B 3 271 fibfi
HE HERON
P A QTT E
LAol.Lc
ALFRED
THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
PRESENTED BY
PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND
MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID
THE HERON OF CASTLE CREEK
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
IANTO THE FISHERMAN
AND OTHER SKETCHES OF COUNTRY LIFE
{Out of Print.
The Times. "The quality which perhaps most
gives its individuality to the book is distinctive of
Celtic genius. . . . The characters . . . are touched
with a reality that implies genuine literary skill."
The Outlook. " This book we speak in deliberate
superlative is the best essay in what may be called
natural history biography that we have ever read."
CREATURES OF THE NIGHT
A BOOK OF WILD LIFE IN WESTERN BRITAIN
With Illustrations.
The Tifnes. "So graphic is Mr. Rees' writing,
the reader himself feels one of the company, crouch-
ing in the brushwood in the moonlit wood, as a
crackle of twigs or a glint of light makes the stealthy
motion of otter, fox, vole, hare, or badger . . . these
pictures of them, in conditions so seldom described,
form engrossing reading for all who love the wilder
aspects of nature."
LONDON: JOHN MURRAY
'-"
Photo by J. Rusxll & Sons.
THE HERON OF
CASTLE CREEK
AND OTHER SKETCHES OF
BIRD LIFE
BY ALFRED WELLESLEY REES
WITH A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR
BY J. K. HUDSON AND A PORTRAIT
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W,
1920
All rights reserved
8 LI-
TO
"GEORGE" AND "ESTHER"
IN MEMORY OP
" My birds, come- back ! the hollow sky
Is weary for your note,
(Sweet throat, come back ! liquid, mellow throat /)
Ere May's soft minions hereward fly,
Shame on ye, laggards, to deny
The brooding breast, the sun-bright eye,
The tawny, shining coat."
ALICE BROWN.
PREFACE
THE articles in this volume were selected
some years ago by the author for re-issue
in book form, and were partially corrected by
him. Their publication was held over during
the war, and owing to the author's death they
still lacked his final revision. As Mr. Rees's
literary executor I have prepared them for the
press, and prefixed a short memoir.
The bulk of the book appeared originally in
The Standard newspaper. I wish to thank the
editor of CJiambers' Journal for permission to
reprint, in revised form, " Bird Life in a Western
Valley." The chapter on the Bittern, called
" A Moorland Sanctuary," appeared first in the
Monthly Review (Murray). The portrait is repro-
duced by permission of Messrs. J. Russell & Sons.
There still remains a considerable amount of
Mr. Rees's work that seems worthy to receive
a more permanent form. I trust the reception
of this volume will justify the issue of another,
perhaps more miscellaneous, selection.
J. K. HUDSON.
CONTENTS
PAOl
MEMOIR OP THE AUTHOR . . . * , . 1
THE WOOD- WREN . . i . . . 19
THE HOME OP THE WILLOW- WREN ... . . 42
MISADVENTURES OF BIRD- WATCHING . . .52
BIRD LIFE IN A WESTERN VALLEY
I. THE KINGFISHER . . . - . . 67
II. THE HERON . . . . /t . 74
III. THE DIPPER . .* . . . . 78
IV. THE DIPPER'S NEST . . . . 90
THE HERON OP CASTLE CREEK
I. THE WOUNDED HERON . . . . 97
II. YOUNG HERONS IN TRAINING . . .111
A MOORLAND SANCTUARY . . . . 124
THE- PARTRIDGE
I. PARTRIDGE NESTING HABITS . . . 139
II. THE SUMMER LIFE OF THE PARTRIDGE . 152
III. ENEMIES OF THE PARTRIDGE . . . 162
IV. THE CHANGING YEAR . . , * 175
V. A DAY WITH THE PARTRIDGE . , 187
W T ILD LIFE IN HARD WEATHER . V . V 197
INDEX . 217
MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR
MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR
THOMAS ALFRED WESLEY REES, the
"Alfred Wellesley Rees " of lanto the
Fisherman and Creatures of the Night, was born
December 7th, 1872, at Pembroke Dock. His
father, Richard Rees, was in the employment of
the Admiralty as a Government Inspector of
Iron Contracts, and is described by his eldest
son as " a man of decided and admirable
character ; he was an unpaid preacher among
the Wesleyans, and one of the best preachers I
have had the good fortune to hear." His mother
was a Wilkins, belonging to a mid-Glamorgan
stock. While he was therefore of Welsh blood
on each side, he belonged both by ancestry and
upbringing to the English-speaking fringe of
South Wales, ruled in early days by Norman
families, and here and there colonised by
Flemings.
Of his two brothers the eldest was a banker,
and the second a Wesleyan minister ; both were
of strong literary tastes, and acquired libraries
alike remarkable in extent and rich in rare books
2 MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR
and manuscripts. Alfred, the youngest of a trio
of exceptional ability, had affinities with each.
He started his career as a banker, and became
subsequently a clergyman ; he possessed an
instinctive love of literature, especially of
clear, balanced, and euphonious prose-writing;
and he gradually developed in his own work
a literary style which won him, to quote
the words of a critic of his first book, "a
place which was all his own in the great succes-
sion of writers who have made Nature their
theme."
Alfred Rees received a sound education at a
good private school at Pembroke Dock ; but his
interest as a boy lay mainly in natural history.
He " would come home, hauling out of his
pockets snakes and toads and all kinds of living
thingsto his mother's great horror." Hi*
brothers collected books ; he, like many another
boy, collected birds' eggs, butterflies and moths,
and he arranged his collections with a care,
thoroughness, and artistic finish worthy of a
museum. He showed thus early that passion
for perfection which distinguished him in
the various pursuits and these, as will be
seen, were many in which he afterwards
engaged.
At the age of about sixteen, he entered the
service of the ill-fated National Bank of Wales,
MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR 3
and in 1891 was put in charge of the sub-
office at Llandyssul, Cardiganshire. This is the
village of which he wrote so much and so
lovingly ; the beautiful country surrounding it
forms the background of most of his nature
studies ; here he found the human types, which
he developed and idealised in " lanto " and
" Philip " ; and here, while yet a stripling, he
married. His two children are the " Myfanwy
and Morgan " to whom his second book was
dedicated. Llandyssul, for weal and woe, had a
decisive influence on his life. It opened up to
him many new interests ; unfortunately these
came to engross a disproportionate amount of his
energy, and his bank work grew increasingly
distasteful.
The River Teifi has excellent trout and
salmon fishing, and was at that date much less
closely preserved than at present. Rees threw
himself, heart and soul, into the sport of angling ;
and he added to the practical and traditional
lore, taught him by " lanto, " all that he could
glean from books, and all the suggestions of his
own thought and close observation. In autumn
and winter he turned to shooting with the
same intense ardour. Here his quickness of
sight and movement stood him in good stead,
and he became one of the best shots in the
district at birds and rabbits, as also in clay-
4 MEMOIR OP THE AUTHOR
pigeon matches. His evening pursuits included
the observation of ants in which he followed
and verified Lord Avebury's work on the subject
and billiards, a game in which he quickly
became proficient. In all these things he was
satisfied with nothing short of the best ; and
there seems little doubt that he spent upon
them far more money than the slender salary
of a junior bank-clerk warranted, and in so
far unwisely mortgaged his future. His affairs
were further complicated by the failure of the
Bank of Wales ; the assistants, indeed, were
mostly retained by the Metropolitan Bank,
which took over from the bankrupt concern ;
but Rees, like many others, lost his invested
capital.
In 1896 he was transferred to Swansea,
where he spent the next five years of his life.
Here his opportunities for sport were much
restricted, but at the week-ends he found in the
Gower peninsula fresh fields for natural history
work. He also had drawing and painting
lessons, and attained considerable skill in each
branch. It was at this time that he began to try
his powers as a writer. He kept careful diaries
of his nature rambles, and on solitary walks
constantly amused himself by literary " phrase-
making." He had the usual experience of the
novice in writing. His business training led him
MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR 5
to keep a record of his articles the order and
date of composition, the titles, the various
papers and magazines where they were offered,
rejected and finally accepted, and the prices
received (or sometimes not received). Ultimately
his work found regular acceptance, first in the
Evening Standard, and later in the Standard,
then under the editorship of Mr. G. Byron Curtis.
When, in 1901, he returned to Llandyssul he
was under agreement to supply the Standard
with an average of (I believe) three articles
monthly at special rates.
His second period of residence at Llandyssul
opened with bright prospects. The bank had
constructed new premises, and the agency was
now turned into an independent branch. Rees
was the youngest manager in the service. In
addition to salary and house, he was now draw-
ing a regular income from his journalistic work
and had ample opportunity for the pursuits he
loved. But even in this short space of time
much was changed. Formerly Dol-llan, the
house across the river, had been rented by a
keen and widely-travelled sportsman, who
remained one of Rees's life-long friends ; but
the house was now empty and its upper garden
the " ruined garden " of lanto had become a
tangled wilderness. " lanto " himself, his old
river companion and tutor, was dead. Rees's
6 MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR
own outlook on life and nature was also changed.
The sportsman's instinct on a fine day "to go
out and kill something " was rapidly dying out
in him ; he preferred rather to watch the habits
of living birds and animals, and to divine their
instincts, feelings, and actions. At a meet of
fox-hounds, harriers, or otter-hounds, he would
follow every movement with keen zest, but his
sympathies turned more and more to the side of
the quarry, rather than to that of the hunter.
When he went shooting, he now cared little
about the size of his " bag " ; his joy was rather
to watch the working of the beautiful dogs he
had himself trained, to note the haunts and
movements of the birds, and to watch the ever-
changing aspects of sky and landscape. In
spring he was content to go day by day to the
" island " below the village, or to the river bank
opposite ; to sit and watch the nesting birds ;
to think and dream.
All this was reflected in his literary work.
A vein of tender sentiment was there revealed,
which seemed strangely at variance with his
earlier character, and with the boisterous fun
and high spirits aroused in him by the com-
pany of those he knew well. And the change
went deeper. The careless scepticism of his
youth passed slowly away, and was replaced
.'
MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR 7
by a growing sense of religion. Ultimately,
though here I anticipate the order of events,
he resolved to take orders in the Church of
England.
Among other activities of this period may be
mentioned photography and amateur acting. He
designed proscenium and scenery for the County
School of the little town, painted the scenery
with his own hands, and inaugurated its use by
organising a performance of Caste, in which he
played the part of old Eccles with marked
ability. He was henceforth known as " Pa " to
his old associates in the play.
At one time he thought of devoting himself
entirely tS literary work, but was strongly
urged by Mr. Curtis not to do so. In spite
of this, he resigned his position in the bank
in July, 1904. Misfortunes quickly followed.
Before the end of the year the Standard news-
paper was acquired by Mr. (now Sir C. Arthur)
Pearson, in the interests of the Tariff Reform
movement. Mr. Curtis and nearly all the staff
resigned. Gradually under the new manage-
ment Rees lost that position as a regular
contributor which was now his chief source
of income ; and finally he resolved to take
orders.
In 1906, after a strenuous period of prepara-
8 MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR
tion, he entered Lampeter College, where he
spent two years, at the close of which he
emerged as the best man of his year. Pro-
fessor Hugh Walker has written the following
appreciation of his Lampeter career :
LAMPETER,
13th July, 1919.
Mr. T. A. W. Rees matriculated at St. David's College
in October, 1906. At that time I had read none ot his
writings, but I knew that he was the author of a volume
published by Murray, and I looked forward with interes
to his essays. They were at first so feeble and so ill-
expressed that my interest in Rees's writings withered
and, as I believed, died. Towards the end of his first
term, however, a friend handed me lanto the Fisherman
and asked me to read it. I took the volume without
enthusiasm, sat down by my fire and began to read.
At once I was fascinated, and I read on without a pause
until I had finished the book. I naturally asked Rees
for an explanation of the singular fact that for me he
wrote drivel, and drivel that could hardly be called
English of even the humblest sort, while in his published
writings he showed himself not merely an accomplished
naturalist but a master of style. His reply was that
when he wrote lanto the Fisherman he chose his own
subject, wrote in his own study and was undistracted
by the slightest noise. The College essays were of the
nature of exercises in the art of being examined. The
subjects were dictated, the men were gathered together
MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR 9
in large rooms, and they shuffled, fidgeted and turned
this way and that in the search for ideas. They did
not always find ideas themselves, but they effectually
scattered those of the solitary student. Neither by
word nor by tone did Kees suggest a complaint. I am
confident that he never challenged the justice of the
judgment which ranked him for a time among the least
competent of his fellow-students ; and he never shirked
a task which must have been odious to him, as a weaker
man might have done. His good sense showed him
that if he was to end his College career with credit he
must learn to write under the conditions which he then
found so distracting. He had his reward. Very soon
he mastered his difficulties, and long before the end of
his period of residence he was decidedly the best essayist
in College. The calm acquiescence with which he
accepted the conditions under which he had to work
was characteristic of the man as I knew him. In the
same spftit he faced all his difficulties, and he conquered
them with equal completeness. In his final examination
his work was pronounced by the examiners to be the
best they had seen. He had in the meantime taught
his fellow-students to be proud of him ; at least he had
taught the more generous of them, for there were a few
who were petty enough to feel their own dignity dimin-
ished by his superiority. He had also shown that he
was scarcely less a master of the art of speaking than
of that of writing. Feeling that the time was brief and
that for a man whose education had been irregular
there was much to do, he seldom allowed himself to go
outside the curriculum ; but once he gave to one of the
10 MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR
students' societies a lecture on ants, as delightful in
expression as it was rich in knowledge. This gift of
speech of course stood him in good stead after he was
ordained. " The people hang on his lips " were the words
of his first vicar to me.
As a man of mature years, and married, Rees natur-
ally, in some respects, stood outside the circle of students.
But he was far too human to separate himself from them
completely. He was even willing to play the boy on
occasion. There was no hint of condescension in his
attitude to them, no air of superiority, though the
superiority was real. I do not think that he readily
made friends, but he was most loyal to those whom he
admitted to his heart. He knew that I liked him and
admired him and meant well by him, and he was acutely
pained on one occasion when he believed that he had
quite unwittingly done me an injury. Even if he was
right, I fear that I had beforehand injured him at
least as much by the emphatic expression of my opinion
of him. It is easy to forget that some sprats imagine
themselves to be the peers of whales and resent the
blunt assertion of the fact that they are considerably
smaller. But if men of mark almost inevitably stir
envy and jealousy in the mean, they have their reward
in the admiration of bigger souls. I have already quoted
the generous words of Rees's first vicar, and I know
that this hearty appreciation was not confined to the
vicar. I had been instrumental in placing Rees there,
and a neighbouring vicar, aware of the fact and admiring
Rees, asked me to send him " a curate like Rees." I
was obliged to own that it was quite beyond my
MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR 11
power to do so. In my long experience of Lampeter
I have known some very able men, but only one
Alfred Rees only one man capable of writing lanto
the Fisherman.
To this I may add that Rees's method of
composition was peculiar. He would sit down
with pencil and large sheet of paper, and com-
pose slowly, writing a neat but extremely
minute hand, with the lines very close together.
Corrections, deletions, transpositions followed,
till each sentence was moulded to his fastidious
liking. The final result was sent to his un-
fortunate typist to decipher ! Professor Walker
is not quite right in saying he required absolute
quiet for his work. He would often write with
two or three others working and talking in the
study, though doubtless it was less easy for him
to do so ; but he rather prided himself on his
power of concentration. Later on his sermons
also were often written in similar conditions.
The difficulty with his college essays was
largely, I think, the limit of time ; he was
accustomed to brood slowly over his subject,
and at first probably found himself with
about ten minutes to go, and nothing yet
done. Hence a rapid rush at the end, and
" drivel " !
12 MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR
After leaving Lampeter, in 1908, he served as a
curate for four years at Holy Trinity, Oswestry,
and for a similar period at the parish church,
Bowden, Cheshire. My own last glimpses of
him were at this place. A holiday at the seaside,
spent largely in sea -fishing with rod and line, had
aroused afresh his old love of angling. All his
spare moments during his last winters here were
spent in contriving and making all kinds of
ingenious tackle for the sport.
Now, as ever, he flung himself with all his
extraordinary energy into his new work, and
immediately made his power felt in the multi-
farious activities of a busy parish. In particular
he won recognition as a preacher ; but as a
writer his work was over. No time was available,
though he looked longingly forward to resuming
it, when, as he hoped, he should receive a country
living.
That time appeared to have come when he was
appointed in 1916 to the living of Exmoor. He
entered on this with high hopes both of literary
and research work ; suddenly his health
mysteriously failed.* In January, 1917, he
* Physically, Rees was of short, stocky build ; broad in the
body, and endowed with considerable muscular strength. Doubt-
less he had in early life made over-great drafts on his physical
and nervous energy ; but, in spite of occasional illness from his
Lampeter days onward, no organic disease was suspected.
MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR 13
consulted a specialist, who found him to be
suffering from a long-standing kidney disease.
Strict diet produced for a time an improvement ;
but in May his condition changed rapidly for the
worse, and he passed away on June llth of that
year. A friend who was with him at the end
writes : " In the short time he has been here he
has much endeared himself to his parishioners,
and in spite of ill-health he has done much in the
way of bringing about better conditions of
farming. . . . His year at Exmoor was one of
rapidly failing health. Just at first in the
height of the summer beauty he was in a
rapture of delight, and said he felt better than
he had done for months. Then came the terribly
long and cold winter, which was fatal to his com-
plaint ; the loneliness and isolation preyed upon
his spirits and, I feel sure, hastened the end.
When I saw him in January, after an interval of
five months, I was struck with the scared expres-
sion in his eyes, and with his passionate dread of
another winter on Exmoor. Had he been well
he would have felt differently, and Exmoor
would have become to him a place of rest and
adoration. After all he had the joy of a most
radiant summer."
Such in brief outline was the life of Alfred
Rees. In his short career he lived through more
14 MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR
joys and sorrows than most of those whose span
is " three score years and ten," or over. Faults
he had, and he suffered much through them.
His brother writes : " His strength lay in going
at all hazards and forgetful of all else for what
occupied his attention for the time being. His
weakness was the forgetfulness of everything
that did not contribute to and fall into line with
the all-absorbing subject occupying his whole
mind at the time." His impulsiveness and
ardour led occasionally to serious mistakes and
aroused enmity ; and in his younger days at
least he did not " suffer fools gladly." But he
faced his difficulties and " dreed his weird "
without whining. As Tennyson said of J. R.
Green, " he was a jolly, vivid man " ; and I
think that on the balance the joys of his life
outweighed the sorrows. Lake Charles Kingsley,
he lived each day to the full, and preferred to
wear himself out rather than to rust. He had
many talents, which he sedulously used and
developed, and he spent his last years ungrudg-
ingly in the service of others, where his duty lay.
His personal friends and those who knew him
only through his writings alike deplore the
tragic fate which struck him down so suddenly
just as he had reached a goal manfully sought
for and attained. Mellowed and chastened by
MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR 15
experience, with his trained powers of observa-
tion at their height, with leisure at last at his
disposal, and a new and fertile field 'of work
before him, he seemed about to earn fresh
laurels. Then suddenly the " silver cord was
loosed and the golden bowl broken " and the
ardent " spirit returned unto God who gave it."
J. K. HUDSON.
FOWEY, CORNWALL.
THE HERON OF CASTLE CREEK
THE WOOD-WREN
FAR up in the dark sky, myriads of tiny
birds sped northward from the arid plains
of Africa. Ever northward, hastening to their
distant homes, they journeyed through the night.
Instinct guided them, as, since remote ages,
it had directed their species towards the old
haunts in the springtide fields and woods of
higher Europe. Above them shone numberless
stars from the transparent heavens ; beneath
them, now and again, flashed the lights of ships,
or of lonely beacons on rock or shoal, placed
there to guide the merchant mariners. Over
the night brooded the silence of utter calm,
broken only by the whir of many wings cleaving
the air, or by the distant clang of a bell-buoy
rocked on the waves, or by the music of the surf
as it washed the shelving sands and iron-bound
promontories that lay, indistinct, beneath the
rolling, drifting mists. White clouds, at intervals,
sailed slowly under the crescent moon, casting
dark shadows along the wan streak that lay on
the sea. Ever northward swiftly moved in dense
array the countless host, almost the last of the
19
20 THE WOOD-WREN
great bird-multitudes to seek the ancestral
homes. Occasionally, as if according to some
careful plan, the living mass divided, as band
after band broke the close ranks and shaped its
course from the main line of flight. These
divisions became increasingly frequent, till, as
the grey dawn broke slowly in the east, most
of the great valleys in mid-Europe were occupied
by flocks of twittering birds.
Almost unobserved, one of the migrant armies
reached the shores of Britain just before sunrise,
and, after resting for a while in the woods and
copses near the southern coast, dispersed in
every direction, to fill with song the woodlands
now almost breaking into leaf. Among our
summer visitors were hundreds of wood-warblers,
mostly males ; the females, according to a
general habit, having for a little while delayed
their journey. Towards evening on the day of
his arrival in Britain, one of these wood-warblers
reached the island copse below oar village in the
west. Recognising that he had returned to the
place where last year he had first looked out on
the world of summer from the shelter of a snug
nest hidden in the grass, he resolved to stay
there, and immediately, giving expression to his
contentment and delight, burst into song. He
was hungry and tired and cold after his long
flight from the torrid regions of the south, and
THE WOOD-WREN 21
so, when his sweet little trial song was ended
a simple and unpretending song, meant only for
his own uncritical ears he set his thoughts on
supper. Presently, having found the evening
duns plentiful among the leafy bowers fringing
the river, he retired to the blackthorn thickets
in the middle of the island, and tucked his head
under his wing, just as the sky was darkened
in the west and the last lay of the willow-wren
was hushed in the sprouting alders.
The night passed uneventfully, save that the
hoot of an owl, coming from the woods across the
river, caused a momentary feeling of insecurity,
and a thrush in the furze-brake beneath the twig
on which the warbler slept gave a false alarm,
imagining that a weasel was wandering in the
thicket. In the twilight of dawn the warbler
awoke, but the air was damp and chill, and he
did not leave his perch till the first rays of the
ascending sun lit up the thatched roof of the
farmstead on the hill, and the leisurely rooks
crossed the valley from the elms near a lonely
mansion to the dewy ploughlands where the
worms had not yet descended into the lower
galleries of their burrows after their night's
wanderings in the open air. White clouds passed
slowly overhead on the breath of a north-west
wind. The leaves of the hawthorn and woodbine
were half unfolded ; awaiting the coining of the
22 THE WOOD-WREN
bees, the yellow flowers of the coltsfoot, asleep,
drooped over their crimson stalks. The golden
garment of the gorse was aglow in the slanting
sunbeams.
To the wood-wren everything seemed too
wonderful to be true. The old familiar sights
and sounds aroused a hitherto unknown longing
for the arrival of the tiny mate that was to share
his summer happiness ; and, as he carefully
preened his feathers, he decided on a tour of
inspection through the copse and the adjoining
wood. Ephemerals were plentiful on the twigs
and under the leaves. Yesterday had been warm
and fine, and at noon a cloud of dancing insects
had moved over the bright face of the river.
Though the trout and salmon-pink had played
sad havoc with the spent " dark blues " borne
down beneath the surface of the stream, and with
the cock-winged duns floating on the sun-flecked
ripples, many a delicious morsel yet remained to
satisfy the wood-wren's appetite. Sensitive to
the gladness of spring and the charm of home,
the warbler called and sang, but no sweet answer-
ing cry was heard in the bushes, though his
music set all the willow-wrens atune, so that
the copse was ringed with the subdued and
immature strains of their sweet and wistful
melodies.
Following the example of the willow-wrens,
THE WOOD-WEEN 23
the robin in the hazel, the wren in his ivied
retreat among the lowest branches of the haw-
thorn, " Silver Wings " the chaffinch on the
topmost bough of a beech, sang merrily their
morning songs ; the thrush, forgetful of the
night's alarm, piped gaily in the thick bushes
around his mud-built nest. The wild, whistling
carol of the dipper came from the shallows up-
stream, where, with snow-white waistcoat, and
restless, flirting tail, the bird stood on a rock
jutting out into the deep, shadowed flood at the
far side of the rapids. Now and then a sandpiper,
uttering a shrill, plaintive call, glanced by on
pointed pinions as he skirted the island and sped
from shallow to shallow.
The day wore on ; the water-flies left their
hiding-places under the leaves, or rose from their
pupa-cases in the grass, and with irregular
flights moved to and fro beneath the fringing
alders on the river reach. The hovering green-
tail dimpled the circling backwaters as she de-
posited her eggs on the surface ; the blue dun
strayed, whirling in a film of fragile wings,
towards the alder clumps ; that May-fly of the
mountain torrent, the big March brown, ranged
swiftly from bank to bank. The island was alive
with singing birds ; every feathered inhabitant
of wood and field seemed to have come hither
for the daily feast of flies. Again and again the
24 THE WOOD-WREN
warbler sang and called, but still no answering
cry was heard.
About a week had passed when, one afternoon,
a flutter of grey-green wings was seen near the
rose tree by the stream, and the wood-wren flew
thither to find that another of his kind had come
to the island copse. During the rest of the day
he never for a moment lost sight of her. She
was coy, and made pretence of scolding him for
the ardent affection displayed as he hovered on
swift-vibrating wings before the branch on which
she rested. Sometimes, frightened by his bois-
terous attentions, she flew away, with a harsh
little note of defiance ; but he pursued her in
and out of the bushes and tree-trunks, entreating
her always, with quick, twittering voice, to live
with him in his mid-stream fastness, whither
no prowling cat or stoat ever came to disturb
a nesting bird.
The jealous willow- wrens were fighting among
themselves continually in the trees, but no rival
came to disturb the wood-wren's peace of mind.
His courtship, compared with theirs, was almost
commonplace, and before April had gone he
and his mate, after much deliberation, chose a
suitable nesting-place, and in earnest began their
household duties. The first hours of each day
were occupied in breakfasting on ephemerals
that, sleepy with cold, hid beneath the foliage.
THE WOOD-WEEN 25
Afterwards, till the noontide swarm of insects
burst from their nymph -cases, the warblers
turned their attention to building. When the
flies, enticed by the increasing warmth, drifted
everywhere on frail, transparent wings, and the
" plop " of rising trout came from the reaches
beyond the sloping gravel-banks, the wood-
wrens, like the fish, made the most of their
opportunity to secure a supply of dainty food.
In the afternoon they were again busy about
the nest. The evening was regularly given up
fco courtship and fly-catching. And nightly, as
the misty gloom spread slowly over the country-
side, they retired to sleep in the gorse near the
copse.
The spot selected for a building site was a tuft
of grass beneath a clump of broom on the edge
of a thick tangle of briar and furze. A green,
moss-covered pathway, trodden only by the
cattle that in the cloudless summer days some-
times waded across the cool shallows from the
farm meadows to browse in the shade of the
copse, here intersected the furze-brake, and led
onward to the tall avenue of beeches near the
island pond, where a pair of moor-hens had their
home among the sedges. Directly opposite the
wood-wren's nest was an ash tree, overlooking
another thicket of furze, and forming a con-
venient plighting place from which the birds
26 THE WOOD-WREN
could reconnoitre before dropping into cover and
thence flitting straight into the nest.
Nearly every member of the warbler family
loves to nest in such a situation, where insect
life is plentiful, and the undergrowth is so art-
lessly arranged that it forms an ample screen
while admitting sufficient light for the health of
the young and the satisfaction of the sunshine-
loving parent birds. And a special tree, as a
post of observation, seems indispensable to
wood-wren and willow-wren alike. The warblers,
whose habits are in many ways almost identical,
are seldom found far from the lowlands ; for in
the lush meadows, and in the brakes of fern, and
briar, and furze on the borders of brooks and
rivers, the insects on which they feed are hatched
out in greater profusion than in the cornlands
and pastures on the slopes of the hills, where the
bitter winter wind, the furrowing ploughshare,
and the close-browsing rabbits and sheep are
never-tiring enemies to the lowlier forms of life
that dwell in the grass.
Great care and ingenuity were shown by the
wood-wrens in the construction of their dwelling.
The moss used for a roof and foundation was
readily obtainable from the cattle-path close by.
When this had been moulded into shape, dry
grass-bents and leaves were woven together
within the dome ; next, at the bottom and sides.
THE WOOD-WEEN 27
of the hollow, were placed fine fibres brought
from the roots of plants exposed in the river
bank. Then a still finer lining of hair, red and
white and black, left among the thorns by the
wandering cattle, was twisted into shape ; and,
as if to confuse the assumptions of our naturalists
who tell us that the willow-wren's downy couch
is never imitated by the wood-warbler, the
structure was completed with a soft lining of
feathers, pilfered from the disused nest of a
long-tailed tit, and from the neighbourhood of a
pheasant's nest in the copse.
By the second week in May all was in readiness ;
and the first of seven pearl-white eggs, slightly
larger than those of the willow-wren, and
speckled with dark reddish purple, was deposited
in the hollow beneath the dome. Sometimes one,
sometimes the other, of the happy pair brooded
over the dainty treasures, but to their welfare
the hen was more closely attentive than the
cock. Her mate's chief delight lay in hunting
for food, and in visiting her while, with beady
eyes peeping from the open door of the nest, she
sat in quiet and proud possession of her well-
furnished home. He found for her the choicest
tit-bits flies fresh from their nymph-cases, and
unsoiled by rain or sun, and caterpillars, hanging
by their lines of spun silk from the leaves.
Often, after feeding her, he stayed to help M turn
28 THE WOOD-WREN
the eggs, or to discuss, in soft twitterings, all
kinds of family affairs.
Strange and wonderful were the doings of the
woodland folk around that snuggery in the grass,
and many an anxious moment was experienced
by the brooding birds. The nest was not so
completely domed as the willow-wren's on the
far side of the thicket by the river front. The
roof was higher, and rather less compact ; and
no threshold of twisted grass, as constructed by
the smaller bird, lay at the entrance. The little
domicile by the side of the grass-tuft might, in
fact, have been better concealed. Many an
incident that would have passed unnoticed had
the warblers built high up in the furze after the
manner of their neighbour the greenfinch, gave
them serious cause for apprehension. The
pheasant, whose nest was in the heart of the
copse, sometimes came across the path to an
ants' colony about three feet from the nest, and,
scratching vigorously in search of the fat pupae
nursed within the underground galleries, caused
quite a shower of earth and gravel to fall about
the warblers' home, so that the little birds every
moment feared disaster.
Once, in the moonlight, a rat from the river-
bank stole along the path, and paused for a
moment beneath the furze, sitting there on his
haunches while, half believing that he had
THE WOOD-WREN 29
detected a nest wherein might be obtained a
delicious supper of eggs, he sniffed the air re-
peatedly. But his attention was diverted by the
same owl that had frightened the cock warbler
just after arriving on the Island, and he scurried
away to shelter beneath the hawthorns. One
night, just as the eggs, grown heavy, were about
to be hatched, an otter trod on the edge of the
nest. The hen warbler was crouching asleep
in the far corner beneath the dome. Awakened
and panic-stricken by the rude intrusion, she
scrambled out and flew for safety to the nearest
furze-brake. But before the eggs had become
perilously cool, the dawn, lightening the east,
enabled the mother-bird to see that no harm had
been done, and that the way was clear for her to
return home. Night brought with it many un-
pleasant surprises, but by day nothing startling
occurred ; the keeper across the river had freed
the island from hawks, jays, and carrion crows.
The warblers became, however, increasingly
anxious as the eggs gave signs of hatching.
Even the usual intervals of leisure, spent by
them together at evening in the tree-tops, were
shortened. The time of courtship that holiday
season of freedom and delight, when the hen
bird, fascinated yet reluctant, was wont to
watch her mate as he hovered for a moment
overhead, and dropped on upturned wings to-
30 THE WOOD-WREN
wards her through the air, uttering meanwhile
a trill of music that was more like a shy caress
than a song had passed away ; henceforth
family cares were to be purely and simply
business, and suspiciously like irksome drudgery,
but for that parental gladness which is the very
breath of summer's morning.
Towards the end of May, six of the seven
spotted eggs in the wood- warblers' nest hatched
out successfully ; the seventh was addled. The
helpless nurslings of awkward shape, with long
neck, long legs, ridiculous little fleshy projections
for wings, and, for head, a round bail, with blue-
black protuberances where the eyes lay beneath
the tight-drawn envelope of the sealed eyelids
squatted, each too weak to move, in the position
formerly occupied by the eggs from which they
had emerged, on the downy lining of the rain-
proof chamber. For some hours the fledglings
lay in abject feebleness ; then, with a sudden
access of strength, but doubtless utterly un-
conscious of the meaning of the action, they
craned their necks, like the buds of some strange
flower with stiffened stalks, and each barb-
shaped beak opened to reveal a cavernous,
orange-coloured receptacle for flies.
Work had commenced in earnest for the parent
wood-wrens. Day by day their labours increased
as the callow brood grew into vigorous nestlings,
THE WOOD-WREN 31
at first clothed with irregular patches of blue-
black down, and, later, with a few pale, greenish
grey feathers on head and back, leaving the down
visible only about the eyes, which in time opened
to the gentle light filtering through the leaves.
Nature seemed to have carefully arranged the
minutest details for the welfare of the birds.
Though packed on the bed of the nest as tightly
as goods in a bale, so that it seemed impossible,
had the addled egg been sound, for the seventh
midget to have found accommodation, the wood-
wren's family suffered nothing from the usual
ill-effects of overcrowding. No dirt could cling
to them, for hardly a single feather grew on the
underside of their bodies while they remained in
the nest ; side by side they filled their allotted
positions, from which they seldom, if ever,
moved.
Probably because they received a more liberal
allowance of food, the three near the door of the
nest were perceptibly bigger and stronger than
the three behind them. Indeed, the nestling
that occupied the far corner, away from the
light and beyond easy reach of the parent
warblers, was the delicate member of the family.
But kindly nature, in due time, made amends ;
this little bird, when his brothers and sisters
left the nursery, remained at home, and for a
few days, till he, too, became strong enough to
32 THE WOOD-WREN
hop out into the undergrowth, was feasted
royally ; for the more venturesome youngsters,
scattered in the grass, were not always easily
found when a nice beakful of flies had been
brought from the riverside ; and their portions
often fell to his lot.
It is an interesting fact that a bird's nest, if
built compactly, with circular walls, generally
appears to contain as many inhabitants as it can
possibly hold, let the number be two or ten.
Many young birds, particularly thrushes, linger
at home till the walls of the nest actually bulge
from the pressure within ; but, as a rule, when
discomfort is felt, some of the fledglings become
impatient of confinement, and seek more com-
modious quarters out of doors.
Almost immediately the young wood-wrens
had broken from the eggs, a strange visitor,
destined often to perplex and annoy the warblers
till they became familiar with his presence,
appeared on the scene. The cock-bird was
removing the last of the broken egg-shells to the
thicket on the outer side of the path, when the
quick, irregular sound of human footsteps was
heard on the pebbly shingles near the ford at the
top of the island. Ever on the alert, the warbler,
having dropped the shell he was carrying into
the bushes, flew to his look-out station, from
which he saw that a man, having waded through
THE WOOD-WEEN 33
the ford, was sitting on the grass by the stream.
Presently the new-comer took something from
a pouch that dangled by his side, and placed it
to his eyes. The warbler, alarmed, noticed that
the dark instrument was turned towards him, and
immediately dived to the shelter of the under-
growth. Thence he flew to the arching spray of
the rose bush that screened his nest, and, greatly
excited, trilled a loud strain, apparently a song,
but in reality a succession of decoy notes :
chit-chit-chunrn ! chit-chit-chunn ! churn-chit
chit-chit-chit! The intruder approached nearer
and nearer to the nest, till he almost stepped
on its mossy dome. The hen-bird, panic-
stricken, flitted up on the off-side of the broom,
but her exit was evidently noticed, for the in-
truder at once began to search leisurely in the
grass. Still the loud decoy rattle continued.
The cock was low down beneath the rose-tree,
in a tremor of excited concern for the success
of his ruse, when, to the birds' unfeigned delight,
the dreaded disturber passed down the path, and
sauntered along the river front, followed craftily
by the anxious pair. The hen-bird was silent
till her mate, thinking that his efforts to mislead
had so far met with successful results, gave her a
signal, which she answered by a chun-r-r,
pitched in a lower key than that of her partner's
music ; she then returned secretly to the nest.
34 THE WOOD-WREN
The cock stayed behind, and deliberately set
about endeavouring, for more than an hour, to
persuade the stranger, who now stood motionless
in the shadow of a hawthorn, that the nest was
concealed beneath a neighbouring clump of gorse.
Presently, as luck would have it, a willow-
warbler, carrying a fly in her beak, flew into an
alder scarcely a dozen yards away, and the man's
attention was diverted. The mothering bird,
eager to feed a nestful of fledglings older and
hungrier than those in the wood-wren's nest,
hopped on the edge of a waving fern spray, then,
heedless of danger, made straight for her nest on
the ground in a low tangle of brambles, and
disappeared within. Having waited for a few
moments, the watcher moved across the path,
stooped down, and discovered the little dwelling
in the side of a mound. Seemingly satisfied, he
walked back as far as the pond, and then turned
along the opposite side of the island. The
wood-warbler, recognising that the danger had
passed, uttered a last decoy-note, half in caution,
half in bravado chit-chit-chunrrr and slipped
away to his nest. From the top of the ash he
saw that the watcher was preparing to cross the
ford ; and, as the sun went down, the woodland
home was once more left in peace.
But, unfortunately, next day the intruder
came again. On the same rose-bush, busily
THE WOOD-WREN 35
reeling off the same decoy signals, stood the wood-
warbler, but the watcher was not to be misled
this time. Remembering that a bird had flown
up almost beneath his feet during his former
visit to the Island, he came to the ash, and there,
much to the wonder of the wood-wrens, seemed
to disappear into the ground. An hour passed
by, and then the hen warbler, convinced that the
danger was over, flitted in and out of the broom
and furze, pecking on tiptoe at stray flies hidden
among the leaves, and occasionally flashing into
the air, to hover for a second, and secure an
insect that had been disturbed in its concealment.
The furze was in full golden bloom, and the
atmosphere laden with its luscious scent. Along
slight, pale-green wands stood boldly out the
fresher and more brightly coloured blossoms of
the broom. Bees droned hither and thither,
drowsy beneath their loads of pollen dust.
Thousands of busy flies, transparent and silvery
in the light, but with dark heads and brown
legs, threaded the maze of their unceasing
evolutions, ascending straight towards the tree-
tops, then dropping suddenly, to circle and twist
in the spaces between the vernal sprays bedecked
with yellow blossoms. The blue eyebright dotted
the sward, amid notched leaves of chickweed
and dandelion, and long, slowly-waving plumes
of foxtail grass.
36 THE WOOD-WREN
But almost the fairest gem in the setting of the
perfect day was the little bird fluttering among
the flowers. The sun shone on her as, ever rest-
less, she moved towards the nest. From a
distance she was hardly to be distinguished
among her surroundings, but now so near was
she to the watcher that the diverse markings of
the feathers were distinctly visible. No appre-
ciable difference could be detected in the plumage
of the parent birds pale ash-grey on the under
surface of the body, inclining to greenish yellow
on the throat, beneath the tail, and near the
wings ; olive-green on the upper side of the
wings, and extending over the head to the fringe
of the beak ; dull flesh-colour on the legs ; dark
streaks, extending horizontally beyond the eye-
lids, and fringing the lower side of the wing ;
above the eye a sulphur-yellow line.
The warbler, hunting for her fledglings' food,
happened to catch an unusually large ephem-
eral. With this in her bill, she approached
nearer and nearer to the nest, when a feeling of
insecurity suddenly overcame her. Turning in
the very act of alighting on the ground, she flew
back to the ash-tree above the watcher's head.
There she hopped lightly down from twig to
twig, determined to explore the shadowed recess
under the tree. Peering between the leaves, she
caught sight of a grey motionless object lying in
THE WOOD-WREN 37
from the pathway, beneath an arch of broom
and gorse. It gave no sign of life, so she ven-
tured into the shadow, and for about ten minutes
viewed the strange thing from every side, pre-
tending, meanwhile, that her thoughts were
entirely on fly-catching. Nothing stirred in the
thicket, and the male wood-wren, grown bold,
appeared on the lower branches of the broom.
Gaining confidence, the female joined him.
Both, nevertheless, still showed signs of uneasi-
ness. The hen was silent ; but the cock, though
he, too, carried a fly in his beak, and ran the
risk of dropping the morsel when he ventured to
make a sound, continually uttered a soft note,
imploring caution heu-whee, heu-whee. At
last, impatient of prolonged delay, the female,
after a swift glance to right and left, overcame
her timidity. With a flit-flit of delicate wings
she darted downwards, stood before the nest
door, and deposited her burden in one of the
wide-open beaks uplifted at her coming. The
male, without more ado, alighted by her side,
and also fed the young. Both stayed for a few
seconds she within the nest, and he outside
attending to the cleanliness of the infant brood ;
then they flew away in different directions to
search for further supplies of ephemerals. Their
secret was revealed. Day after day the naturalist
crossed the ford to pry on their doings, and fche
38 THE WOOD-WREN
warblers wasted a deal of their time in trying to
lure him away from their young.
Just as the larks on the upland pastures have
each a sacred place, sometimes little more than
a square yard, with a stone or mound marking
the boundary beyond which no neighbour may
venture unchallenged, so each pair of willow-
wrens, nesting along the island front, held rights
over a special plot, and defied all other warblers
that dared to encroach. Yet, in spite of the
pugnacity of their diminutive cousins, the wood-
wrens, while following the disturber of their
sanctuary, trespassed unhesitatingly on many
a little preserve, and sometimes ran the gauntlet
of a fierce -and unrehearsed attack.
As, deeply interested in the least important
detail, the naturalist noted carefully their every
movement, he found it hard to decide whether
the wood-wrens or the willow-wrens were the
most fairy-like of the tiny songsters inhabiting
the island retreat. While the song of the wood-
warbler was a loud trill, often repeated, the carol
of the smaller bird was a varied, wistful strain of
minor music that sometimes suddenly changed
into a low refrain, so deceptive of direction and
distance as seemingly to be uttered by a wood-
land singer far away. This peculiar, ventrilo-
quial change was most noticeable when, towards
evening, the willow-wren left his brood to
THE WOOD-WREN 39
the care of the mother bird, and retired to the
boughs of an alder overlooking his home. There,
as the sun, from the far entrance to the gorge,
flooded the valley with a glory of yellow light,
the willow-wren, abandoning for a brief interval
his search for flies, poured forth an incessant
stream of subdued, delightful melody. The call,
heu-whee, heu-whee, of the wood-wren, though
almost similar to that of the willow-wren, was
slightly fuller and sweeter in tone ; and whereas
the willow-wrens exchanged greetings when in
the immediate neighbourhood of their nest, the
hen wood-warbler, on visiting her treasures,
seldom made response to the notes of her spouse.
Gradually, taught by experience, the wood-
wrens decided that the strange being who took
such evident interest in their doings meant no
harm, and so they relinquished much of their
caution, till, one afternoon, the little ones, now
almost ready to fly, were unexpectedly taken
by the intruder from the nest and placed in a
group on an arching branch of the broom. Some-
thing, of a peculiar shape, stood before the spray,
mounted on three long pieces of wood, and
covered with a black cloth, beneath which, now
and again, the naturalist disappeared, before
finally he moved to the side of the cloth and
pressed a ball which he held in his hand. Im-
mediately afterwards, the fledglings were safely
40 THE WOOD-WEEN
returned to their home. But though the wood-
wrens had grown so trustful that once they had
even shown the watcher how the feathery lining
of the nest was partially removed to make room
for the growing fledglings, this incident brought
back all the old distrust, and before the following
evening the young were hidden in the grass some
distance from the empty nest. Obedient to
their parents, they crouched motionless in their
secure retreat as lately they had been taught
to remain in the widened chamber beneath the
broom whenever danger threatened, and the
loud chur-r-r of warning, varied by a soft ken-
wkee, heu-whee, of entreaty reached their ears.
They skulked, like long-legged mice, in the under-
growth, hissing audibly if alarmed, and seldom
venturing aloft to the tops of the gorse and broom
till, grown strong, and somewhat independent,
they caught flies for themselves, and accepted
the unselfish attentions of their parents only
when a feeling of weariness made them dis-
inclined for exertion. When unusually hungry,
they made known their wants by low sibilant
call-notes that sounded like an indrawn whistle ;
and, crouching before the old birds, with a
pleading flutter of grey-green wings begged for
the tit-bits brought to satisfy their greedy appe-
tites. Soon the feathers appeared strong and
firm on every part of the body, and young and
THE WOOD-WREN 41
old were almost alike in colour as well as in
habits.
The brood continued under the supervision
of the adult wood-wrens throughout the summer.
The golden blossoms of the broom faded, and
gave place to ripening pods. The seed clusters
of the gorse dried and crackled in the sun ; and
the prickly, greyish green twigs lengthened on
the bushes. Tall, stately rows of foxglove bells,
alive with murmuring bees, fringed the thickets ;
roses opened their white petals along the thorny
sprays under which the father wood-wren lurked
when first he tried to entice the watcher from his
nest. And with the constant succession of
bright flowers, unfolding and withering away,
occurred an equally constant succession of gauze-
winged water-flies circling over the pools and
shallows of the shining river. At last, in Sep-
tember, when the days were shortening, the
happy family journeyed together to a southern
county, and thence, uniting with a vast flock of
migrant birds, sped away towards a warmer
land, whither the hot sun and the summer had
already departed.
THE HOME OF THE WILLOW- WEEN
events stand out prominently in the
calendar of the naturalist-sportsman ; just as
the middle of October marks the coming of the
woodcock, and suggests the immigration of our
winter bird-visitors, so the middle of May is
associated with the arrival of the spotted fly-
catcher from the south, " the last of our migrants,
a laggard." With the spotted fly-catcher the
coming of our welcome woodland visitors is
ended ; our resident birds should then have
built their nests and hatched their young. The
insectivorous birds that in our northern summer
find food plentiful, even for their fastidious
appetites, should either be building, or about to
build, the homes wherein their eggs are to be
laid and their fledglings hatched, with such
promptitude that autumn will witness a goodly
company of fleet-winged emigrants following
the sun to southern climes. The swift is by no
means the first of our visitors from distant
shores. The martins begin to arrive in the middle
of April the swift delays his journey till a
fortnight afterwards. But his stay is short, and
42
THE HOME OF THE WILLOW- WREN 43
he returns to a more congenial latitude than
ours long before the swallows think of forsaking
the old church in the valley. In the heights of
the sky, where the swift loves to wheel his
arrowy flight, insect life becomes rare when the
showers of August begin to fall ; and soon, on
wide-spread pinions, this free, bold bird of
summer takes his farewell, abandoning his
nesting-place to the chattering sparrows that in
winter often seek refuge in the cranny above our
study window; from which, each spring, they
are evicted with the unceremonious haste always
displayed by the relentless, business-like swift
when he returns from Africa for his brief sojourn
in our valley.
The song of the willow-warbler is now much
louder than when he came to us in the second
week of April. Then it was hardly to be heard
at a greater distance than about fifty yards
from the songster, and, indeed, was not notice-
able, among other bird-voices, even when the
listener stood scarcely half that distance away.
Frequently, in those days, when, with every-
thing new and strange, yet evidently delightful,
in his surroundings, he waited anxiously for
the coming of his tiny mate, I daily watched
the frail songster in his summer haunt & thick
hedgerow near the river and grew to imagine
that his actions, in some subtle fashion, were
44 THE HOME OF THE WILLOW-WREN
gradually becoming an index to his thoughts,
and more and more to be interpreted as such.
For a while his movements suggested little
beyond an inquisitive restlessness. By day,
at any rate, he was never for a moment at
ease. I wondered how he could possibly fold
his head beneath his wing and go to sleep when
night stole over the fields, and I was inclined to
believe that even in his sleep he must fidget
first on the right leg, then on the left ; with his
head first under one wing and then beneath
the other. The night would appear damp and
chill after the warm zephyrs of the south, and
in the deep shadows of the hedgerows the cold
Would be unusually severe, and the willow-
warbler would feel, as we often feel when the
winds of spring blow from the north-east, that
discomfort followed him everywhere, and that
the long-looked-for summer must yet be far
away. It might be, however, that in some pre-
vious May, when the hawthorn blossoms beneath
the hazels made a sweet-scented paradise of
the shady hedgerow, he had opened his fledgling
eyes in a dome-shaped nest carefully hidden
in the grass, and not far from the spot to which
he recently returned from his latest pilgrimage.
If I remained motionless near the hazels,
the warbler presently became familiar, and in
his intimacy ventured to give me lessons in the
THE HOME OF THE WILLOW- WEEN 45
theory and practice of fly-catching. Each twig
was examined so carefully that surely nob a fly
in the neighbourhood could escape the atten-
tion of the fragile midget. Prom bough to
bough, up to the highest leaf-bud of the hazels,
or down in the long grass where among the
hawthorns the nut-brown wren gossiped and
chattered concerning her nest in the leaves by
the ivied trunk or far out on the branch hang-
ing over the rill, the warbler searched for spoil ;
then with a faint rustle of rapid wings flew out
into the sunlight and caught a stray insect
that had been frightened from a leaf-bud as
the bird pecked sharply at a slender twig.
As he searched diligently among the hazels
and willows, the warbler, on the look-out for
caterpillars, peered on tiptoe into every fold of
the leaf -buds, or, if he thought of flies and
beetles, into every likely hiding-place between
the stamens of the catkins. The shapely little
head was cocked knowingly, now on one side and
now on the other, as though first the right eye
and then the left had a keenness denied to the
other.
Occasionally, as if to vary his tiptoe curiosity
and his insatiable greed of flies, the willow-
warbler would pause for a moment to whisper
a carol of spring ; then, as if the thought
occurred that even somewhere on himself a fly
46 THE HOME OF THE WILLOW-WREN
might be hiding, he would ruffle his feathers
and arch his neck in order to inspect his downy
breast. His most humorous attitude was struck
when he held his head erect, so that his beak
resembled a thorn stuck in a bunch of feathers,
while he gazed at the sky, or perhaps at a leaf
where a fly might be seen as a dark shadow
in a setting of semi-transparent green. But
his song seemed to belie the fun and frolic
so easily conjectured from his artless demeanour ;
the low, sweet phrase betokened some exquisite
sentiment beyond description, but which I
almost believed that sympathy enabled me to
understand.
Frequently I have been struck by this pecu-
liarity in the song of a bird that it indicates
more than a mere exuberance of joy, more
than the one simple emotion evident in a
melodious call-note, and more than mere wonder,
anger, expostulation in the harsh, unmusical
note of alarm. This point may be illustrated by
the song of the skylark. While the lark soars,
circling, into the sky, his carol is a loud, bubbling
trill, instinct with vigorous health, free move-
ment, and utter delight an evident challenge
to sorrow and pain. The phrasing lengthens
when he attains the zenith of his flight, and as
the bird descends his song changes and becomes
plaintive, pleading, questioning, till, as he drops
THE HOME OF THE WILLOW- WREN 47
with shut wings to the earth, it ends with two
or three notes the most passionate and beautiful
of all. It were vain to attempt an interpretation
of the skylark's carol, for it cannot be compared
with the outcome of any emotion felt in the
human heart. But it is, nevertheless, akin to
something that strives within us for utterance.
There is one essential difference between the
outburst of the lark and the spring music
of the warbler one tells of a spirit of aban-
donment to be expected in a bird that loves
to climb the sky towards the very gate of
heaven ; the other whispers of a scarcely less
charming spirit of diffidence befitting a bird
that delights in the seclusion of the willows
and hazels near the river. The early lay of
the willow-warbler is perfect in every note ;
nothing occurs in it to mar its wonderful sweet-
ness. But if we would really enjoy the sweetness
of the melody, we must wait and listen, and
turn over its gentle phrases again and again in
our mind. The song will remain with us when
summer passes away.
Since his arrival in the valley, the warbler
has partly changed his habits. He is shyer
than he was when first I saw him ; day by
day the leafy screens are becoming denser
about his retreat, and he takes full advantage
of his surroundings to hide away from prying
48 THE HOME OF THE WILLOW-WEEN
eyes. Bub while more retiring, he is less self-
conscious. His little mate has joined him from
the south, and together they are occupied in
household cares. A carefully-woven nest, made
of grass and moss and leaves, and lined with
downy feathers, will shortly be their chief
delight. Many a journey will the tiny singer
make to the home in the grass at the foob of the
hedgerow, during the time when his mate sits
anxiously hatching her eggs, or later, when the
six white shells spotted with red have released
their tiny, helpless occupants, whose constanb
needs become a tax on the insect-catching
abilities of their parents. Filled with the
anticipation of parental pride, the warbler,
grown bold in song, though still shy in habit,
trills a far more perfect carol than that which
I heard practised artlessly among the sprouting
alders in the cold, damp days of April. His
throat swells into the shape of a pouch, and the
feathers ruffle out when the notes are for a
moment sustained ; he sings apparently in the
consciousness that his great ambition in life,
the care of a wife and family, is about to be
fulfilled.
It is most amusing to observe this diminutive
woodland songster making love to the equally
diminutive object of his ardent affection. He
stands on a twig in sight of his mate, and
THE HOME OF THE WILLOW- WREN 49
assumes an almost lackadaisical air, his head
held down, and his wings wide open and flutter-
ing gently like those of a tortoiseshell butterfly,
when the gaudy insect, on wooing bent, climbs
over the edge of a flower. Occasionally, to
break the monotony of his entreating gestures,
or as if afraid that he is beginning to look
foolish in the eyes of his lady-love, the willow-
wren stretches upwards to peck at a leaf-bud or
willow-catkin ; then leisurely settles down to his
love-making again, as if it were a hopeless but
fascinating pursuit ; while the coy recipient of
his springtide blandishments answers him with
a mocking, irritating call, from the neighbouring
tree. Presently she flies away ; and half in
sport, half in earnest, he chases her in and out
of the thickets with a persistency that defies
her modest remonstrances, and for that very
reason, perhaps, at last appeals to her secret
admiration for her swift and strong-willed lover.
The willow-warbler, or " yellow wren," as he
is named by the country-folk, may by that
local description be readily distinguished from
the many other warblers which in summer fill
our woodlands with song. His sweet under-
tones, as of subdued and tranquil joy, with
which is blended the faintest trace of regret and
sorrow, are heard from morning till night as
he threads his way through the thickest tangles,
50 THE HOME OF THE WILLOW-WREN
or flies in and out among the upright wands
that fringe the marshy places in the meadow
where the kingcups grow, and garlands of
wind-flowers encircle oozy beds of reed and
sedge. One moment he is hidden on the far
side of the bramble ; the next, he reappears
near by, and alights on a twig above a blaze of
golden gorse. He now sings as loudly as his
small voice permits ; then, with a flirt of his
grey wings, hops down on the bank and in-
stantly vanishes.
Noiselessly I move towards the spot where he
was last observed, for there is little doubt as to the
reason of his disappearance. On my approach he
flies up from the grass, and reveals the where-
abouts of his nest. The cattle, when leaving
their favourite drinking-pond for the fields above,
have with careless hoofs torn down the turf from
the bank, and at the end of one of the furrows
thus formed in the yielding soil the warbler has
found a depression exactly suited to his purpose.
His domed nest, perfectly concealed from every
casual visitor, is nearly complete ; in a few days
the feathery lining will be suitably adjusted,
and the first pearly egg will be deposited by his
dutiful spouse. Then he will be heard singing
more frequently than before ; and every rival
warbler in his neighbourhood will vie with him,
taking up the burden of his pleasing melody the
THE HOME OF THE WILLOW- WREtf 5i
instant he relinquishes it, or breaking in on his
half-uttered phrase with a high-pitched, musical
ripple that precisely corresponds with the begin-
ning of his own dreamlike song.
When the first falling leaves give warning of
winter's footsteps, the frail, restless little warbler
will join the vast flocks of migrant birds collected
near the coast, and set out across the southern
seas, to find in distant countries a welcome
change in food and climate.
MISADVENTURES OF BIRD-WATCHING
AFTER some years of bird-watching, the
lover of Nature begins to regard his hobby
as one of the sports of his country life. It is
a quiet, unpretending sport, demanding the
exercise of much patience ; and the chief draw-
back is that considerable leisure must be at the
disposal of the watcher if a fair measure of
success is to be assured. Frequent disappoint-
ments are inevitable, but these serve only to
foster increasing care and vigilance, in order that
the results at last obtained may preclude the
possibility of doubt. The naturalist cannot but
realise the value of the advice given by several of
our best writers on the life of the fields that
every fact should be treated as new ; exhaustive
notes should be made, and compared with those
written by other hands on the same subject ;
and the observer should never be slavishly bound
by the opinions even of recognised authorities.
It will presently dawn on him how little is known
concerning the habits of some of our commonest
birds. He may shoot our woodland friends,
identify them, measure their feathers and their
52
MISADVENTURES OF BIRD-WATCHING 53
bones, and describe the colours of their plumage
at different seasons of the year. He may compare
and classify and theorise. But to learn much
about their interesting ways of life, their " daily
walk and conversation," is quite another matter,
belonging to many an hour spent in the open air
under spring and summer skies, and having
nothing to do with the study and the midnight
oil. The reader can have but a faint idea of the
charm inseparable from systematic observation
of the habits of birds unless he himself has
special opportunities and inclinations for such a
pursuit.
Mention has already been made of frequent
disappointments. I shall never forget an
incident connected with my endeavours to
learn as much as possible about a warbler which
frequented a copse on the steep river-bank
below the village. One evening I discovered
the bird quite unexpectedly. Evidently she
was not aware of my presence, for she flew to
a bramble twig overhanging a dense tangle of
grass, in a beautiful wild garden, where blue
hyacinths and pink campions grew luxuriantly
under the shadows of tall ox-eye daisies, and
boughs laden with the snowy bloom of the
" may." Thence, without hesitation, she
descended into the middle of the undergrowth,
evidently with the intention of visiting her nest.
54 MISADVENTUEES OF BIRD-WATCHING
I remained motionless for a while ; then,
thinking that she had settled down to brood over
her eggs or her nestlings, I crept towards the
bramble spray, knowing that directly I came near
she would flutter up from the grass and betray
the whereabouts of her nest. But I had not con-
sidered that it would be necessary to climb a
difficult hedge before entering the copse. The
hedge proved to be nothing less than a labyrinth
of brambles, furze, hidden stakes and hawthorn
branches, in the midst of which, having an eye
only for the appearance of the warbler, I got
hopelessly entangled, and, floundering about,
fell into the torturing embrace of a myriad
sinuous nettles.
On regaining my feet, the first sound I heard
was the rapid heu-wee, heu-wee, lieu-whit of the
startled warbler that, flitting from bough to
bough overhead, indicated in plain language
how unmistakably suspicious was my conduct.
Nor was her opinion altered when, after forc-
ing a way back from the thicket, I danced
about in the mazier peculiar to one whose
cheeks and hands are tingling with the effects
of nettle poisoning. After half an hour's in-
terval, during which numerous blisters had been
soothed by the application of bruised dock-
leaves, I crept up to the hedge, and, hiding as
far as possible in the ferns, peeped through
MISADVENTUEES OF BIRD-WATCHING 55
the gap made in my struggles among the
thorns.
But the warbler would not venture near her
nest. She gradually moved away to the left,
came back to the rose-bush immediately in front,
crossed the gap, flew into the holly on the right,
and, in full view, endeavoured to persuade me
that her nest was in the shadow between the
hazel and a guelder-rose. Then she flew across
the path to the copse on the margin of the river,
stayed there for about ten minutes, returned, and
over and over again repeated her little decep-
tions.
For an hour I watched her every movement,
except when the intervening foliage screened
her from sight ; and when she was hidden
learned her whereabouts by the plaintive notes
she continually uttered. Her mate came to
sight only once, when he took up his position on
a flowering hawthorn at the crest of the slope.
He, however, remained silent, and presently flew
back to the thicket on the left.
This shyness of the male bird is not unusual,
but, according to my own experience, he
generally assumes the role of a decoy, and his
heu-wee, lieu-wee is heard oftener than that of
the hen, while she, if his artfulness in drawing
away the watcher is successful, steals to the
nest, and remains there with her treasures,.
56 MISADVENTURES OF BIED-WATCHING
Twilight came over the valley, and I returned
home without having discovered the nest.
Next evening I went again to the spot, creep-
ing stealthily beside the cover of the hedgerow
till I was able to kneel under the rose-bush.
The warblers were evidently unaware of my
presence ; no signal of alarm was heard though
the birds flitted about the copse and occasionally
perched on the bramble which apparently hung
over the nest, whence they peered into the
undergrowth as if to assure themselves that their
charges had not been molested. Just as it
appeared certain that the warblers would soon
betray their secret, a bull appeared close to the
hedgerow, right above the copse, and began to
rub his horns and neck against the trunk of an
oak. The birds, greatly agitated, tried to lure
the animal away, but, taking no notice of them,
he remained under the tree, and, leaning over
the low bank dividing the meadow from the
copse, browsed noisily on the rank herbage. In
desperation I retreated towards the river, and
endeavoured to drive the animal away by a
cannonade of sticks and stones. But this action
caused still greater alarm ; and that evening
like the first, passed fruitless so far as its main
object was concerned.
An amusing adventure occurred on the third
occasion. Not a dozen yards from the nest a
MISADVENTUKESOFB1KD-WATCHING 57
pair of blackbirds were busy educating a hopeful
young brood ; and, directly I arrived on the
scene, they commenced a vociferous alarm,
making such use of their tongues that every
furred and feathered inhabitant of the valley
seemed keenly alive to an imagined danger.
Needless to say, the warblers were on the alert,
and the hen at once began to indulge in her
favourite methods of misleading. Thinking it
useless to remain in the accustomed hiding-place,
I crept towards the river, and there, ensconced
beneath a furze-clump, endeavoured to follow
the movements of my wily friends.
The clamour of the river, raging through a
narrow channel between the rocks immediately
behind, drowned the heu-wee, heu-wee of the
warblers ; and so, having once lost sight of them,
I was unable to trace their movements by their
frequent notes of alarm. I resolved, in spite of
everything, to watch intently the place to which
it was likely that the warblers would ultimately
return ; but the " everything " could hardly be
expected to include the bull. After an hour of
useless watching, I suddenly found that a herd
of cattle had browsed towards me, headed by the
patriarch, a beast of forbidding aspect, with a
ring in his nose, and altogether much more
formidable in appearance than he had appeared
>yhen ; o,n the previous evening, he rubbed his
58 MISADVENTUKES OF BIRD-WATCHING
horns against the oak tree on the crest of the
slope. I beat a retreat, not precipitately, but
craftily, dodging on the far side of the furze,
till I gained the copse, and climbed through the
gap-
But soon another difficulty arose. The bull,
suspecting my presence, came near, sniffed in
the hedgerow, bellowed hoarsely, and gave
undoubted manifestations of a desire to clear me
out of his domain. However, he eventually
moved away, but, alas ! only to occupy such a
position that escape along the path up-stream
was well-nigh impossible. To climb the slope of
the copse was out of the question, for a sheer
wall of rock barred any exit at the top, and on
either side the undergrowth was so dense and
thorny for a hundred yards or more among
rugged boulders, that after trying to force a way
towards the wood I gave up the attempt. The
only alternative was to break cover and take the
chance of a long chase down the valley ; but
knowing too well the unhesitating delight with
which he would thunder after me, and knowing
also that I should fare badly if he happened to be
close behind at the hurdle-fence separating the
meadow from the swamp near the corner of the
glen, I abandoned that project and returned to
the watch.
Lying prone on the wet grass, I once more
MISADVENTURES OF BIRD-WATCHTNG 59
turned my attention to the warblers. For half an
hour nothing of unusual interest happened ;
but the monotonous alarm-notes indicated that
the birds knew I was near, and that the utmost
caution was their order of the day. At last,
cramped and tired, and anticipating all manner
of ills from lying in the drenched undergrowth,
I rose, determined to make for home in spite of
the bull. This time, happily, the enemy was
nowhere visible. He had evidently gone down
the bank to the ford above the cataracts ; so I
crossed the gap, and, taking advantage of every
clump of furze and broom along the way, came
down the glen ; then, turning sharply to the
right, ascended the cattle-path, and skirted the
hay-field above the copse. There, peeping
through the hawthorns, I discovered that the
bull had come up from the ford, and, with head
through the gap by which we had left the
thicket, was leisurely engaged in an attempt to
discover my hiding-place.
Next evening heavy showers came over the
valley soon after I had taken my position near
the copse, and thus I was doomed again to dis-
appointment. These showers were the beginning
of a week's wet weather, and on the next visit to
the thicket I discovered that the young birds had
left the nest.
Now it had happened that on one occasion,
60 MI8ADVENTUEES OF BIRD-WATCHING
while in the valley, I noticed that somebody,
half concealed in the hedgerow above the furze
brakes, was following my every movement with
apparently as much interest as I myself derived
from prying on the doings of the woodland folk
around ; but as the landlord of the estate was a
friend, I thought nothing of the incident, and
desired only to be left in peace. A few days
afterwards, however, Dan the gillie came to me
with a tale. Said he, " leuan Ty-bach (John of
the Little House) met me this morning, and told
me you was a-poachin } under the wood by the
farm last Wednesday afternoon, sir." " Poach-
ing ! what do you mean, Dan ? " " Well, sir,
he says as how you'd lost your ferrut, whatever
that she'd stuck in a hole, and you went off
home without her." " What on earth are you
talking about, Dan ? " " You needn't be so
wild, Mister ; I'm sure there's been a mistake
somewhere, but leuan said as how you was
lyin' down watching the nets under the trash,
and the ferrut stuck, and then you went back
and fore a lot of times, but couldn't coax her
out nohow. He says as he couldn't make heel or
elbow of the business why you didn't come for
a day's shootin' if you wanted it, 'stead of
creepin' in and out of the fern like as you was
afraid to be seen workin' a ferrut. To tell truth,
sir," and Dan's voice sunk into a whisper, " I
MISADVENTURES OF BIBD-WATCHING 61
tried to stick up for yer, and gave leuan my mind
on it. 6 Why/ says I, ' you're all wrong ; least-
ways I b'lieve so. He wouldn't go a-ferrutin'
rabbits this time o' year. Most likely Mister's
got a worm, or a Jinny flewog (caterpillar) that
he's a-studyin' of ; that's what he's doin' under
the wood.' But leuan says as no man would go
after a worm or a Jinny flewog all that way, or
he'd better go a bit further, to th' 'sylum, quick ;
and then leuan talks about tellin' th' landlord,
and all that. But I says if he'd as much as
breathe about you poachin', he'd put his foot in it
and no mistake."
Then the truth dawned on me, and I recog-
nised at once that it was leuan who had been
watching from the hedge, and that it was leuan
who had endeavoured, in his own cunning way,
to stop my depredations among his rabbits by
turning loose the old bull, whose antipathy for
all and sundry had won him abundant respect
throughout the countryside.
In this case I failed to identify the warblers,
though I watched them evening after evening,
spending in all probability thirty hours near
their haunts. The reader may wonder at this
assertion, and may express an opinion to the
effect that it would be easy to obtain a satis-
factory clue from some first-class book on
natural history. But I am nevertheless certain
62 MISADVENTURES OF BIRD-WATCHING
in my own mind that all was done that was
possible under existent circumstances to ascer-
tain their species. Luck was adverse. Birds,
particularly some of the warblers, are nob easily
identified from coloured illustrations, or from
elaborate descriptions of their habits. If I had
heard the male in full song, I might have
instantly recognised him. Though he probably
sang while I was near, he certainly must then
have been out of sight in the thicket ; and, had
I arrived at any hasty conclusion, the very end
to which my observations were directed might
have been defeated. Several of the warblers
make use of alarm notes that are almost identical ;
still, but for the fact that for the past six years I
had been unable to spend my leisure, at favour-
able intervals, in the companionship of the birds,
I might have formed an accurate idea, from
some slightly distinctive sound, of the species to
which the warbler belonged.
I made one careful attempt at finding the nest,
but the undergrowth was matted and thick, and
it seemed likely that to beat it down, or turn it
roughly aside, might mean unnecessary labour
and the destruction of the nest. My chief desire
was to ascertain the exact point from which the
hen-bird dropped into the nest ; but she only
once visited the spot while I was near, and that
was on the first occasion, when she perched on
MISADVENTURES OF BIRD-WATCHING 63
the bramble spray, and afterwards, for a moment,
remained with her young. Her persistent
endeavours to lead me away to a safe distance
occupied by far the greater part of the time spent
near the copse.
While I was in durance vile, held there by the
bull, the warbler suddenly changed her alarm
signals into distinct calls to her mate ; her voice
was pitched in a higher key than before ; and,
making note of the change, I was persuaded that
before long she would gain confidence and fly
over to the bramble spray. But, after making a
preliminary tour of inspection, she again pre-
tended to be deeply distressed on account of the
strange being lying still, but vigilant, by the
furze brake.
Such disappointments as have just been
descirbed are by no means infrequent, but birds
are seldom so shy that the discovery of their
nesting-place is impossible. With the warblers,
and with a number of woodland birds, it is,
however, an easier task to find the nest than
to find the young birds which have just ventured
forth into the world. The fledglings, directly
they gain a little confidence in the use of their
wings, are scattered about in the undergrowth,
and there, in turn, each is fed by the parents.
The old birds are now more than ever keenly
alive to the value of secrecy, and, if they suspect
64 MISADVENTUKES OF BIRD-WATCHING
danger, take advantage of every available bush
and tree when approaching their offspring.
In the earlier days of summer I found a white-
throat's nest among the fern and nettles at the
margin of the copse. No great patience was
needed for the discovery ; the hen-bird descended
straight towards her home from an overhanging
twig, and, after she had on three occasions
entered the tangle from the same spot, I was
able, without treading down the undergrowth,
to turn aside the leaves that screened the little
domicile. When the young had grown healthy
and strong, I took them out of the nest that I
might carefully examine the development of
their wing feathers. They squeaked harshly
when first touched, and the hen-whitethroat,
alarmed for their welfare, ventured close to me,
and continually scolded in a loud check-check-
check. Owing, doubtless, to this interference, the
little family next day left the nest ; and when,
towards evening, I again visited them, they were
hiding here and there in the tangle. Anxious to
secure a photograph of the brood, I sought high
and low, but the old birds were far too careful,
and baffled me completely by entering the bushes
under which the fledglings were hiding by one
way, and leaving by another. On hands and
knees I crawled into all sorts of likely places, but
failed entirely to get hold of the youngsters. I was
MISADVENTUEE8 OF BIRD-WATCHING 65
stung by nettles and torn by thorns, and yet all my
efforts and inconvenience was in vain. I listened
intently, hoping to hear some harsh little note
which would direct the search, but, warned by the
persistent " checking " of the adult whitethroat,
the fledglings remained quiet and motionless.
Most of the warblers, even those which build
on the ground, are so overcome with inquisitive-
ness that they appear in sight directly their
haunts are invaded. The exception to the rule
is perhaps the grasshopper-warbler, which creeps
through the thickets like a mouse, and is rarely
seen. Unlike full-fledged birds, nestlings pass
the greater part of the day in sleep, but they
awake when food is brought to them. Once,
before photographing a nestful of willow- warblers,
I waited till, impatient at the absence of their
parents, the little birds began to show un-
mistakable signs of hunger. Wide-open eyes
and beaks, and six tiny heads in two rows at the
entrance to the feather-lined snuggery I con-
gratulated myself on the prospect of a pretty
picture. But while the plate was being exposed,
the tired little heads gradually sank into an
attitude of repose, and the little beaks and eyes
were shut. A meaningless blur was ultimately
all that marked the centre of the developed
negative, though every twig and leaf around
was perfectly distinct.
BIED LIFE IN A WESTEEN VALLEY
I FIND that as my quiet years occupied by an
unremitting study of wild life in one of the
most secluded districts of Britain have passed,
and ever and anon I have gained new ideas of
Nature's purposes, my methods of observation
have gradually changed. In studying certain
creatures as types, I had been apt to form a too
hasty opinion regarding the habits of various
members of the family to which they belonged.
Now, however, in each separate study of a
mammal, a bird, a fish, or an insect, I am led to
pursue that study to the farthest limit possible to
me, even though I had already observed with
care some creature nearly allied to the one
engaging my attention.
But there are many creatures whose habits of
life are so peculiarly fascinating the fox among
mammals, the owl among birds, the salmon
among fish, and the moss humble-bee among
insects may be instanced that a preference for
these is well-nigh inevitable. Without the fox,
the life of the coverts and the upland fields
would seem incomplete ; without the owl, the
66
THE KINGFISHEE 67
night in the woods would be devoid of much of
its appealing mystery ; without the salmon, our
rivers would have far less charm than now for
angler and naturalist alike ; and without the
humble-bee, the summer meadows in the swelter-
ing heat of noon would seem silent and deserted.
Similarly, the dipper the cheery, restless,
white-breasted robin of the brook is so com-
pletely at one with his surroundings that in his
absence the gorge, the glen, and the low water-
meadows by the mill would lose not a little of
their own special attractiveness. Though the
dipper is as much at home on the main river
as on the tributary stream, he is more particularly
associated in our mind with the dams and the
leats and the purling shallows, over which the
branches of the arching alders meet, than with
the wide, uninterrupted sweep of salmon-pool
and trout-reach where, as he stands at the water's
brink, he may be mistaken, from the opposite
bank, for a white pebble thrown among a number
of stones brown with sun-bleached moss and
grey with the natural hue of the river-bed.
I. THE KINGFISHER
I have not found it so difficult to observe the
habits of the dipper as those of the kingfisher,
the heron, and the water-rail. Often, by acci-
dent, I come across the kingfisher perched on a
68 BIRD LIFE IN A WESTERN VALLEY
stump or branch above the water. Long before
I am aware of it he has seen my approach, and
directly I pause he is gone, with a glint of topaz
and emerald, through sunlight and shadow, to
some distant haunt that I have not discovered.
Only in summer, when he makes his home be-
neath a gravelly bluff where the river-bank is
so steep that the path of the angler deviates for
some distance from the course of the stream, am
I sure of being able to watch him well during
most of the long, bright day. But then I am
amply repaid for all my patience as I lie hidden
in the undergrowth on the bank opposite to the
kingfisher's home.
The excessive shyness of the kingfisher may
be the result, in this western valley, of constant
persecution from sportsmen and poachers. As
he flashes by on his way to some favourite pool,
he seldom fails to awaken immediate curiosity
and wonder. Too often, alas ! the gun leaps to
the shoulder, and the radiant butterfly-bird
becomes a crumpled, blood-stained bunch of
feathers floating down the sunlit stream towards
the ford. Afterwards, when inartistically stuffed
and mounted by a taxidermist in some local
market-town, he becomes the principal ornament
in the gunner's best parlour ; or his skin, nailed
clumsily to a piece of wood and cured with a
home-made compound in which pepper is a chief
THE KINGFISHEK 69
ingredient, is sold for a few pence to a village
fisherman, who in time uses the beautiful feathers
as the dressing of the " shoulders " of a salmon-
fly. Because of the kingfisher's timidity, and
also because of certain of his habits, the produc-
tion of a complete story of his life is beset with
many difficulties. Much has been written of
the habits of this bird which is wholly incorrect,
unless, indeed, such habits differ to an amazing
extent from those of the particular bird I have
watched in his favourite breeding haunt about
two or three miles from my old village.
The kingfisher, on the approach of winter,
often leaves his home beside the brook, flies far
away down the main river to the estuary, and
takes up his abode near the fringe of the sea.
There he subsists on the small fish that the storm-
lashed tides, receding from high-water mark,
leave imprisoned in the pools of the rocks ; till
with the advent of spring the heavy floods
become infrequent in river and brook, and,
encouraged by the increasing warmth, the tiny
samlets, soon to be followed by the silvery
minnows, glance again in the shallows beneath his
old nesting place.
But even in summer the kingfisher's move-
ments are not regular along the course of the
stream near which he rears his family. In his
flight from one point of the stream to another I
70 BIRD LIFE IN A WESTERN VALLEY
have seen him leave a certain salmon-reach at a
bend beneath the woods, and fly straight along
the line marking the ancient bed of the river.
Often, beside this old river-bed, I have found him
sitting in lonely state on a projecting willow-
root, and looking intently at his image in the
placid mirror of the rain-filled hollow beneath
him. I would not assert with confidence that on
these silent, sunny mornings he was gratifying a
personal vanity, though I can hardly doubt that
birds, especially in spring, are conscious of their
charms ; but the pool contained not a single
fish of any description, and such an expert as the
kingfisher, knowing this, could not have been so
mistaken as to visit the spot for the ;>urpose of
obtaining food. Yet again, I have startled the
kingfisher from his day-dreams in a certain quiet
place near the margin of a tiny rill in the heart
of a wood where the summer shadows are cold
and dark.
The rare sight of a kingfisher engaged with his
mate in teaching an eager, attentive little family
of three or four how to catch fish is something
never to be forgotten. Below the hole inhabited
by the kingfisher, the pool is calm and deep, with
a shelf of rock in midwater, and a leafless oak-
bough shadowing the surface just above the shelf.
The spot is perfectly chosen. No inquisitive
angler intrudes on the solitude ; no prowling
THE KINGFISHER 71
otter, stoat, or weasel can climb the sheer ascent
to the nest ; shoals of silvery minnows wander
in the summer sunshine over the shelf of rock,
and from the old oak-branch the bird can watch
each movement of the tiny fish.
Once, when I had crept silently into my hiding-
place, I saw both parent kingfishers perched on
the oak-bough. The mother was calling eagerly,
yet persuasively ; and now and again, from the
dense shadows beneath the bushes, came a feeble,
piping cry. This calling and replying continued
at intervals for some time, till an odd-looking
fledgling fluttered out from the shadows, and
with a mighty effort succeeded in perching dose
by its parents. Another youngster followed,
and still another, and then the family was com-
plete.
The birds sat in a row with their heads turned
up-sfcream. But directly the little ones became
familiar with their surroundings, they unusually
hungry, perhaps, because of a long absence from
their parents sidled along the bough, opened
wide their beaks, and with trembling wings
begged the old birds for food. One of the
parent birds, apparently the male, uttered a
low, harsh Jcr-rh, and edged away to the end
of the bough. The hen, however, seemed to
be questioning and reasoning with her impatient
offspring till, one by one, they moved to their
72 BIRD LIFE IN A WESTERN VALLEY
former positions, and, as if in obedience to her
injunctions, remained quite still and silent. Both
parent birds now kept watch intently on the
pool where the water flowed slowly over the
submerged shelf of rock.
The male was the first to leave his perch.
Quickly lowering his head, he dived with a splash
into the river and disappeared, but soon came up
with a minnow wriggling in his beak, and returned
to his resting-place, where he killed the fish by a
few smart blows on the branch. Instantly the
little kingfishers, their appetites sharpened by
the sight of the silvery minnow, crowded about
their parent, and snatched the prize from his
possession. The hen also dived from her perch,
but failed to catch a fish, and immediately
resumed her watch on the pool. The minnows
did not reappear till all the occupants of the
bough were once more motionless. In her second
dive the mother bird was successful ; she carried
an unusually fat minnow to the bough and
surrendered it to her little ones.
After obtaining a fish for the third time, she
changed her methods and dropped the disabled
minnow into the river just as her fledglings were
striving to take it from her. One of the young
birds, eager to grasp the dainty, slipped from the
bough, but, fearing to enter the water, soon
struggled back to its perch. Several times in
THE KINGFISHER 73
succession both parent birds dropped the dis-
abled minnows back into the pool, while in great
excitement and anger the young birds protested
against the treatment they were receiving, and
failed in their persistent but feeble attempts to
secure the falling fish. At last, desperate with
hunger, one of the fledglings took a plunge,
and came quickly to the surface with a minnow
in its beak ; then, failing to fly up straight to its
perch, fluttered across the pool to a low alder-
root, and there, in the shadow, called continually
to the rest of the family. Either from pity or
because they knew not what else to do, the king-
fishers, both old and young, at last flew over to
join the disconsolate adventurer, and soon after-
wards the parents proceeded in earnest to feed
their brood.
Next day, when I came again to the place, the
education of the kingfishers' family seemed to be
entering upon another stage. The little birds had
discovered a convenient perch close above a
shallow by the bank, and their parents, having
perhaps taken the failures of the previous day to
heart, were carrying thither minnows they had
captured by diving from the old oak-bough, and
were dropping them, disabled, into the ripples.
Now one, then another, of the fledglings would
dive in pursuit, and sometimes the three would
dive together and a tug-of-war would take place
74 BIRD LIFE IN A WESTERN VALLEY
for possession of the fish. Much splashing and
scolding and many topsy-turvy falls lent variety
to the proceedings. Carried away by excibement,
the youngsters were unconsciously becoming
accustomed to immersion, and were learning
to use their beaks and wings with increasing
strength and dexterity.
When yet again I came and watched the king-
fishers' family, the lessons had so far advanced
that the young birds would enter the deep water,
without the slightest fear, from the oak-bough,
and had fully recognised the importance of
remaining motionless on their perch, instead of
begging food from their parents, till the shoal of
minnows, its numbers sadly diminished, rose
from the depths of the quiet pool to play about
the rock.
II. THE HERON
The heron, like the kingfisher, escapes observa-
tion with a skill to be estimated only by the
patient naturalist who has succeeded, but much
more often failed, in his attempts to stalk the
gaunt, motionless bird as it stood in some quiet
little bay at the bend of the stream. I remember
how once, when I had discovered a heron fishing
in the glen, and had almost crept down to him
beside a 'thickset hedge, a moor-hen, noisily
splattering out from a ditch, gave instant alarm,
and sent him away, as hastily as his great,
THE HERON 75
cumbrous wings could carry him, to the dim
distance of the up-river woods. No bird pos-
sesses a keener sight than this lean hermit of
the wilds. However well the watcher may hide
in the brushwood near some favourite fishing
place, the bird overhead, while spying out the
land before descending, will catch sight of the
dread human form the form of an enemy to the
heron since the earliest days of falconry and
will pass onward till a mile of field and woodland
separates him from the object of his fear. While
he stands rigid in the water, apparently intent
only on the movements of the minnows and the
salmon-fry beneath, he is always listening and
looking for the slightest indication of danger.
Last spring, however, I got the better of an old
jack-heron that had baffled me by his untiring
vigilance. Two of the large feathers in his tail
had been permanently destroyed, and thus his
flight had long been familiar to me. I had seen
him in the glens and the gorges, beside the mill-
leat near the mouth of the brook, at a pool on
the main river, and even by the old Corrwg
bridge about five miles from his usual haunts. I
was for ever coming upon him when I least
expected to do so, and when he was perfectly
aware of my approach.
But one morning, as I lay in wait for the
return of a timid sandpiper that I had disturbed
76 BIRD LIFE IN A WESTERN VALLEY
from her nest on the shingle by the stream, the
old heron suddenly appeared, flying leisurely in
the direction of a fir-spinney a hundred yards or
so away. He alighted quietly on one of the trees,
and, as I followed his movements intently
through my field-glass, I saw him feed another
heron whose head was thrust up above a large
pile of sticks forming a nest amid the green tops
of the firs. He soon left his lofty perch, and,
much to my satisfaction, headed straight towards
a pool at a bend of the stream not far from my
hiding-place. I waited for him to return to the
wood ; then stealthily and slowly, and with a
watchful eye on his movements, I crept behind
the bushes and made my way towards a furze-
clump that commanded a view of the place
where he had fished. Before I had reached the
spot, however, I saw him beginning his journey
back to the pool. I instantly dropped to the
ground, crawled into a ditch, and lay there till he
once more went to his nest ; then I crept on, and
gained my post of observation.
For over an hour the bird continued to visit
the same place for food. While he stalked
through the water sometimes wading deeply
till the current touched his feathers, and at
other times only so far as to wet his claws or,
as moveless as the stones around him, stood alert
for the least sign of an approaching fish, I
THE HEEON 77
watched him eagerly through my field-glass.
Time after time he transfixed with his long,
powerful beak an unfortunate salmon-pink ;
and once, among the pebbles in the shallows, he
caught a big, fat frog that he immediately carried
off to his mate. During his journeys to the nest
I stretched my cramped limbs and altered the
focus of my glasses in readiness for observing him
feeding the mother-bird. At last he varied his
course of action by relieving the brooding hen.
She, much to my disappointment, flew away bo
a distant part of the stream ; while I, refraining
from following her, moved back to watch the
sandpiper on the shingles under the beech-trees.
The heron's nest forms the centre of a wide
circle, within the limits of which to marsh or
leat or river or brook his lines of flight are
frequently varied even in the breeding season.
On being disturbed, he flaps away to such a
distance that hours of careful stalking are often
necessary before another glimpse of the gaunt,
motionless bird can be obtained. I have noticed,
however, that just as the bee, honey-gathering
among the flowers, will, for a period, confine
her attention to one species of plant, so the old
heron, found " frogging " in some stagnant
upland pond, will generally, when surprised,
make his way to another pond where frogs are
plentiful ; or, if alarmed while fishing for unwary
78 BIRD LIFE IN A WESTERN VALLEY
minnows and salmon-pink at a ford, will seek a
place where the conditions of water and of fishing
are apparently similar.
III. THE DIPPER
The dipper has never been harassed in these
western valleys to the same extent that the king-
fisher and the heron have. He makes no impos-
ing show, as the stately heron does, in a glazed
case, with artificial rocks and reeds and painted
background, over which the sky is a marvel of
vivid blue such as only the mind of the country
taxidermist could suggest. And though, amid
his natural surroundings rippling streams, and
tumbling waterfalls, and many-coloured rocks
and ferns and moss and trees, decked with those
wonderful pearly lights and shadows which are
peculiar to narrow valleys divided into swamps
and islands by numerous watercourses the
dipper, with his snow-white throat, rust -brown
waist, and dark-grey head, back, wings, and tail,
is at all seasons a neat and dapper little fellow,
his appearance is not nearly so distinguished as
that of the brilliant kingfisher.
A familiar figure by the brook, as the blackbird
or the wren is in the meadow-hedge, the dipper is
seldom molested by the passing sportsman. Like
the wren, he sings in all kinds of weather. His
blithe and fearless heart is never saddened by
THE DIPPER 79
the winter storm. Even when the blast is bitter
as the breath of death, the stream still sings
among the pebbles by the ford. Perhaps, while
seeking his food beneath the surface of the water,
the dipper had heard the secret of perpetual
happiness whispered by the spirit of the brook
as perhaps the wren had often heard it whis-
pered by the spirit of the wind through the patter
of the hail on the withered oak leaves in the
hawthorn -hedge and for that reason is wholly
undismayed. The song of the wren is, somehow,
in keeping with that of the wind, and the song
of the dipper with that of the waterfall ; and
probably, just as the song of the wren
has made that bird a favourite among the
country-folk, so the song of the dipper has a
bright, peculiar charm for the sportsman, who,
in the secluded fastnesses along the brook, listens
to the wild, twittering carol rising clear above the
undertones of the breeze and the brook.
About half a mile from my home, the Lower
Road beside the river turns abruptly northward,
and begins a steep ascent in the direction of the
moorlands. At the foot of the hill, a weaver's
cottage stands near a sun-flecked brook that
turns an old-fashioned water-wheel. Here all
day the rhythmic clack of the shuttle mingles
with the sounds of the groaning wheel, the
splashing " feeder," and the rippling ford.
80 BIRD LIFE IN A WESTERN VALLEY
I often climbed this rugged road only that I
might look on the glorious landscape and enjoy
the fresh, cool breezes always playing about the
hill. Then, during my winter expeditions with
gun and spaniel, I explored the course of the
brook, and my delight was unbounded as I
wandered through dingles and gorges where
every turn in the path revealed a change of
scenery, and I was promised opportunity for
lonely summer studies of wild creatures amid
conditions of life apparently unchanged through
many peaceful years.
There were several reasons for the unusual
variety of animal life in this valley. Among
the silent, romantic gorges cultivation had
never been attempted. So steep were the de-
clivities that the burning of the gorse would
have meant at least the destruction of the trees
along the slopes ; and frequent trimming with
bill-hook and " prong " would have been both
tedious and unremunerative.
Each narrow gorge was an almost perfect
sanctuary for wild creatures. High pinnacles of
rock caused the water from the hillside springs to
divide and trickle into numerous tiny fountains
along the edge of the cultivated uplands beyond.
Whenever a gorge opened out into low-lying
pastures, a tangled swamp was to be found on
each side of the brook, so frequently had its ill-
THE DIPPEE 81
tended sluices overflowed on the way to mill or
farmstead.
The brook-trout were too small to tempt any
angler to leave the sport afforded by the main
river, and as the byways of the country had little
attraction for my neighbours, I was always alone
when rambling through the dingles and the
gorges.
After becoming thoroughly familiar with every
part of the valley I seldom proceeded further
than a certain spot, only about half a mile from
the weaver's cottage, but difficult of access at
all times to a stranger. With one exception, the
numerous cattle-paths leading thither end in
swamp and tangle, and this one path is not
easily followed.
The perfumed breath of spring seemed to
ascend like an invisible incense-cloud from the
dingle far beneath, as one morning I climbed
the low hedge-bank half-way up the hill beyond
the cottage, and afterwards moved down the
path skirting the precipitous woods towards the
brook. The sounds of the feeder, the wheel, and
the loom mingled in a distant monotone. Nearer,
at the margin of the woods, many little cataracts
hissed and bubbled. And still nearer, within
the woods, where the brook reflected the sun-
light between the trees, the voice of the water
was subdued and tremulous, as the current rose
82 BIRD LIFE IN A WESTERN VALLEY
and fell about the moss-grown stones and among
the hollows of the alder-roots. Everywhere
beside the path the sword-shaped leaves of the
wild hyacinth were standing erect above the
rich brown soil, the iris flags were lengthening,
the anemones were blooming, and the earliest
buds of the daffodil were beginning to assume
the pendulous position in which they open their
yellow cups. As the only dense shadows in the
woods were beneath a clump of fir-trees near
the brook, I seated myself on the dry brown
" needles " carpeting the grass, where I found
that I could command a view of the brook and
of the slope on either side ; and where, if silent
and motionless, I should probably remain unseen
by the wild creatures on whose haunts I tres-
passed.
I had not long taken up my position in the
shadows before a little wood-mouse stole out
from his burrow under the dry oak leaves at the
edge of the glade, and passed on his journey
quite close to my feet. At any other time I
might have thought that the timid mouse,
continually persecuted and therefore ever sus-
picious of the presence of a possible enemy, had
thus unwittingly paid a compliment to my know-
ledge of wild life ; but now the breath of spring
was in the wood, and the mouse, intent on court-
ship, had probably rid himself of his haunting
THE DIPPER 83
fears and wholly surrendered himself to a
subtler, more insistent influence. He had gone
for some distance from his home, and much
rustling and squeaking had caused me to believe
that fighting and love-making were in progress
among the withered leaves, when suddenly, as
I turned my head towards the brook, I saw, to my
surprise, that a dipper stood leisurely preening
her feathers on a stone in the middle of the
stream, not more than three or four yards from
my hiding-place.
The scene before my eyes was one of great
beauty. The brook reached away like a shining
path through an avenue of trees ; a steep
declivity, strewn with fern-clad boulders, be-
tween which, here and there, grew stunted oaks
and pines, towered from the farther margin of
the stream ; while on the nearer side, beyond
the firs, the glade ended in a gradual slope on
which were some of the stateliest beeches on the
country-side. The wood, except beneath the
firs, was, as I have already said, almost shadow-
less, for the trees had not yet opened their leaf-
buds ; but the colours of spring were on the
flowers in the grass and on the fresh green weed
that, in long filaments, trailed from the pebbles
on the bank of the brook ; and the air was full of
reinvigoration.
The dipper, unaware of my presence, showed
84 BIRD LIFE IN A WESTERN VALLEY
no sign of hurry while with elaborate care she
preened her feathers. Every part of her plumage
seemed in fcurn to need her close attention ; but,
like the majority of the water-birds that I have
been able to watch intently, she devoted most
of her care to the underside of each wing, to the
breast, and to the neck, where every feather,
after being dried and shaken into place, was
stroked out, whorl by whorl, and dressed with
oil from the gland near the tail. For a little time
the performance was highly entertaining ; but at
last the bird's fastidious repetitions failed to
interest me, and I became somewhat impatient,
especially as my position was uncomfortable, and
afforded only a view of the stream towards the
falls, and not of the nearer pools and shallows
under the boulders.
I had resolved to risk detection in an effort to
gain a better position, when the dipper suddenly
finished her toilet. Walking deliberately off the
stone, she disappeared, with a flick of her wings,
beneath the surface of the stream, and proceeded
to hunt for worms and grubs among the stickles
and the backwaters by the bank. As for the
time I was completely hidden from the bird by a
projecting ledge of rock, I moved from my seat
and stealthily crept towards the shelter of a
bramble-clump from which an uninterrupted
view of the dipper's haunts could be obtained.
THE DIPPER 85
Exercising the utmost caution, I slowly gained
the heart of the thicket, and there, not far from
the edge of the brook, gathered about me a small
heap of withered leaves which, as opportunity
served, I quietly sprinkled on fche briars, that
I might be still better hidden while watching the
water-ouzel as she searched the bed of the stream
for food.
Presently a loud, ringing call chit-chit ! chit-
chit ! came from some distance away, and a
second dipper flew straight up-stream, and
alighted on the stone where, a few minutes
previously, the first bird had been standing.
Without delay he joined his little mate in her
search for food in the shallow, and I was treated
to a display such as hitherto it had never been my
privilege to witness. Now and then, the birds
were so close that I could follow with ease their
every movement in the clear water.
They shot hither and thither beneath the
surface, using their wings as fins in playful pursuit
of each other ; they explored the hollows be-
tween the pebbles in diligent search of worms and
caddis larvae ; occasionally they pushed the
stones aside, and firmly grasped them with
their long, curved claws while they thrust their
beaks into the gravel ; then, having found the
desired dainty, they quitted their hold on the
stones, floated buoyantly to the top, and with
86 BIRD LIFE IN A WESTERN VALLEY
evident relish gulped down the morsel before
diving once more to resume their frolic and
work. Each action was quick and decided,
manifesting exquisite ease and the perfect
adaptability of the birds to their surround-
ings. Whenever they tired of such proceed-
ings, they adjourned to convenient resting-
places at the margin of the brook, where they
stood blinking at the sunlight, and repeatedly
twittering and curtsying to each other.
After a while the hen, perched on a moss-
grown ledge, called to her mate, just as he
happened to float up with a large worm in his
beak from the bottom of the stream. He
immediately flew towards the ledge, and offered
her the dainty he had secured. As he stood in
the shallow beneath her, and with gently flutter-
ing wings begged that she would accept the tit-
bit, and she with much show of coyness and mis-
giving stooped to take the tribute, it seemed to
me that in the affection of these happy birds I
could recognise a sentiment subtly different from
mere animal passion if such I may term the
instinctive desire to which the matter-of-fact
naturalist is accustomed to refer nearly all the
actions of beasts and birds in the mating season
of the year.
I cannot explain why it seemed to be so. In
those rare brief periods of outdoor study when,
THE DIPPER 87
to my surprise and delight, I have caught a
glimpse of what, for want of a better phrase,
might be termed the humanity of Nature, I have
not merely imagined, but have felt sure, that
many of the finest feelings of man pity,
sympathy, devotion, unselfish comradeship-
are shared in no small measure by creatures
considered to be far beneath our plane of life.
Directly his gift had been received, the dipper
waded out, dived with a flourish and a splash into
the deep water past the stickles, rose quickly a
little way down-stream, swam to the bank, ran
up the gravel, and flew to a large, round pebble
well within the shelter of an alder. He shook the
drops of moisture from his wings, dipped once
or twice as if to satisfy himself that the stone
afforded a sure foothold, then, turning so as to face
the brook, poured forth a low, sweet, bubbling
song, full of joy, and love, and the hope of spring
and sunny weather. Having ended his carol, he
flew up-stream in the direction of the gorge ; and
as his last chit-chit reached my ears from the
corner of the meadow beyond the wood his mate
departed in pursuit.
I have seldom found a dipper far from his
favourite haunt by leat and rivulet. If he has
chosen the source of the river among the moun-
tains for his nesting site, he quits this bleak
spofc during the winter frost and snows for the
88 BIRD LIFE IN A WESTERN VALLEY
shelter of the down-stream glens and gorges ;
but if he has fixed his summer abode on the lower
reaches of the brook, he rarely migrates, for he
is sufficiently hardy to endure such changes of
temperature as may there occur. Once he has
thoroughly explored his chosen haunt, he resists
to the utmost of his power every intrusion of
strangers of his own species. Ib is, therefore,
more than likely that a dipper coming down for
the winter from the mountain torrent meets with
considerable persecution, and, like an alien gipsy,
is passed on under unwelcome escort from place
to place till he finds a stretch of water where the
rights of proprietorship are not too strictly
enforced.
Almost every wild creature has its own fixed
ideas of rights of privilege over a certain district
about its home, and in no creature are such ideas
more strongly developed than in the dipper. It
would be interesting to learn, from the observa-
tions of naturalists in various parts where dippers
are numerous, what is the extent of river or
brook usually " preserved " by a breeding pair
of these birds for their own exclusive family
requirements.
As far as I myself have been able to ascertain,
dippers almost invariably breed twice a year.
The fledglings, directly they are well able to take
care of themselves, vanish from the neighbour*
THE DIPPER 89
hood of the old home ; and the parents, though
seldom afterwards seen feeding together, remain,
till the pairing season comes round once more, in
friendly possession of the reaches which served
them with food for their young. Seemingly,
their lines of flight reach farther on tributary
brooks than on broad, quick-running rivers
adjoining, where between the salmon-pools the
water is shallow over the gravelly fords.
The dipper has been accused of preying on the
spawn and the fry of salmon and trout, and con-
sequently in a few districts has been unceasingly
persecuted. There are undoubtedly some grounds
for the accusation ; the bird, finding an egg or a
recently hatched fish beneath a pebble, would
hardly disdain such a tempting morsel. The
persecution, nevertheless, is altogether unreason-
able, since the bird amply atones for his misdeeds.
On our western streams he subsists chiefly on
water-worms, leeches, and the caddises and the
" creepers " of the stone-fly. No injury is done
to the angler by robbing the trout of " bottom "
food, because at all times, except in winter,
" surface " food is abundant. On the contrary,
the course thus pursued by the dipper is really
productive of good ; the trout in these localities,
while they do not afford such sport with the
artificial fly as on streams where " bottom " food
is scarce, are occasionally induced through the
90 BIRD LIFE IN A WESTERN VALLEY
depredations of the dipper to turn their attention
to the March browns and the blue duns floating
past the " hovers." I sometimes fear that if it
were not for the dipper and other creatures as
eager as the trout in pursuit of the stone-fly
grubs, surface-fishing in these western streams
would disturb the equanimity of the most
philosophical angler that ever wielded a trout-
rod. The dipper is also of use to the fisherman
by destroying great numbers of the nymphs of
dragon-flies, which devour the spawn and even
the very young fry of the salmon and the trout.
IV. THE DIPPER'S NEST
Soon after my long watch beneath the pines at
the margin of the brook, I again visited the val-
ley, entering at the point where the dippers had
flown from sight around the bend on the out-
skirts of the wood. I had formed an opinion that
spring was sufficiently advanced for the dippers
to have nested, and that their nest would be
found up-stream beyond the spot where they had
vanished. If they had built, or even had done
no more than choose a site, down-stream, they
would, after the long intervals of feeding and play-
ing in the shallows, have departed in the direction
of the little cascades not far from the river.
This opinion was proved to be correct. For
the first few hundred yards along the valley I
THE DIPPER'S NEST 91
found no sign of the dippers ; then, leaving
the water's edge and ascending a steep, badly
drained pasture, I crossed a cattle-path ankle-
deep in mire, turned into a copse of oaks and firs,
and from between the tree -trunks gazed long and
steadily through my field-glass at the brook,
that, winding along the gorge far below, gleamed
in the light of the sunny April day. A moorhen
was feeding in the grass by the great crag at the
neck of the gorge, and a few yards farther on a
restless grey wagtail ran hither and thither over
the pebbles.
But I could see nothing of the dippers till,
after a few minutes, I laid aside my glass and
searched with the naked eye the nearest reaches
of the stream. At the comer beneath the scat-
tered oak-trees, the rock had many generations
ago been cut into a sheer precipice, and between
the precipice and an old mossy wall the course of
the brook had been deflected into a leat which
opened towards the gate from a roughly built and
leaky dam. In the shallows near, both dippers
were busy at work, and for a time I watched them
moving in and out of the ripples. Suddenly one of
the birds flew off, turned the corner, alighted at
the water's edge near the moorhen, rose again,
and disappeared at a spot directly in the shelter
of an oak-tree jutting from the crag. There,
evidently, she had entered her nest.
92 BIRD LIFE IN A WESTERN VALLEY
I waited on till the other bird became alarmed
at a stone thab I inadvertently loosened, and
with a loud chit-chit sped down-stream out of
sight. Then, swinging from tree-trunk fco tree-
trunk, I descended to the bottom of the gorge,
walked towards the crag, and quickly discovered
the exact position of the dippers' nest. By the
oak-tree's root hung a fringe of long, withered
grass, and a thick cluster of polypody ferns
drooped over the grey, lichen-covered base of
the crag. Dead leaves, that had lingered through
the winter on the oaks, and had at length been
pushed away by the swelling buds, were strewn
alike on grass and fern. Beneath the polypody
roots, from the long filaments of which the rain
had washed the soil, a number of leaves appeared
to have been collected by chance while falling
from the oak ; but this seemingly haphazard
collection really formed a ball-shaped structure
the snug, well-roofed sanctuary that my little
friends had built with care and perseverance.
To approach the nest by climbing down the
crag was impossible ; the bluff towered perpen-
dicularly for more than a hundred feet above the
oak, and afforded not the slightest foothold. So,
taking off some of my clothes, I waded into the
ice-cold stream, which here spread out into a
pool about three feet deep and five yards broad.
When I had gone half-way across, the dipper
THE DIPPER'S NEST 93
hurriedly left her home and flew along the mill-
leat to join her mate. Standing on a slippery
ledge of rock in the pool, I made a leisurely
examination of the nest. It was cup-shaped and
domed, and built of grass, with an outer covering
of oak leaves and a lining of fine, hair-like roots
of polypody fern. The opening, at first upwards
under the dome, and then down into the cup, was
so contrived as to be quite invisible till I stood
close to the crag. Four creamy-white eggs, one
much elongated and tapering to a point, the
others almost spherical, lay on the soft, elastic
floor of the little chamber.
Remembering how fastidious that nearest
British relative of the dipper, the wren, invari-
ably proves herself to be regarding the slightest
interference with her domestic affairs, I handled
both nest and eggs with exceeding care, lest
possibly the rain should penetrate the loosened
roof, or some other slight disarrangement occur
and cause the wary birds to forsake their snug-
gery. Presently I moved away to a hiding-place
up-stream, and there watched for the return of
the dippers ; but the afternoon was well ad-
vanced before they reappeared on the dam, and
the mother-bird, satisfied that danger had passed,
settled down again to brood on her white
treasures in the little house beneath the drooping
fern.
94 BIRD LIFE IN A WESTERN VALLEY
Thenceforth, many of my daily rambles led
to the gorge, and generally, either before noon
or towards dusk, I spent an hour or two not far
from the dam. The hen sat closely on her eggs,
and I seldom saw her except when the morning
sun shone brightly on the nest, and she came out
to stretch her wings ; while the cock, proud of
the satisfactory progress of events, made his
periodical visit to gloat over the treasures which,
doubtless, he felt belonged as much to him as to
his hard-sitting spouse. When the hen was
brooding, the cock, however, was by no means
idle. He tended his mate untiringly, brought
her the choicest caddises and worms to be found
by the dam, and worked and fussed as if the
patient partner of his summer joys took quite
an unimportant part in household duties.
In time the eggs were hatched, and during the
first days after the event, while the young
birds' appetites were quickly appeased, both
parents enjoyed brief periods of relaxation, and
were often seen far down-stream by the cascades
or up-stream beyond the distant mouth of the
gorge ; and once or twice the cock was heard to
sing the cheery carol he had practised weeks
before on the pebbles in the shallows beside the
dark-green firs, while the daffodils were opening
and the wood-mouse ventured forth to seek his
timid lady-love. The cock soon found his share
THE DIPPER'S NEST 96
in the task of feeding the four feeble nestlings
lighter than that of providing for the hen's
apparently insatiable appetite, while the hen
on her part found a welcome relief from her
long confinement in the comparatively light
labour now falling to her share.
But holidays are brief in early summer, and
before a fortnight had passed the dippers learned
that family cares pressed heavily as the appetites
of the nestlings increased. Seldom venturing
far from home, they obtained food chiefly from
the dam by the sluice and from crevices in
the old wall a few yards further down the stream,
At last, one morning, I ascertained that events
had reached a crisis. The young birds, though
unable to fly, had left the nest and were wander-
ing shyly here and there among the ripples ;
while the parent dippers, with much ado, flew
hither and thither, and dipped and dived and
splattered in the stream, with an air of vast
self-importance, as they taught their inquisitive
offspring how and where to seek their food, and
how to hide when a cruel hawk sailed overhead.
Another fortnight went by, and then the
beetling crag near the dam no longer echoed to
the oft-repeated calls of the little dipper family.
All was silent in the gorge ; the fledglings had
taken wing to some far-distant retreat, and the
parent birds, finding that food-supplies for a
96 BIRD LIFE IN A WESTERN VALLEY
while had almost ceased in the neighbourhood
of the nest, spent most of the day on the reaches
by the weaver's cottage, till, towards the middle
of May, the old home was cleansed and repaired,
and again four cream-white eggs were deposited
in the dark, snug chamber beneath the oak,
that now displayed its first rich olive leaves at
the foot of the giant rock.
THE HERON OF CASTLE CREEK
I
THE WOUNDED HERON
ON a rocky eminence, near a winding creek
that at ebb of tide was scarcely broader
than the river flowing into it a mile above, was
perched, like the gigantic eyrie of a bird of prey,
the feudal Castle of an Earl. Already the ivy
was climbing around the lower loop-holes of the
keep, but in other places, on tower and turret,
wherever it might afford a foothold for an escap-
ing prisoner or a grip for hooks and scaling lad-
ders, its growth had carefully been kept in check.
It was a mild, sunny day in late winter, and
unusual preparations were in progress within the
precincts of the Casfcle ; the Justiciar had started
on his itinerary and was shortly to visit the Earl.
The drawbridge was down over the moat to
landward of the creek ; and wagons, filled with
stable provender and firewood, with wines and
meat, and with fresh rushes for the floors of halls
and sleeping chambers, rumbled over the strain-
ing planks into the Castle yard. Here and there
a man-at-arms or a green-gowned forester
H 97
98 THE HERON OF CASTLE CREEK
mingled with the teamsters ; and cooks and
scullions loitered at the doors of butteries and
cellars. A few couples of setting dogs and
springers in leash followed at the heels of a
falconer as he crossed the yard from the port-
cullis to the mews. High tide filled the creek,
and boats and barges that had recently crossed
the ferry lay unloading their miscellaneous
freights at the water-gate.
On the grassy battlements of the keep, far
above the highest tendrils of the ivy, and out
of sight of the crowd in the Castle yard, stood
a fair-haired boy practising archery. An old
forester knelt by his side, directing him. The
target, a rude straw image, with a circle painted
in Norway tar for " clout," was placed at the
edge of the woods on the opposite bank of the
creek ; and there, beside a giant beech trunk,
another old forester watched the archery, and
collected the arrows. Presently, when his quiver
was full, he returned the shafts with ease and
precision from his own bow to the archers on
the keep, having first, however, tipped each
barb with a small piece of wood cut from a pithy
elder growing close at hand, and thus ensured
that it should not be bent or blunted as it fell on
the stones of the Castle roof.
Both these old foresters dearly loved the
youthful archer. He, the only son of the Earl,
THE WOUNDED HERON 99
was their pupil ; and, assisted sometimes by the
seneschal, and sometimes by a light-hearted
friar who, it was believed, knew more about
sport and war than about the strict obser-
vances of the Church, they, from his earliest
infancy, had guarded him, by day and by night,
and had taught him how to bend the dainty
long-bows they had shaped for him after the
pattern and the balance of their own stronger
weapons. The boy had grown adept in every
martial pastime. Riding his palfrey at the
miniature quintain that the seneschal had
erected for him in a grassy close beyond the
tower, he would rarely fail to point his slender
lance aright, and afterwards elude the swing-
ing sandbag. He could strike and ward with
sword and shield as deftly as could many a war-
trained squire.
Among the Earl's horses was a certain destrier
that had often borne his master in the fray, but
later had settled down to end his days in peace.
The friar had taught the old horse to gallop,
at a signal, straight from end to end of the close ;
then, the charger's lessons being complete, he had
strapped a straw-stuffed dummy to the animal's
back, and sent the youthful warrior, with spear in
rest, full tilt against the effigy. Little Renoult
soon loved this exciting sport far more than to
ride against the quintain. The docile destrier
100 THE HERON OF CASTLE CREEK
never swerved in his thunderous career, the
palfrey was obedient to the slightest sign ; and,
though at first the boy seldom struck the sway-
ing effigy, misses became fewer and still fewer,
till the mark was changed for the life-sized
image of a knight in rusty helm and coat of mail,
and with a rusty shield held slantwise beneath
the visor. To hit the casque with such accuracy
as to snap its light fastenings from the collar-
plate, and bear away the head-piece hanging by
the vizor from the point of the lance, had for
weeks been the boy's ambition.
But Renoult delighted most of all in the sports
contrived for him by the two old bowmen who
were now superintending his lessons in archery.
His mother was a Saxon heiress, and his present
companions had been in the service of her family
long before she wedded the Earl. Perhaps,
indeed, it was because of this that the Earl, a
haughty Norman, looked tolerantly on exercises
which, at heart, he scorned as unbefitting a
youth whose weapons in the fray would be, not
the foot-soldier's longbow, but the axe, the mace,
the sword, and the lance. For the powerful
feudal lord loved the gentle Saxon lady, and,
while he rested in his Castle from the arduous
service of his King, nothing pleased him better
than to sit beside her in the bower, and watch the
smiles that wreathed her beautiful features as
THE WOUNDED HERON 101
ever and anon she gazed from the casement on
the green courtyard far beneath, where Renoult
with his faithful attendants was busy with his
sports.
Renoult 's archery highly pleased the two old
men who had taught him how to bend the bow.
One after another that winter morning the
whistling arrows found the butt ; sometimes
they shivered in the " clout," and Serewulf,
the marker, signalling his joy, stepped from
beside the beech trunk, and promptly cut a
notch for tally in a sapling ash behind the target.
The boy, elated by his successes, secretly longed,
as he stood upon the battlements, for some
chance to prove his skill at a living, moving
object. A week before, he had seen old Serewulf 's
deadly arrow pierce a grey wild goose that flew
at utmost speed along the creek towards the open
sea. He hardly believed, though his boyish self-
assurance was unlimited, that he could hit a
flying goose, but he kept a sharp look-out, and
his favourite arrow, specially tipped by the
armourer from the fragment of a dagger blade,
and flighted with feathers from the bird that
Serewulf had recently shot, lay in readiness on a
near ledge of stone. The lesson was almost at an
end, when suddenly a blue heron rounded the
donjon wall, and, alarmed at the sight of Renoult
and his companion, rose high above their heads.
102 THE HERON OF CASTLE CREEK
Excited beyond control, the boy fitted his
favourite arrow to the string, and, before the
forester could interfere, aimed and sped the
shaft. The heron struggled for a moment to
continue her course, then flapped slowly down-
wards and fell in the undergrowth by the
target.
In the Middle Ages the heron was game,
preserved so carefully for hawking that on the
great feudal manors the destruction of the bird
by an underling was severely punished. If a
serf, the underling probably suffered physical
torture according to the barbarous customs then
in vogue ; if a freeman, he was banned, and to all
intents and purposes outlawed from the district
in which the offence occurred. Both foresters
knew this, and, dreading lest they might be held
responsible, as the attendants of the young
noble, for the boy's thoughtless act, were
instantly dumbfounded. Then Serewulf, ever
resourceful, stripped off his jerkin, wrapped
the wounded heron in its folds, and vanished
with his burden into the undergrowth. Renoult
and his companion hurriedly descended the
winding stairway of the keep, sought the
water-gate, pushed off in an empty boat till
they gained the ferry opposite, and soon joined
old Serewulf, who was leisurely examining
the bird in a glade at the far end of the wooded
THE WOUNDED HERON 103
stretch beyond the creek. After a few minutes'
eager conversation in a broad dialect that
Renoult imperfectly understood, the foresters,
speaking in Norman-French, explained to the
boy the position in which they were placed by
his reckless archery. If he told of his deed, they,
at least, would never more be present in his
pastimes. He quickly recognised that he had
wronged his staunchest friends, and protested,
with tears, that he had meant no harm, and
would on no account divulge his doings even to
the seneschal or the friar.
Renoult and one of the archers presently
returned to the Castle, leaving Serewulf with
the heron in the glade. The archers, though
they loved the boy sincerely, felt they could
not rely on him to keep his recent action secret.
They believed that, sooner or later, proud of
his first successful shot at a bird on the wing,
he would whisper the news to a playmate, or, in
some moment of endearment, to his lady-mother.
So, when Renoult had gone to the Castle, Sere-
wulf again examined the heron, determined, if
possible, to carry out the plans he had briefly
discussed with his comrade. To his great relief
he found that the bird was only slightly wounded
in one of its wings ; the arrow had cut through
the thickest quills, and blood was oozing from the
fleshy sockets of the split feathers. Concealing
104 THE HERON OF CASTLE CREEK
his charge, whose pick-axe beak he had been
careful to render harmless by wrapping his hose
around it, he occupied himself for a while in
makirg a coarse rope of grass. Then he bound
the heron's legs and wings and beak, donned
jerkin and hose, and walked away through the
wood towards a corn-mill on the banks of the
river some distance beyond the head of the creek.
At dead of night, long after curfew, the heron
was taken to the cage of a duck-decoy in the
feeder, where she spent a luxurious captivity,
fed by the miller with fish and all manner of
dainties till her wound was healed, and the
balance of her wide vanes so far restored that
she was able to fly. But one of the great
pinions was damaged beyond the present prospect
of a new growth.
When all was in readiness Serewulf carried the
heron back to the glade where, by appointment,
he met his comrade and their pupil ; and with
great show of boyish gladness the Earl's young
son himself released the bird and watched her as,
wild-eyed and with ludicrous haste, she rose to
the heights of the sky before flapping away in
the direction of her unforgotten haunts. Thus
for the bowmen ended a time of considerable
misgiving. They cared little whether the boy
kept his counsel or not, now that all had hap-
pened well ; and their affectionate regard for
THE WOUNDED HEEON 105
him affectionate, yet respectful as became their
rank was quickly renewed.
Eenoult led an almost unfettered life. The
Earl, famed as in every respect the greatest
military leader among the Norman Barons of
fche day, was strict and unrelaxing in the
discipline of his soldiery. Each beacon fire on
fche hill-tops of his broad domain was ever ready
for the torch of the sentinel ; the sleepless
sentinel was ever ready to kindle it on the
approach of a marauding band. ' Watching,
and in arms " was the motto on the escutcheon
of this magnate of fche Western Marches. When-
ever Eenoult wandered alone he was followed,
as by an invisible shadow, by one or bofch of his
personal attendants, and, if his rambles led
far from the Castle, a troop of horse, presumably
engaged in military exercises, often crossed his
path or moved along an adjoining hillside.
Hard, indeed, without a doubt, would it have
been for fche leader of that fcroop if Eenoult had
been kidnapped in a robber raid ; hard, also,
for the faithful foresters if wolf or boar had
wrought him harm. Once, during a ramble
through the woods, Eenoult had happened on a
rutting stag in company with a herd of timid
hinds. Frightened by the threatening behaviour
of the jealous beast, he had lifted to his lips the
horn that, by his father's strictest orders, he on
106 THE HERON OF CASTLE CREEK
his lonely excursions invariably wore strung at
his baldric, and, at the first nervous note, had
been surprised to see his friends the bowmen
leap from the thicket and stand before him,
beating off the persistent creature with their
stout hog-spears.
It was, after all, fortunate for the heron that
she had been wounded and imprisoned in the
decoy by the mill. For, during the visit of the
King's Justiciar to the Marshes, hunting and
hawking had seemed to be the order of the day,
and lords and ladies, with their trains of hunts-
men, falconers, and servitors, had scoured the
wide countryside in search of sport. Herons and
bitterns, in particular, had suffered ; and the
smaller birds had been so often flushed and
frightened that they either hid in terror or flew
away with reckless speed when Renoult appeared
near their accustomed haunts.
When spring was well advanced, and the
leaves were opening on the forest boughs and
the marigolds were blooming by the now unused
decoy, Renoult 's desire to wander far from
home became stronger and still stronger. Out
on a bright, fresh morning near the edge of a
marsh along the river, he saw a heron that,
from the condition of her damaged pinion, he
recognised as the bird he had shot descending
leisurely to the shores of a little lake in the
THE WOUNDED HERON 107
midst of the swamp. He stole through the
rushes and the alders till he reached a spot
close to the lake ; and thence he watched the
bird intently.
She was in company with another heron, and
waded hither and thither catching frogs. Now
and again her mate as the stranger ultimately
proved to be deferentially approached her and
offered a frog or some other tit-bit he had just
secured, which she invariably accepted with a
slight display of condescension, as if his regard
for her, though not exactly unwelcome, was an
every-day matter of trifling importance. Renoult
noted the strange, clumsy methods by which the
male bird paid court the wheeling, drooping
flights, the lowering of the head and the elevation
of the crest, the soft, caressing touch of the
powerful beak on her slate-coloured breast, and
the quick retreat as she, half in play, half in
earnest, struck at him when his attentions
lacked due ceremony. The Norman boy, accus-
tomed to think of the heron as the falcon's
prey, an object most particularly associated
with hoods and jesses, bells and gloves and
lures, the use of which had been familiar to
him since his earliest infancy, found that new
interest had awakened in his mind ; and was
possessed by a vague wonderment that the
intelligent creatures before him, almost human
108 THE HERON OF CASTLE CREEK
in their free and happy ways, could possibly be
sought out simply as the means of sport, offer-
ing little more than the tests of a falcon's flight,
and marked for death at the very moment when
the springer flushed them from the reedy mere.
As summer drew nigh Renoult's love for the
wild creatures in the great forest on the banks
of the creek a love owing birth to that morn-
ing on the marsh immeasurably increased, and
so absorbed him that he was seldom as happy
as when he stole through the grassy glades, or
over the open wastes of moor and bog, or along
the banks of river and creek, his eyes alert for
every movement, his ears quick to catch every
note of bird and beast. But for the gaunt heron
he had wounded from the Castle keep he main-
tained a peculiar fondness.
One place in the forest to which Renoult
frequently resorted was a wild yet sheltered
dingle, overgrown with furze and brambles,
littered with big white boulders that gleamed
among the rocks, and pastured by sheep belong-
ing to the industrious Flemish weavers, who
dwelt in neighbouring hamlets beneath the
protection of their feudal lord. The young
noble, wise beyond his years, felt that the
perfect solitude appealed to him, suggesting
ease and calm in contrast with the warlike bustle,
and the preparations for feasts and sports, in-
THE WOUNDED HERON 109
separable from life within the moated fortress
by the creek. One side of the dingle, sloping
steeply to a brook that poured in dancing
torrent over the shale on a fringe of the moor-
land far up the valley, faced the south, and
caught each ray of sunlight as in a trap of golden
gorse and bronze and emerald fern. Lying amid
the undergrowth near the crest of the slope, the
boy could command such an uninterrupted view
of every part of the dingle that not a single bird
could enter it without his knowledge. Immedi-
ately beneath him, the brook flowed into a little
lake, where, amid the flags and rushes, the trout
glanced gaily as they rose to the incautious flies.
Like Renoult, the heron loved this solitude.
But she knew far more of the trout and their
ways than the boy could ever learn. Day after
day the heron came to the brook ; and whenever
the sun shone bright Renoult watched from his
retreat amid the golden gorse, till he believed
he understood his wild pet's ways, and the
bird seemed gradually to regard his presence
with as little fear as that with which she viewed
the wandering sheep amid the fern. At first
her visits to the brook were frequent and hasty.
She waded up or down the stream ; she seldom
captured a fish ; chiefly her attentions were
bestowed on frogs and worms. Once Renoult
saw her fly away with a long grass-snake in her
110 THE HERON OF CASTLE CEEEK
beak to her nest, built high up in a tree not far
from the mill ; and, greatly daring, the boy had
climbed to the giddy height to see her four big
blue eggs, that, as Serewulf told him, had
borrowed their colour from the unclouded sky.
Later, when again he wished to climb, the
forester had dissuaded him from mounting
further than the bough beneath the nest, and
from that point of view he had seen the young
birds, as, hissing with fear and rage, they bent
over the nest in readiness to resist his inter-
ference, while the parent herons, anxious for
their fledglings' safety, and croaking their alarm,
circled slowly high above the tree tops.
THE HERON OF CASTLE CREEK
II
YOUNG HERONS IN TRAINING
ONE midsummer day Renoult, the young
Norman, walked over the Castle hill to
the abbey, and thence accompanied his friend,
the friar, to watch the monks fishing for their
Friday's dinner in the ponds below the terraced
kitchen garden. The monks were all keen anglers
and enjoyed their sport with almost childish
glee. Invariably, on Thursdays, they entered
into competition for the biggest catch ; and
excitement ran high when, home at evening in
the refectory, they weighed their fish, and the
abbot rewarded the most successful fisher with
an extra bowl of sparkling Rhenish wine.
Rumour had it, said the friar, that brother
lorwerth, a monk from the mountains of Cere-
digion, had on several occasions gained the
prize when his catch seemed smaller than that
of brother Gruffydd, a monk from Morgannwg,
and the most eloquent preacher, as well as the
most skilful angler, of the abbey. At last, sus-
picious, Grufiydd meekly asked the man from
111
112 THE HERON OF CASTLE CREEK
Ceredigion to dress a few trout from the prize-
winning dish, and lo ! in the gullet of each
speckled beauty were found some round smooth
pebbles, while the heaviest fish of all had
swallowed a fair-sized piece of lead such as
the builders had used to cover the abbey roof
rolled up neatly, like a " sinker " for the capture
of the ravenous pike.
Brother Grufiydd, however, soon had cause
to rue his proof of vulgar appetites in lorwerth's
fish, for when the trout that he himself had
caught were dressed, the monks around him
with one voice exclaimed that they would forth-
with net each pond and stream, lest the abbey
roof might disappear. The abbot, prompt in
discipline, extended Friday's fast to Saturday
and Sunday for the ingenious sinners, and, as
part of their penance, caused them to read, once
every hour, the chapter of the miracle of the
loaves and the fishes, and furthermore instructed
Gruff ydd, whom he judged to be the greater
rogue, to take for a text the words " five small
fishes," and preach therefrom a sermon to the
brotherhood on Sunday morn. This, according
to the friar; had Gruffydd done, but with such
little eloquence that all the listeners, from abbot
to novice, dropped fast asleep, and the sound of
snoring was loud and deep when the friar, re-
turning from a visit to a sick member of the
YOUNG HERONS IN TRAINING 113
Earl's household, tiptoed on silent sandals
through the doorway of the nave.
Renoult enjoyed the friar's story ; and when
the good man related how lorwerth, determined
not to be outdone, used heron's oil to flavour the
moss wherein he kept his worms for bait, and,
till his secret was discovered, continued to be an
easy winner of the Thursday's prize, the boy led
on his friend to further anecdotes of birds and
fishing. The friar related that when a heron
stood still in the water she voluntarily caused
oil to ooze from her legs, and, tempting the fish
with its taste and odour, was soon able to obtain
a meal. lorwerth, having heard this from the
miller, had obtained the legs of a bird struck
down by the Earl's fleet-winged peregrine, and,
with the help of the Castle cooks, had carefully
extracted the oil in a stew-pan.
Renoult fully believed, as many anglers since
his day have believed, in the efficiency of heron's
oil on baits for trout, and, therefore, that the
friar related but a simple fact when he spoke of
lorwerth the monk's success on Thursdays by
the fish-ponds. As luck would have it, when the
party of merry clerics gained the lower hedge of
the abbey garden the boy spied his wild pet,
the heron from the nest in the forest, standing
apparently asleep in the shallows at the margin
of the ponds. He begged the good monks to
114 THE HERON OF CASTLE CREEK
halt awhile, and, motioning the friar to hide
with him behind the hawthorns, told, in a
quick whisper, how he had often watched the
bird in the dell beside the brook, and on her
nest in the forest. The friar, who at heart was
gentle and a lover of Nature and solitude, listened
wifch interest, and delighted his companion by
explaining that the heron always seemed to be
asleep when luring fish, and that at the moment
she was surely in the act of emitting the oil from
her legs to tempt the trout. Immediately the
friar had finished speaking the bird, as if she felt
something nibbling at her long green shanks,
struck downwards and shook her head vigorously,
then lifted her beak high into the air, and de-
voured with utmost relish her glistening prey.
Had any doubt as to the friar's explanation of the
heron's method existed, it would inevitably at
once have vanished, for Renoult was too young
and inexperienced to judge that the fish had
more than likely mistaken the heron's legs for
stems of water weed, and had fearlessly ap-
proached them to suck at the glistening air-
bubbles collected on the scales.
The monks, though they looked askance at
the visits of such an expert fisher as a heron to
their well-stocked ponds, delighted, scarcely less
than to sit fishing in the summer twilight, to
gaze from their garden at the movements of a
YOUNG HERONS IN TRAINING 115
swift-winged cast of falcons the spiral flight,
the lofty poise, the sudden swoop on an out-
distanced quarry, the trained return to lure and
glove. Into their souls, thralled in the service of
Mother Church, crept, perchance, a disturbing
envy as they viewed the bright train of lords and
ladies galloping across the wind-swept marsh ;
then self-reproached for their own levity, yet
longing for the transient vanities of life, they
returned from the garden to the cloistered at-
mosphere of grave-like peace, and at their orisons
sought, with the recitation of creed and pater-
noster, to subdue the desire of the world, and,
in duty bounden, prayed that this latest and
most searching temptation of the flesh might be
cast out.
Directly the monks passed through the garden
gate towards the ponds, the heron rose into the
air, and, throwing back her stilt-like legs and
arching her supple neck, winged slowly off
towards the heronry. Thence, as soon as the
morning's sport was over, Renoult followed,
but he saw neither the old birds nor the fledg-
lings in the nest. So, taking the nearest course
through the leafy woods, he climbed to the crest
of the dingle, and found the object of his search
by the lake below. She was not alone ; follow-
ing her to and fro in the shallows were three
other birds, whose smaller size and unkempt
116 THE HERON OF CASTLE CEEEK
appearance indicated that they were the fledg-
lings from the nest in the forest trees. Eenoult,
not wishing yet to risk discovery, crawled like
a snake beneath the gorse, till from behind a
shoulder of rock he peeped unseen at the pre-
occupied family.
The young herons were undoubtedly filled
with the importance of their early lessons in
obtaining food, and were closely attentive to
every motion on the part of their mother. When
she advanced, they all advanced, when she trod,
they all trod, lifting their long shanks with ner-
vous clumsiness. Generally they moved in
single file behind the parent bird, but sometimes,
as with excessive caution, she stalked a trout or
a minnow that had darted to refuge beneath a
pebble in the shallows, or a mouse, or a frog, or
a beetle that had hidden in the grass on the bank
of the lake, they quietly stole up in line beside
her the better to enjoy the sight of good hunting.
Hardly had the mother lifted her head after
striking her prey, when the young birds, crowd-
ing around her, and feebly flapping their wings,
begged with low, harsh cries for food. If the
catch proved to be an insignificant item in her
usual bill of fare, the mother heron swallowed ib
with ludicrous haste, but if she caught a frog or
a trout of any considerable size she at once
doubled back among her excited brood, so that
YOUNG HERONS IN TRAINING 117
the water she had not already fished might
remain undisturbed ; then, pretending to find
difficulty in eluding their pursuit, she hastened
haphazard hither and thither till her most
vigorous pursuer forced her to surrender the
prize. The excitement having abated, she re-
sumed her stalking, and the members of her
awkward squad formed again in line to the rear.
The performance was vastly entertaining for
the Norman youth ; but his cramped position
at the edge of the rock became more and more
uncomfortable. Presently, turning slightly to
seat himself on a grassy knoll, he dislodged a
stone, which clattered down from ledge to ledge,
rolled across the dingle, and so disturbed the
herons that with hoarse cries of alarm they flew
off and disappeared over the opposite hill.
Early next morning, Renoult, bent on learn-
ing more, again paid a visit to the heron's
favourite haunts. From the highest battlement
he scanned the creek, but could catch no glimpse
of wide blue vanes beating slowly through the
clear summer air, or of a lonely watcher by the
mud-flats down towards the sea. The entrance
to the mill-leat was deserted ; the fish-ponds
near the abbey were undisturbed save by dimp-
ling trout, and busy coots and waterhens among
the lily-pads ; and nothing moved along the
mere save the pale green flags that bowed and
118 THE HERON OF CASTLE CREEK
nodded as the gentle wind passed by. A squirrel
chattered as she explored the empty nest in the
forest glade ; she showed no signs of fear ; its
rightful occupants were far from home. Renoult
turned away from the glade, and once more
wandered up the winding sheep-paths to the
hill-top. He looked out over the dingle, but
neither by lake nor by brook could he see the
heron and her brood.
Tired by his long ramble, he sat on the knoll
to rest for a while before making straight across
country to the nearest part of the river, that
thence, on his homeward journey, he might
explore the pools and the reed-beds. Scarcely,
however, had he seated himself when far in the
direction of the river he saw, just above the blue
horizon, the heron and her young heading straight
towards the dingle. So slow was their flight that
by the time of their arrival at the lake the boy
was comfortably hidden in the shadow of the
closest thicket near the rock. Preparatory to
her descent by the water's edge, the mother
heron, followed by her brood, wheeled several
times around the dingle, and once, approaching
the rock, almost touched the top of the furze
beneath which the boy was hidden. But Re-
noult lay as motionless as the ground beneath
him ; and soon the birds, skimming the hill-
side, vanished below the line of his vision.
YOUNG HERONS IN TRAINING 119
Then, moving forward to the look-out station he
had occupied on the previous day, he watched
the birds wheeling lower and yet lower till their
wings almost trailed the smooth, bright surface
of the little lake.
Presently the young herons checked their
flight, and, depressing their tails and throwing
forward their legs, managed, with much self-
satisfaction, to alight safely at the water's edge,
where they began, in the sheer exuberance of
their summer mirth, a series of exercises that to
Renoult seemed as diverting as the antics of the
Justiciar's half-witted fool had been during the
recent revels in the Castle hall. Lifting their
legs almost to the level of their breasts, they
paced awkwardly around a clump of reeds, and
along the summit of a grassy mound, where,
turning quickly, they bowed to each other with
grave formality. Then they marched in single
file back to the reeds, and, again turning, lurched
from side to side, balancing themselves with
half-open wings and occasionally shooting out
their long, lean necks as if to guard against a
fall. Afterwards, perhaps giddy and out of
breath, they for a few moments stood motionless,
with their feathers raised around their throats
and their heads buried almost out of sight in
their distended crops. Anon, recovering from
their exertions, they formed a compact little
120 THE HERON OF CASTLE CREEK
group, their heads towards the centre, and each
bird standing on one leg only, as the mother
heron had sometimes stood in the fish-ponds
while Renoulb watched her from the abbey gar-
den. At last, breaking away from the group,
and strutting, with heads erect and beaks point-
ing straight upward, around the reed clump and
over the mounds, they ended their frolic by a
grand parade. Then, returning to the mother
bird, they dutifully placed themselves once
more beneath her care.
In their sport they had doubtless scared every
fish and frog from the neighbourhood of their
alighting place, so the old heron led them to
the further shore of the lake before beginning
the lessons of the afternoon. Evidently deter-
mined that her progeny should as soon as possible
be able to forage for themselves, she stalked to
and fro till her keen eyes detected some small
creature moving in the grass ; then she attracted
the attention of the young birds by pointing at
the ground before her, and allowed them to
advance and secure the prize. Each such episode
was full of interest, for the fledglings copied
faithfully the old bird's movements, and " broke
^ point " only when jealousy and hunger prompted
them to a race. Once, in their eagerness, they
reached beyond the spot where a half -grown
water-vole was hiding, and the little animal,
YOUNG HERONS IN TRAINING 121
leaping behind them towards the lake, was killed
and eaten by the parent bird.
Out in the shallows of the lake, however, the
heron's methods of training were somewhat
different. There, though she stalked the trout
and the minnows with unfailing patience, she
for some time chose herself to catch the fish,
which she killed by sharp blows against a stone,
and dropped at her feet, that the young might
learn how to mark and find their food beneath
the surface of the water. Renoult observed that,
in comparison with the rest of the brood, one of
the herons was small, and weak, and unintelli-
gent. This young bird had been the last to
alight by the lake, had taken the least important
part in the dances, and had often by its com-
panions been bullied out of the possession of
food. But, with all-enduring patience, the
mother shielded her weakling, satisfied its hunger
with the daintiest scraps that she could find, and
never concluded her lesson till her backward
pupil had attained proficiency.
The boy's warm, unspoiled heart went out
towards the patient mother and the weakling
of her brood. Had he carried his long-bow and
his favourite arrow he probably wouEJ have
hazarded a shot at the bullies when they pecked
and chased the timorous weakling. Much of
what actually happened during the education
122 THE HERON OF CASTLE CREEK
of the young herons was, of course, not known
to the watcher ; bub, had he possessed their
keenness of vision, and occupied a hiding-place
beside them, he would have learned that the
lean, lanky birds, apparently ill-fed, were wonder-
fully fitted to meet the difficulties of life. Some-
times the old heron waded thigh-deep in the lake,
and, seeing a trout or a frog beneath a lily-pad,
stole up to the creature without giving it the
slightest indication of her approach. Sometimes,
either because her presence was detected, or
because the over-anxiety of the fledglings to
imitate her methods caused alarm, her quarry
fled precipitately to refuge among the reeds or
beneath the pebbles. Not in the least discon-
certed, the heron marked the wake of the fleeing
creature, cast ahead and viewed the dim little
form shooting down into the depths, then, with
the utmost weariness, stalked it again to its new-
found hiding-place.
For some time the inexpert fledglings failed
entirely in their attempts to learn the secret of
their mother's good fortune ; they lifted their
feet too high and splashed the water, instead of
advancing stealthily and raising their feet only
sufficiently to avoid the surface of the pebbly
bed. They lacked the old bird's knowledge of
the likeliest spot for a basking trout, and they
could not follow the movements of their prey
YOUNG HERONS IN TRAINING 123
when it hurried from shelter on their approach.
Suddenly, however, they gained the trick of
success ; and henceforth, till the old heron led
them back to their forest home, they fished
assiduously in the shallows by the margin of the
lake.
Often afterwards, when even the weakling
became so strong and expert that she would no
longer endure the slightest attempts at bullying
from the other members of the brood, Renoult,
in his rambles over the countryside, watched the
family at work or play. And when the hawking
season came again, the Earl, much to Renoult 's
delight, yielded to the intercession of his lady
and allowed the rights of sanctuary over the
creek, the brook, and the lower reaches of the
river, where the lad's wild pets remained for
long unmolested.
A MOORLAND SANCTUARY
A WINTER night was stealing slowly over a '
-JL wilderness of moor and marsh among the
hills. A genble wind had scattered the day-mist
and then had given place to a brooding calm.
Above a solitary farmhouse on the northern
slope of the moor, dark grey clouds had gathered
in the sky, while down towards a part of the
horizon discernible between a few scattered pine
trees sheltering the lonely dwelling, gleamed a
thin line of steely light. Towards the west, the
outlook changed to the splendour of the after-
glow. There, nothing was suggestive, like the
white line among the pines, of desolation. The
glorious light, spreading across the waste, trans-
formed the withered grass and heather into
masses of flame, and was reflected in the reed-
fringed pools and rivulets among the hollows of
the peat. Gradually, the splendour sunk into
the west, till nothing but a dazzling yellow bar,
against which stood out in relief an ancient
burial mound, remained above the horizon.
Then, breaking the silence, a hollow boom-
ing cry rang out over the waste, and echoed
124
A MOORLAND SANCTUARY 125
drearily among the hills. It was the cry of a
bittern.
Hidden completely by the lower slopes of the
moor from view of the farmstead and the
winding road across the hills, was a deep and
narrow gorge. At its upper end, a torrent
leaped a sheer precipice of rock into a cup-
shaped pool. Past the shallows at the margin
of the pool, the brook flowed between steep
banks clothed with fern and heather and strewn
with rugged boulders, then gradually broadened,
and at the outlet of the gorge was lost amid
the tangled vegetation of an almost impassable
morass.
From this sanctuary in the wilderness came
the loud, weird cry that disturbed the stillness
of the gloom. The gorge lay in dense shadow.
None of the beauty of the afterglow was mirrored
in the pool beneath the waterfall, or in the clouds
of spray that wreathed the precipice. But the
last golden light from the western sky, slanting
across the entrance to the gorge, shone on the
lingering vapours above the surface of the brook,
and caused them to appear like phantoms rising,
one by one, from the narrow mouth of some
deep tomb, and gliding away, in long procession,
to begin a night's fantastic revels on the marsh.
Suddenly, in the half-transparent haze, the
bittern appeared flying from the direction of the
126 A MOORLAND SANCTUARY
marsh, and alighted by the stream. For a few
moments he paused, as if intently listening, then
stalked into the darkness of the gorge. Till
midnight the bird continued to search for food
beside the brook. But when the moon ascended,
and hung like a clear lamp above the waterfall,
he stretched his wings, flew up and around the
gorge, and up again and further and still further
into the heights of the sky ; and, uttering a dis-
cordant cry, headed south towards a river,
followed its course to the estuary, and crossed
a headland to another marsh far off on the fringe
of the sea.
Spring had come ; and the marsh on the
coast was the scene of restless activity. By day,
the thick reed-beds at high-water mark were
thronged with migrant birds on their way to the
north and here awaiting the coming of night.
During the darkness, the air seemed filled with
the noise of beating wings, as flock after flock
swept northward. If the night was calm, the
noise was faint and continuous, and indicated
that the birds were passing high over the marsh ;
but when storm prevailed, the sounds seemed to
show that the birds were skimming the waves,
rising gradually as they neared the land, and
then flying a hundred feet or so above the reeds.
The bittern's favourite hiding-place was a
A MOORLAND SANCTUARY 127
wide hollow, between sand-banks overgrown
with rushes and fringed with stunted trees, in
the middle of the marsh. There, from dawn to
dusk, he slept secure, his long stilt-like legs out
of sight in the coarse herbage growing among the
rushes, his head turned back beneath his wings,
and the delicately mottled feathers of his breast
rising and falling as he breathed. And thence,
after sunset, he wandered in quest of food, by
ditch and bank and across the open waste. And
even as he thus wandered he often felt an
intense longing to join the ranks of the great
bird-armies.
During the previous autumn that desire had
been strong within him while the birds were
departing from the south ; then, however, he
was suffering from an injury, and so was unable
to venture on the long journey oversea. For he
had flown one night far from the gorge to a
sheltered valley, where, among woods and corn-
fields and meadows, the wide river he had
recently followed on his way to the sea glistened
in the moonlight. The call of the water rippling
over the fords could not be resisted, so, descend-
ing, he hid among the thickets of a little island
in mid-stream. Presently, he emerged from his
retreat and stole out into the shadows by the
side of the island. He had just begun to fish
when suddenly the alarm note of a wild duck to
128 A MOOELAND SANCTUARY
her young came from beyond the thickets. This
unmistakeable sound was followed by a loud
whir as the duck and her brood rose swiftly
over the top of the alders by the bank. Too
timid to disregard such signs of danger, the
bittern waded back to the island, lowered his
head, spread his wings, and launched himself
into the air. Instantly he heard an almost
deafening noise and felt a stinging pain. Luckily,
however, the poacher's gun had not been held
quite straight, and the bird, though distressed,
was able to continue his flight. With desperate
and continuous effort he soared high above the
valley, till the wide sweep of the dim moorland,
dotted with shining pools and divided by the
shining brook, lay before him towards the
horizon. On and on he flew, and at last, in the
grey light of dawn, reached the gorge once more.
For days he languished, stiff and sore from his
wound. Fortunately, however, food was easily
obtained, and he was free from disturbance ;
but when at last he recovered, the autumn
migration had ended.
It was now the time of the spring migration.
Night after night the birds passed over the marsh
by the sea ; night after night the bittern im-
patiently longed to depart. Why did he not fly to
the near estuary, and thence, by way of the river
valley, to his haunts on the moor ? The reason
A MOOKLAND SANCTUARY 129
was that the time for his departure had not fully
come ; he was waiting. On stormy nights,
especially, he was restless and anxious, and
listened for the signal that should cause him to
journey back towards the hills.
One evening, a cold north-east wind arose,
and, as the darkness gathered, a storm of rain and
hail beat mercilessty on the marsh. The migrant
birds arrived unusually late, and flew so low
that they almost touched the tops of the reeds
with their wings as they moved slowly in from
the edge of the tide, and, slightly altering their
course, crossed the wind in the direction of the
estuary. At midnight, during a break in the
storm, the bittern, standing in the shelter of a
rough, reed-grown bank, with his breast to the
wind and his head turned sideways to the sea,
suddenly recognised, among a small flock of
herons and plovers, the familiar shape of a bird
of his own kind. His keen sight and hearing
could not be deceived ; the form of the approach-
ing bird could be easily distinguished, and its
beating wings produced a peculiar sound that
could not be mistaken. Rising at once and
facing the wind, the bittern uttered a harsh call,
which to his delight was quickly answered. His
waiting and watching were over ; the new-
comer was the bird that had shared his last
summer's home in the mere beyond the lonely
130 A MOORLAND SANCTUARY
gorge. With her he journeyed through the gloom
to the estuary, and, again, past villages and
farms by the river. As the sun rose, the bittern
and his mate circled down, and, alighting on the
marsh, rested among the rushes near a broad and
shallow channel through which the waters of the
brook passed till they were lost among the
quaking peat-beds in the hollows of the moor.
Fatigued by buffeting against the strong north
wind, the birds remained in close hiding during
the entire day and the greater part of the
following night.
For many years the conditions of migration
in the spring had not been more unfavourable ;
the storm over the marsh by the coast, though
apparently not more severe than an ordinary
springtide gale, marked the fringe of a terrific
cyclone that had swept over Europe and the
Atlantic, and driven vast numbers of birds to
destruction out afc sea. The hen bittern, having
wintered in bhe distant south, was utterly
exhausted by the journey, and during the first
week after her arrival seldom wandered beyond
the marsh ; but the cock soon recovered from
his weariness, and at night flew restlessly from
place to place, as if to make himself familiar with
forgotten scenes, and so be better enabled to
guard against danger.
Then came the brief season of courtship and
A MOORLAND SANCTUARY 131
of preparation for domestic life. How droll were
the male bird's antics as, beside the pool in the
gorge, or in some spot among the reedy tangles
of the marsh, he displayed his charms before
the eyes of his admiring companion ! He paced
to and fro so proudly that he seemed to tread on
air ; he swayed and strutted with the rhythmic
motion of a dance ; running a little way towards
the object of his affections he spread his wings
and ruffled the long, loose feathers of his breast;
then, turning, he stood still in such a position
that the lines of beautiful colouring, not seen
before, were clearly displayed to her. Finally,
taking to flight, he hovered immediately above
her, so that, if all else failed, he might impress
her with a show of strength and grace and
perfect form.
Spring, on the bleak moor far from the sea,
seemed reluctant to make ready for summer.
On the hills, at that time of the year, the wind
never slept even while, in the neighbouring
valleys, an utter calm prevailed. March was
bitter and tempestuous ; the beginning of April
was wet and almost as tempestuous as March.
But there were occasional days when, though the
wind blew chill and strong, the sun gave life
and beauty to the wilderness. On the sheltered
slopes of the gorge the heather unfolded its
delicate green leaf-buds, and the furze its golden
132 A MOORLAND SANCTUARY
blossoms ; and the colours of leaf and flower
were reflected in the filmy curtain of the falling
water, and in the clear, trembling depths around
the vortex of the pool, from which fearless little
trout, that had never seen an angler's lure, rose
gaily to incautious flies. Sometimes an amorous
grouse, in all his springtide finery, mounted a
knoll on the highest ridge above the heather
and the furze, and there, boldly outlined against
the sky, stretched his wings, and cackled and
crowed, as if he knew and rejoiced that envious
eyes beheld him from the gorge. And, some-
times, the great stillness of the moor, of which
the unceasing sound of the waterfall seemed a
part, was broken by the " drum " of a towering
snipe, or the bleat of a wandering jack-hare, or
the carol of a joyous lark climbing an invisible
stairway to the sky.
April brightened with the progress of spring,
and then across the moor came often, mellowed
by distance, the faint trill of a hovering plover ;
while from end to end of the marsh rang out the
loud, flute-like call of a curlew, as the bird, in
an ecstasy of delight, dashed to and fro on
rapid, whistling wings near the spot he had
chosen for his nest.
To the peasant climbing fche sheep-path by the
farm, these wild voices were almost as eloquent
of the freedom of the hills as had been the roar
A MOORLAND SANCTUARY 133
of winter tempests. They suggested some great
mystery of Nature, but were not in themselves
mysterious. Different from them all was the one
weird voice that greeted him at dusk, and left
with him a thought of immortality.
He would say to the shrivelled figure in the
ruddy light of the inglenook, when he tramped
into the kitchen after the long day's labour :
"Mother, I heard the voice to-night.'' And
the old woman would reply, in the slow, quaver-
ing accents of extreme age : :< The shepherd is
calling to his dog, calling, calling, by the marsh
and by the brook. But nothing four-footed
ever comes back from the quake. Poor dog !
Poor dog ! "
The bittern's evening call was considered to be
a solemn warning. The peasant observed the
utmost care to prevent his dog from straying
beyond sight on the outer fringes of the marsh,
and himself to avoid, after sundown, the neigh-
bourhood of the dreaded spot. So the rare
visitors to the marsh suffered nothing from the
dwellers at the hillside farm.
By the end of April, a large nest, carelessly
built of reeds and rushes, and containing four
pale-brown eggs, occupied a dry tussock of ling
and cotton-grass in the heart of the marsh. For
some time, every approach to the nest had
been vigilantly guarded by the bitterns ; a wild
134 A MOOELAND SANCTUARY
duck, crossing a litfcle pool beyond a near clump
of reeds, had been compelled to dive repeatedly
to escape the bittern's fierce attack, and then,
having failed to elude her pursuers in the
shallow water, had taken flight in the direction
of some more peaceful part of the mere. The
curlew, whose home was on the further shore of
the pool, dared not wander afoot through the
archway of the flags by the edge of the water.
For long, each day, he took up his post as
sentinel at some distance from his sitting mate,
and piped disconsolately, as if longing to return
to his old look-out station the very tussock
on which the bitterns' nest was constructed.
Except to scare intruders, the bitterns, however,
seldom moved, during the day, from the im-
mediate vicinity of their nest. While the hen
brooded and slept, the cock, his head well
hidden in the soft plumage of his breast, stood
near a clump of reeds on the margin of the pool,
and dozed the quiet hours away, or, alert for
signs of danger, watched the flight of passing
birds. No approaching shadow seemed to
escape his notice ; the pool before him was a
faithful mirror of everything that happened in
the sky. Alike in sunshine and in shadow both
he and his mate were almost invisible, so
perfectly did the colours of their plumage
harmonise with those of surrounding objects.
A MOORLAND SANCTUARY 135
Summer came, the brief radiant summer of the
open upland moor, when the days are torrid and
the nights are cooled by a gentle breeze, and the
few bird- voices of spring are hushed. Its
approach was not indicated by the sudden
unfolding of the leaf -buds on the trees ; the only
trees on the moor were the pines near the farm,
and they were always green ; the grass, except
immediately around the marsh, was stunted and
parched by the fierce heats of noon. But along
the hills the colour of the heather had slowly
deepened on the lengthening sprays, and the
bracken had thrust up its branching fronds till
every trackway of the grouse and the hare
resembled a bowered lane through which the
creatures could wander unseen. And on the
marsh the reeds and flags were tall and thick,
and waved to the breath of the wind. Regularly
now, in the twilight, the bitterns, leading a little
family of three grey-brown birds, stole out from
the mere to the brook, and thence to the gorge
below the waterfall. Frogs and slugs were
plentiful in the undergrowth when it was wet
with dew, and, occasionally, a trout, in the act
of leaving the pool to feed down-stream, could
be surprised among the pebbles where the water
narrowed near the side-channel of a neglected
sheep-pond long since overgrown with weeds.
The gorge was a chosen school, in which, safe
136 A MOORLAND SANCTUARY
from all enemies, the young bitterns could be
taught to exercise their wings and seek for food,
in preparation for a later life of separation from
the parent birds.
The heat of summer waned with the advent of
August. The purple of the heather rivalled in
beauty the deep orange that had taken the
place of a lighter yellow in the earlier blossoms
of the gorse ; and at sunrise, when the bitterns
flew home to their sanctuary in the marsh, the
pale blue of the rolling mist, and the first golden
rays of the sun, blending with the colours of the
flowers, transformed the wilderness into a
paradise whose splendours surpassed even those
of the afterglow of the previous winter, when
the male bird was about fco depart to the coast.
Then, with tragic suddenness, the sanctuary
of the mere was violated, and its peace disturbed.
Early one morning, before the moon had set, and
while the bitterns as usual were feeding in the
gorge, an old, unmated fox, that for years had
haunted the lonely countryside, trotted leisurely
down the sheep-path past the farmstead, and
across the rough hillside, to drink at the brook.
He discovered, as he stooped by the water's
edge, that the scenfc of a young hare was fresh
on the sodden grass, but, as he followed the line
for some distance by the only safe track-way
through the marsh, it became faint and was lost
A MOORLAND SANCTUARY 137
among the reeds. The fox's home was in a cairn
not far from the highest point of the moor ; but,
since the air was warm and gave promise of a
perfect day, he turned aside from his path, lay
down on the dry tussock where the bitterns had
nested, and fell asleep.
At dawn he was awakened by a faint rustle
among the reeds. Peeping from his " seat " he
saw the bitterns slowly approaching him along
the track- way by which he himself had come in
pursuit of the hare. His eyes ablaze, he crouched
for an instant ; then, bounding from the
tussock, he struck down one of the young birds
and fastened his teeth in its breast. The other
young birds quickly vanished, but, as the fox
stood over his fluttering victim, the parent
bitterns, abandoning every thought of danger,
closed in and struck him repeatedly with their
beaks and wings, inflicting such strong and rapid
blows as for some moments to bewilder their
enemy. He retreated a few paces ; then,
recovering from his confusion, and mad with
rage, he leaped high into the air once, twice,
thrice. The conflict was over, and before him
lay, fluttering in the throes of death, the two
rare and beautiful birds which, probably alone
of all their kind, had nested that year in Britain.
Away on the fringe of the marsh, the fugitive
young bitterns lurked in hiding through the day.
138 A MOORLAND SANCTUARY
At evenfall, they began a weary search for their
missing parents ; and often, through the night,
fcheir weird calls resounded in the wilderness.
But the only answer that came was an occasional
echo from among the slopes of the gloomy gorge.
And among the boulders of the cairn on the
hill-top, the old fox, vainly endeavouring to pass
the time away in sleep, moaned and writhed with
pain. One of his eyes had been torn from its
socket in his brief battle with the birds.
THE PARTRIDGE
PARTRIDGE NESTING HABITS
rilWM SAR was the genius of the hamlet.
JL His neighbours relied on him for help in
doubt and trouble. His little " shop " stood at a
corner of the cross-roads ; and almost filling it
from door to window was a collection of old
furniture, boards, planks, carpenter's tools, clog-
soles, boot-lasts, nails, screws, rusty bicycle
wheels, paint-pots, brushes, soldering irons,
picture frames, block-pulleys, cart-shafts all
sorts and conditions of things likely to bewilder
a chance passer-by who might desire to know
what Twm could do or what he could not do.
Amid this litter, an apprentice boy might afc
odd hours of the day have been seen at work ;
but Twm was seldom found at home. Either
he was away at some lone farm among the hills,
building outhouses, mending clocks and chairs
and implements, doctoring cows and sheep,
assisting at seed-time or harvest ; or he was out
among the three-acre fields of his own little
139
140 THE PARTEIDGE
freehold, engaged in one or another of the
tasks he there found ready to his hand.
Though clever at most things, Twm was not
a good farmer. The pastures near his farm-
housethat nestled among the trees at the
end of the lane beyond his " shop " were
overgrown with weeds ; the hedges even of his
cornfields were thickets of furze and brambles,
with here and there a sapling oak or ash, and
the gates were mere hurdles of split larch plaited
with branches of hazel and alder. Twm Sar's
most cherished possession was a breech-loading
gun of an obsolete French pattern that hung in
the roof-tree of the kitchen at the farm. The
old man had once been a poacher, inasmuch
as he had shot game without a licence. But
later, while he preserved his land with jealous
care as had been his custom in the past, and each
autumn fondly hoped for a few hours of leisure
in pursuit of game, Twm never took his gun
from the roof- tree except to scare the crows from
the corn, or a prowling fox from the hencoops in
the yard. It was a kind of fad, or hobby, with
Twm Sar that, till the bright autumn morning
when his work might be laid aside, wild creatures
such as had given him sport in his youth should
find on his farm safe sanctuary from human
foes. But when that autumn morning dawned,
Twm was too feeble to go into the fields.
PARTRIDGE NESTING HABITS 141
A mild afternoon in March was merging into
dusk as the old farmer-carpenter closed the
gate of his cornfield, and, guiding his plough
over the ruts and the stones of a rough path-
way behind the farm, trudged homewards with
a weary team. The clank of harness and plough-
share had died away, leaving the silence of the
plough-land unbroken except for the cawing of
the rooks, when a partridge suddenly appeared
from a rabbit-creep and wandered over the new-
cut furrows in the cornfield. The little brown
bird, alert for every sign of danger, moved out
into the fringe of grass between the nearest
furrows and the ditch, and for a few moments
fed daintily on some fresh sprouts of herbage
exposed by the plough, and on grubs and flies
that, disturbed from their winter sleep, were
hurrying over the damp clods to seek the shelter
of the grass.
Instinctively feeling the presence of spring
in the scent of the earth, of the grass, and of the
buds on the gorse by the ditch the partridge
stood upright, while the westering light shone full
on the horse-shoe markings of his breast, and
uttered his cry, he-whit! ke-whit ! Tee-whit!
And what an unexpected noise he made ! This
was the first time he had attempted the " chal-
lenge," and for a moment he was almost startled
by his own effort. A rook stalking over a near
142 THE PARTRIDGE
ridge was so surprised that he jumped aside and
flew to join his sable companions in a far corner
of the plough-land ; a field -vole under a withered
bramble scurried to his burrow in the moss ; a
rabbit in a clover patch beyond the hedge sat
up on his haunches to listen, drummed his
alarm, and hopped into the shadowy thicket.
For the voice of the young partridge was as
unlike the full clear voice of an older bird as the
first crow of a barnyard cockerel is unlike the
long-drawn challenge of an experienced rooster ;
and the rook, the vole, and the rabbit were
suspicious of its meaning.
Then the partridge, remembering how the
arrival of the farmer in the morning had caused
him to hide for safety in the furze while the
plump little hen bird to which he had begun to
pay court hastily returned in the direction whence
she had come soon after dawn, flew leisurely over
the hedge and across the adjoining pasture where
the rabbits were frolicking in the clover patches
around stray tufts of withered grass. As he
flew the partridge sought everywhere for signs
of the presence of his kindred. His search
for a while seemed vain, and he was in the act
of alighting beside one of the grass tufts, when
his keen eye detected a dim round form standing
some distance away on a knoll among the
rabbits. Half running, half flying, and, now
PARTRIDGE NESTING HABITS 148
that the desire of spring was strong within his
quick-beating heart, equally ready for love or
battle, he reached the knoll and surprised his
companion of the morning as she was about to
enter the tangle of the grass.
At first she paid slight heed to his gentle pur-
ring notes of affection, and treated his advances
with cold disdain. Every note and movement
of the birds seemed eloquent. " I have found
you at last, at last, little love," he said. And
she, with indignant gesture, made answer, " Who
are you, who are you, seeking me at supper-
time in the twilight of the grass ? >! " Pretty
brown bird," he continued, " don't you know
me ? Don't you see the bright russet horse-
shoe on my breast ? Don't you remember
that I met you in the furze-brake after sunrise,
and we were together for hours till the plough-
man came and frightened us into hiding from
the stubble ? " And plainly she rejoined, " Go
away, go away ; I do not choose to call to mind
what happened this morning." Nearer and still
nearer her suitor approached. In pretended
fright she abandoned her haughty manner and
ran to the far side of the knoll, but before she
could look around he was at her side. Again and
again she attempted to escape, only to discover,
however, that her persistent admirer could with
ease out-distance her. Secretly admiring his
144 THE PARTRIDGE
grace and strength she at last admitted his
conquest. Later, the wan moonbeams shining
through the mist of night lingered on the two
little wildlings crouching together, head under
wing, asleep on the narrow path that Twm
had left unploughed between the furrows in the
middle of the cornfield.
A few weeks of early springtide weather were
succeeded by gloom, and tempest, and bitter
frosts ; winter unexpectedly returned to mar
the work of the husbandman and blight the
hopes of the hedgerow songsters busy with their
nests. Following the custom of their kind the
partridge and his mate became members of a
" pack " that, under the guidance of an old and
experienced bird, frequented the southern slope
of a hill beyond the hamlet. In the pack were
half a dozen mated couples, and among the males
fighting was frequent ; but when the cold
weather passed away, and the pack broke up,
the relationship of each bird to its partner
seemed to have remained unchanged. The young
partridge from the plough-land in the valley
returned with his mate to his winter haunts ;
and presently, when the hen bird had grown
familiar with her new surroundings, the little
pair searched the hedgerow thickets for a nesting
place.
The sparkling crystals of a late white frost
PAETRIDGE NESTING HABITS 145
had vanished from the grass. The ash trees
and the oaks unfolded their pale green and
olive leaves ; their lowest branches drooped
over the matted thickets of the ditch. Clusters
of celandine peeped from every bank, with
violets and hyacinths, anemones and prim-
roses. The pale-golden broom, the ruddy-
golden gorse, their splendour two-fold in the
golden sunlight, seemed to make a garden's
paradise of the roughly cultivated fields about
the dwelling of the hamlet carpenter. Beside
an oak in the lower hedge of the cornfield and
behind a screen of broom and furze, yet away
from the beaten track of rabbit and vole, the
partridges had built their nest. Hardly perhaps
could the few bent and withered leaves collected
in a slight depression of the soil be called a nest.
Yet nothing more was needed. Sheltered from
wind and rain in such a position that even the
drops of a summer shower would not fall into
the hollow from the tree overhead, and hidden
from the keen sight of sparrow-hawk and kestrel,
the nest suited its purpose admirably.
By the end of May a dozen glossy brown eggs
were deposited therein, and over these the hen
bird brooded tenderly, sitting closely hour after
hour, and leaving her charge only at infrequent
intervals for food and recreation. The fussy
long-tailed titmouse, that had her lichen-covered
146 THE PARTRIDGE
home in the furze-brake a few yards away, was
scarcely more attentive to her domestic duties.
And awhile the petals of the broom and the gorse
fell in a scented shower on the grass, the hya-
cinths and the violets were succeeded by the
may-bloom on low hawthorn sprays beneath the
oak, and in the undrained pasture beyond the
hedge the jewelled cups of the marsh marigolds
fringed a tiny pool where the birds of the neigh-
bourhood were wont to drink and bathe.
Whenever the hen partridge rose from her
nest she covered the eggs with leaves and grass,
so that if in her absence sly carrion crows or
hunting weasels happened to peep through the
hedgerow the treasures in the hollow should
remain unseen. Even the most harmless of
Nature's wildlings are at all times keenly in-
quisitive. Knowledge of animal life is often
obtained only through familiarity with creatures
whose intelligence has been blunted by domesti-
cation, and we are accustomed to imagine that
the denizens of our woods and fields take at best a
perfunctory interest in their surroundings. From
watching a cow feeding in a pasture we can form
but few ideas of the habits of her kind in remote
ages, when they lived in herds amid the dense
growth of scattered forests and marshy plains,
and were surrounded by powerful enemies.
Those unapproachable wild geese that, in the
PARTRIDGE NESTING HABITS 14?
rigid winter, occasionally visit the up-country
lake, and tempt us to feats of cunning and
endurance comparable with those of an Eskimo
watching a seal-hole in a floe can they in any
way be likened to the waddling flocks that sup-
ply our Christmas table with its choicest viand ?
The man who attempts to read wild Nature's
book and is familiar only with the lives of
domesticated animals is much in the same
position as he who, having merely learned the
Greek alphabet, essays forthwith the translation
of Homer.
The creatures of wood and field may be
divided into two classes the hunters and the
hunted. The business of the hunters is to
learn the ways of the hunted, and so with ease
obtain their food ; while that of the hunted
is to learn how to escape destruction. Some-
times, like the squirrel that, while raiding a
blackbird's nest, is pounced on by a sparrow-
hawk, or a weasel that, while hunting a vole, is
killed by a fox, the hunters become themselves
the hunted. Whatsoever may be their path
through life, wild creatures are continually alert
as they travel therein. From each experience by
the way they gather a little. Should something
strange meet the eye it is approached cautiously
and examined carefully, that in future it may be
avoided, or pursued, or treated with indifference.
148 THE PARTRIDGE
This inquisitiveness affords the naturalist
delightful studies of character in wild creatures.
As might readily be supposed, curiosity often
leads to mischief. The partridge, when on leav-
ing her nest she covered it with leaves and grass,
safeguarded her treasures from many dangers.
How might the safety of the eggs have been
affected if the nest were uncovered and a red
bank-vole an innocent animal, indeed, com-
pared with the weasel or the stoat passed by ?
It is more than probable that the vole, his
curiosity awakened by the unusual sight of a
clutch of glossy brown eggs, would disarrange
them, either from sheer love of mischief, or
because he smelt some fresh, sweet stalks of
herbage which under the warmth of the hen
partridge's body had sprouted among the eggs,
and desired at all costs to obtain the tifc-bit.
The vole would not trouble about the safety of
the eggs as he searched for the young sprouts
beneath the nest. The desertion of their home by
the disappointed partridges would be well-nigh
inevitable after such a visit from the vole.
From an incident I witnessed in the life of
Bright-eye, the water-vole, I might write, per-
haps, another story of disaster to an uncovered
partridge's nest. Late one evening in spring I
was lying in the long grass on the river-bank.
A few yards from my hiding-place, out on a
PARTKIDGE NESTING HABITS 149
willow bough over the pool, was a moorhen's
nest containing six downy chicks and an addled
egg. For an hour I had watched the parent
birds tending their young and swimming and
diving into the pool. Darkness was drawing on
when I heard the clatter of a loose pebble on the
shelving bank immediately below the willow
root, and, a moment afterwards, saw the water-
vole creeping along the overhanging trunk to-
wards the moorhen's nest. As the vole neared the
outer branches a low gurgling call-note came from
one of the parent birds, and instantly each of the
chicks dropped over the rim of the nest and
disappeared. The vole reached the nest, and,
without hesitation, dived into the pool beyond.
Again I heard a slight sound on the gravel below
the bank ; then a full-grown otter came into
view, stood erect and sniffed at the willow-trunk,
climbed to the branch, and followed on the scent
of the vole. On the edge of the nest the otter
paused, moved from side to side as if intent on a
close examination of the spot, slipped into the
water, and glided from view just as the vole
floated up to the surface of the water in the
shallows near the opposite bank. Soon the pool
around the moorhen's nest was apparently the
scene of a tragedy. The old moorhens swam
along by the reeds at the margin, and hither and
thither past the willow bough, calling plaintively
150 THE PARTRIDGE
and trailing their wings as if in great distress and
pain. The hubbub continued, but the night was
too dark for any further observation of their
movements. Next day when I visited the spot,
only two little fledglings squatted on the plat-
form of rushes at the end of the willow bough,
and I judged that the water-vole, while fleeing
for his life, had thrown the otter off his scent,
and that the moorhen's brood had been hunted
instead.
Something similar might have happened had
the partridge left her nest uncovered. The
bank-vole, even if he himself did not destroy the
eggs, might, in all likelihood, have brought
about their destruction by another creature.
Chased by a weasel, he would, perhaps, have led
his pursuer over the nest, with the result that,
while he himself escaped, the " vear " would
stay and greedily devour the unexpected spoils.
The hare and the fox show great cleverness in
their attempts to baffle the hounds. While
running through a flock of sheep, their only
object may not be to delay the hounds by
" fouling " the scent. Probably, what they
most desire is that the hounds should recognise
the presence of other animals that may well
repay persistent hunting, and should thus forget
the object of their first long chase. Of course,
the fox and the hare cannot take into account
PAETRIDGE NESTING HABITS 151
the human intelligence directing the hunt. In
long past ages, when the wild ancestors of the
modern foxhound coursed the hills and the
plains, that intelligence was lacking, and the
artifice was always likely to succeed. Now,
among the smaller folk whose conditions are
much the same as they have ever been, the
ruse is practised as one of the principal means for
the preservation of life.
THE PARTEIDGE
II
THE SUMMER LIFE OF THE PARTRIDGE
IT was June, and Nature stood on the thresh-
old of summer. The crab-apple bloom had
fallen ; the earliest dandelion seeds had drifted
away. The swifts, from their nests under the
eaves of the farmstead, flew wheeling and
screaming high in the trackless sky. Out beyond
the furze-clad hedgerow, the young wheat grew
rapidly, hiding with its rich greenery the ex-
panse of brown plough-land. Already the mother-
ing hare had worn a trackway between the
stalks from her " form " on a neighbouring bank
to the gateway by the lane ; and the finches and
the yellowhammers often led their fledglings
thither to a sanctuary where, under the arching
verdure, they were safe from hawk and weasel
as they wandered to and fro in search of food.
The day wore peacefully away, and the hen
partridge, brooding over her eggs on the nest by
the ditch, closed her eyes to the bright sunlight
and fell asleep. She was awakened by a faint
152
SUMMER LIFE OF THE PARTRIDGE 153
noise of scratching and pecking beneath the
feathers of her breast, and her little heart flut-
tered with joy, as, with head held downward and
aside that she might catch each repetition of the
sound, she listened intently. Soon the scratch-
ing and pecking could be heard from other parts
of the nest, and, near her feet, she felt that an
egg was broken, and that a tiny chick was feebly
moving towards the edge of the nest. The brood-
ing partridge lifted herself gently, till the chick,
with a twitter of contentment, gained the warm,
well- ventilated shelter of her wing.
Now, instead of resuming the position she had
previously occupied, she held herself slightly
higher above the nest, that the air might pass
freely between her body and the eggs. At inter-
vals, for some hours, the sounds of chipping and
twittering were continued ; and before evening
all but three of the eggs were safely hatched.
The mother bird succeeded in cracking one of
these three eggs, and thus releasing a chick that
had vainly striven to break the shell ; in another,
a weakling died after vain attempts to secure
its freedom ; while the third, in which could be
detected no sign of life, was allowed to remain
for a time among the chicks, and ultimately,
when the mother bird put her home in order,
was removed to a place amid the rotting herbage
of the (JitcL
154 THE PARTRIDGE
Darkness fell over the countryside, and as
long as it lasted the partridge chicks did not
venture from their nest. But with the first peep
of dawn, little heads were pushed from between
the yielding feathers of the mother's breast and
wings, shining eyes looked forth on the beautiful
new world of summer, and low twitters of
curiosity and wonder were exchanged. Soon,
joined by her mate, that had slept in a grass-
tuft by the nest, the hen-bird led her brood
through the " creeps " of the rabbit and the hare
into the growing corn, where, running to and
fro, and gossiping intermittently of their joy
and surprise, they fed on seeds and insects
pecked from the soil or from the dewy herbage
about the stalks of the wheat, while the parents
guided their movements with scarcely audible
notes of warning or encouragement. They soon
grew tired ; and, when the sun rose over the
tallest tree by the gateway, they nestled again
beneath the hen-bird's wings as she crouched on
the nest, and the cock, standing in the shadow
of a clump of thistles close beside them, kept
watch for every sign of danger.
At noon the little family adjourned to the
hedge-bank, and there, choosing a dry, sunny
spot by a rabbit burrow, the old birds indulged
in a luxurious dust-bath, fluffing out their breasts,
idly stretching their wings and feet, and kicking
SUMMER LIFE OF THE PARTRIDGE 155
up the loose loam over their plumage, while the
chicks, curious and surprised as when they par-
took of the morning's meal, attempted, with
comically feeble gestures, to share in the per-
formance of which as yet they could not under-
stand the meaning. The afternoon was spent in
wandering through the corn and along by the
tangled hedge behind the nest, and the evening
in feeding and playing among the cool shadows
of the root field.
For several days the brood remained in the
near neighbourhood of the nest. The mother
bird still hoped for an increase in the number of
her chicks ; but one morning, having recognised
that her hopes were vain, and having removed
the two unhatched eggs, she led the young away,
and nevermore returned with them to sleep in
the shelter of the gorse. Had they continued to
frequent cover, the young birds, unable to fly,
and leaving behind them a strong, widely diffused
and easily followed scent, would, sooner or later,
have been attacked by prowling stoats or weasels.
During the rest of the summer they generally
slept in some place among the open fields, where
the dew-fall was not so heavy as on the dense
verdure of the meadow grass and the corn.
The mother partridge, her duties sometimes
shared by her mate whose solicitude was almost
equal to her own nightly took her chicks to the
156 THE PARTRIDGE
shelter of her wings, till they had grown too big
to nestle in comfort there ; afterwards, as dark-
ness deepened, the covey " jugged " together,
forming a ring, with heads turned outwards,
that no danger might steal on them unobserved.
The old birds at all times took the utmost care
that other coveys should not trespass on their
haunts. Once, when a pair that had nested in
a fallow beyond the carpenter's farmhouse ven-
tured into the wheat, a desperate fight occurred,
and the intruders were routed and driven back
to their own domain. The partridges jealously
sought to ensure that their provender should
not be shared, and also that foes should not be
attracted to their neighbourhood. The finches
and the yellowhammers, searching for seeds
dropped in the grass, were often forced to fly
for safety to the trees ; and the skylarks, about
to tuck their heads beneath their wings for the
night, were likely to be unceremoniously evicted
if the " brown birds " chose to roost near by.
Fearing none but birds and beasts of prey, the
old partridges would, without hesitation, attack
a pigeon or even a pheasant that chanced to
cross their path.
Towards noon one day in mid-July, when the
dew had dried on the undergrowth and the
creatures of field and hedgerow seemed to be at
rest after the morning's work, the partridges
SUMMER LIFE OF THE PARTRIDGE 157
were lazily " dusting " on a mole-heap in the hay-
field. Not far off, the hare with her two leverets
squatted in their runway through the grass, and
the rabbits basked in the warmth on the out-
skirts of a thicket between a patch of clover and
the hedgerow. Suddenly the cock partridge
heard the distant clank of chains, the hoof beats
of a horse, and the shout of a man. The sounds
reminded him of the day in early spring when,
concealed in the ditch, he had watched the
farmer ploughing the cornfield, and the little
hen partridge had stolen back from the furze-
brake to the fields in which she had been reared.
Uttering a low " cluck, cluck " of warning to
his brood, he quickly ran with them to closer
hiding in a dense thicket of the grass.
The sounds drew nearer, the gate swung open,
and, after an interval of silence, a rattling noise,
mingled with the measured thud, thud of the
horse's feet, passed down a path by the hedge
that the farmer on the previous day had cleared
with scythe and hook. All through the after-
noon the loud, monotonous rattle continued,
now on one side of the field, again on the other,
while the patient horse plodded on and on, and
the cut grass fell over in even swathes as the
mower gradually approached the middle of the
meadow. Bewildered, and not daring yet to
cross the widening gap beyond the unmown
158 THE PARTRIDGE
grass, the rabbits and the hares moved hither
and thither ; and the partridges, their alarm
increased as they observed the signs of general
panic and were hustled by their neighbours,
often made rash efforts to escape, but were as
often deterred by the confusing noise about
them. At last, when from any point in the
undergrowth the movements of the mower could
be clearly seen along the swathe, the hare and
her leverets limped off towards the hedge, and
the rabbits scattered and fled at utmost speed
to their burrows. Terror-stricken, the partridge
brood ran out and crouched at the edge of the
grass, hoping that there they would escape the
impending danger. In the nick of time the
farmer, bending over the side of the mowing
machine, caught sight of a shining eye, and
stopped his horse. Hastening into the tall grass
behind the covey, he waved his arms and shouted
loudly ; then, as the old partridges flew out and
alighted on the swathes a few yards distant,
and the young birds, with drooping wings,
scuttled away to join their parents, he muttered,
in his deliberate, self -convincing manner, " If
I'm not too busy when September comes, that
iot o' birds'll give some fun. Maybe I'll get the
loan of a setter in the village ; but if I don't,
the gen'leman at the big house'U be sure to let
me shoot over his slow old spaniel for a day."
SUMMEE LIFE OF THE PARTRIDGE 159
But, as usual, Twm, the farmer-carpenter, did
not mature his plans.
Though by night the partridges, their habits
acquired from the experiences of many genera-
tions of their kindred, never slept in thick cover,
by day they frequently wandered through the
ditches, the outskirts of the furze-brakes, and
the thick verdure of the cultivated land; for
then they feared, not the stoats and the weasels,
but the crows and the hawks, and were safer
amid the brambles and the gorse, and even in
the long grass and the standing corn, than in a
bare pasture or a new-mown meadow. Their
own particular domain beyond which they
seldom ventured, save to explore its surround-
ings, and thus to learn of a possible refuge should
they be evicted from their haunts consisted of
the meadow, two rough pastures partly over-
grown with " trash/' the cornfield bounded by
the hedge in which was their deserted nest, and
a small field of " roots " and barley. One of
their favourite resorts had been the meadow,
and for a while they still visited it at dawn and
dusk to pick up seeds and grubs.
The gateway from the meadow to the pastures
had not been closed since the laden wagons
passed homewards from the harvest ; and
through the opening the cattle sometimes strayed.
Early one morning, as the partridges were feeding
160 THE PARTRIDGE
near the spot where the farmer had saved them
from the teeth of his mowing machine, an old
ill-tempered cow, fancying they were trespassers,
gave determined chase. In the pastures they
had already grown accustomed to her bullying
tricks, and so, easily avoiding her clumsy pursuit,
they scattered and ran off full speed towards
the gateway. Suddenly the cock bird, seizing
the opportunity of inducing his brood to use
their wings, rose into the air, and they, squeak-
ing with excitement and misgiving, flew up and
hurried after him. Only two or three times
previously had the chicks succeeded in making
short flights from field to field, and not as yet
had they learned the importance of rising
together in quick obedience to the signal of one
or other of their parents. The meadow sloped
rather abruptly to the hedge ; this circumstance
favoured their inexpert movements ; so they
sped on in an irregular line, followed, as soon as
they were well on their way, by their mother.
They had reached the gateway, and were about
to turn across the hedge into the wheat, when,
a sparrow-hawk shot with lightning swiftness
along by the hawthorns, and struck down the
two last weaklings to the earth. The mother
partridge saw the hawk descend to complete
his cruel task, swerved through the bushes, and
dropped like a itone into the ditch on the far
SUMMER LIFE OF THE PAETRIDGE 161
side of the hedgerow. There she lay, her little
heart beating wildly, till at twilight, anxious
for the safety of those of her young that had
escaped the hawk, she summoned courage to
wander on to where they fed by a tiny rill at the
margin of the root-crop.
THE PARTRIDGE
III
ENEMIES OF THE PARTRIDGE
IN the old-fashioned hedges of Twm the
Carpenter's farm, and in the adjoining furze-
brakes and bramble clumps, the rabbits, as they
fed and gambolled at dawn or dusk, could
remain unseen from the open fields. Lurking
in and near thick cover, they acted as if birds
of prey were their most dreaded enemies. The
days of falcon and eagle, however, had long
passed, and the worst foes that now remained
to harass the weaklings of the hedgerow thickets
were the members of the weasel tribe. The
rabbits were seldom safe from these blood-
thirsty little pursuers. As summer drew on,
the weasels and the stoats, hunting in family
packs, wrought such havoc that, had not the
power of reproduction among the rabbits been
extraordinary as it always is among defence-
less creatures, the history of whose lives is mainly
a record of hair-breadth escapes from death the
thickets must have been depopulated.
Despite the daily, almost hourly, slaughter,
162
ENEMIES OF THE PARTRIDGE 163
no decrease was noticeable in the number of
the rabbits ; always the signs of their " traffic "
on the mounds near the burrows seemed to be
fresh ; and, in the moonlight, when fear of dog
and hawk was forgotten, they moved hither and
thither by the margin of the tangles, and, ventur-
ing even into the middle of the field near the
roosting-place of the partridges, fed and played
without a thought of death. Sometimes a
hunted rabbit escaped by leading her enemies in
and out of the tortuous trails through the under-
growth, where, at every step, the scent of
other conies crossed her own and baffled close
pursuit.
In the early morning and late afternoon
these cross-scents were so strong and numerous
that the partridges, while wandering between
the outer line of the furze-brakes and the
hedges, seemed to be surrounded by a different
atmosphere from that of the open fields, and
their movements rarely excited the curiosity of
the weasels or the stoats, unless the animals
chanced to arrive at a spot where the brood
had lately " dusted " in the dry loam near a
gap, and where the scent of the birds' bodies
far more powerful than the scent of their claws
and legs could be readily distinguished from
anything indicating the presence of the rabbits.
In a small but dense covert on the hillside,
164 THE PARTRIDGE
to which, during the previous winter, the old
partridges had resorted when they " packed,"
a vixen, with a family of cubs that were now
rapidly learning how to obtain their food with-
out her assistance, lived in a carefully hidden
" breeding earth " beneath the roots of an
oak. Nightly, the rovers stole through the
gloomy woods and through the narrow belts
of shadow cast by the hedge-banks over the
dewy fields, and their quick yet careful methods
of hunting were disastrous to the voles and the
rabbits surprised in their journeys.
The hare, who had made her springtide home
near the wheat-field, now dwelt in a dry " form "
among the reeds in the lower pasture. Her
"run," however, still led through the cornfield
to the gate ; thence, after ambling down the
lane, she generally made off to the hillside, and
skirted the fallows above the wood.
The vixen and her family had discovered
her whereabouts, and on several occasions had
vainly endeavoured to capture her while she
fed in the clover away from home. One night,
on the margin of the root-crop, they followed
the line of her scent, and attempted to sur-
round her as she lay in a clump of grass. But
in the nick of time she bounded from her
" seat," swerved, and thus eluded one of the
cubs which made an effort to close in on her ;
ENEMIES OF THE PARTRIDGE 1(55
then she darted through the gap, and with long,
easy strides hastened across the pasture towards
the wheat. For a moment, the fox-cub stood
bewildered ; then, realising the situation, he
cleared the gap, and, keenly excited by the
prospect of a chase, dashed after the fleeing
creature. Breathless from his impetuous rush,
he halted in the middle of the pasture, and was
about to return in a direct course to the hedge
when, suddenly, almost beneath his fore-feet,
he smelt the sleeping partridges. With light
footfall, he turned for an instant, to make sure
that his senses had ~ot been deceived ; but as he
moved the slight j rackle of a withered leaf awoke
the covey, and, with a low twitter of alarm, the
cock-bird, followed closely by his mate and all
but one of the young partridges, flew up in the
darkness. As the hesitating " cheeper " ran
forward to gather momentum for flight, the fox
leaped swiftly, and with a % single blow struck it
to the earth.
Confused by the sudden disturbance of the
young fox, the survivors of the covey separated
from one another; but, helped by the gentle
breeze of the summer night to direct their
course, they all eventually reached the root-
crop, and, still scattered, sought refuge here
and there among the turnips and the potatoes,
and in the barley that grew at the lower end
166 THE PAETRIDGE
of the field. Wandering afoot between the
dewy stalks and leaves, and listening to the
frequent call-notes of the cock, they succeeded
in reuniting in an open space between the
barley and the roots, then settled, once more,
to rest. But their fright had filled them with
misgiving, and the faintest sound of a wind-
stirred leaf roused them at once from slumber.
With the first peep of dawn, they moved away,
cautiously and silently, and sought a well-known
sanctuary where, hitherto, they had never been
disturbed.
It may often be observed that partridges,
when they take flight without the least sus-
picion of danger, but simply to exercise their
wings, or change their feeding quarters, do
not rise straight or far from the ground. The
signal to rise is given in a low, twittering note
by the old partridge that leads the way. As
on such occasions the parent birds fly along
routes familiar to their offspring, and do not
wander to any considerable distance, the young-
sters need not hurry their departure. They
sometimes wait till they have finished a light
meal ; then, thinking perhaps that their parents
have had sufficient time to find for them a further
supply of food, they leisurely make off in the
direction taken by the cock ; and soon the covey
is once more complete.
ENEMIES OF THE PARTRIDGE 167
Frequently, instead of rising over a hedge,
and thus risking a surprise attack from a quick
winged bird of prey, they steal through the
ditch and between the hawthorns before ventur-
ing to use their wings. Another circumstance
may be marked : the whirring noise of wing-
beats is not so loud when the cock partridge
takes to flight of his own free will as when he is
alarmed. It is, of course, only natural that a
bird, when forced to ascend hurriedly from the
ground, should make a greater commotion than
when haste is unnecessary. The wing-beats have
a language ; each pitch of sound indicates pre-
cisely some condition of alarm or contentment,
and its meaning is immediately known to the
members of the covey, and probably to every
other beast or bird within hearing.
Partridges in hilly districts hereabouts show
decided fondness for nesting on a slope that
faces the morning sun, or on a plateau where
the sun shines continuously from dawn to dusk.
Such a place is generally dry and well sheltered.
It has also this advantage : in winter, when the
prevalent breeze blows from the high ground
above or behind this southern slope, the birds
can quickly escape from danger approaching
them down-wind. If alarmed, they rise against
the breeze, so that the air current, however
slight, catches their slanted wings and assists
168 THE PARTRIDGE
them from the ground. They then turn, and,
with the slope before them and the full force
of the wind behind, fly at high speed, and
with little noise and exertion, down into the
valley, where, utilising the momentum gained
in their descent, they wheel, and thus baffle
any pursuer following the first evident direction
of their flight and hoping to find them again
by a forward " cast." Sportsmen out shooting
on the winter stubbles are nonplussed time after
time by this simple expedient, and, failing to
observe the turn of the partridges' flight, hasten
to the bottom of the valley. Afterwards, keenly
expectant, they search each likely place along the
lower part of the hill ; but, meanwhile, the birds,
having rested there for an hour or so, return to
the fields where they were flushed.
When abroad on the hills in the wet winter
weather I have repeatedly found partridges on
the east side of hedges in bare spots beyond
the drift of the trees, and yet sufficiently near
to the bank to be screened from the driving
showers. They have hurried for a considerable
distance through the ditch directly the setter,
facing them against the wind, came to point,
and, drawing the dog slowly after them and out
of the dangerous position he at first occupied,
have taken flight, when the way was clear, to
the valley. When surprised at night, part-
ENEMIES OF THE PARTEIDGE 169
ridges face the wind immediately, and rise almost
vertically into the air. Expert poachers, aware
of this habit, work against the wind, and hold
their sweep-nets in such a position that while
the lower meshes trail along the ground, the
upper meshes, to intercept the frightened birds,
can be instantly thrust forward and " clapped."
If, under ordinary circumstances, forced to leave
their roosting-places, partridges on a dark night
rise to a greater height than by day.
I have noticed that, when they have thus
ascended in the dark, it is well-nigh impossible
to judge of the direction in which they turn ;
their movements become strangely silent, as if,
with slow flight, they were endeavouring to
ascertain their whereabouts and guard against
the dangers of the gloom. Occasionally the
young birds utter soft, musical notes ; but
these are strangely illusive to the human ear,
much as are the harsh calls of the corncrake
in the summer grass.
The partridges were accustomed to the noise
and the activity which by day were inseparable
from the ordinary life of the summer fields.
Intelligent and high-spirited, they were not
daunted by what they usually saw and heard as
their neighbours wandered near in search of
food. Straying among the sheep and the
cattle that drowsed in the shade of the hedge-
170 THE PARTRIDGE
banks, or under the great oak trees by the
lane, they even ventured to peck at the insects
their sharp eyes detected alighting on the flanks
of the recumbent animals. But during the
twilight they loved to frequent sequestered
spots not far from chosen sleeping-places, and in
peace to feed and prepare for the night. While
thus engaged, each foraging apart, but within
easy distance of the parent birds, the chicks were
keenly attentive to every occurrence in their
immediate neighbourhood, and, as at night, were
extremely liable to panic and its attendant long-
continued distress.
A sportsman whose " preserve " is small, and
who shoots partridges over dogs, knows well
that if the disappointment of a blank day is
to be avoided the birds must be left unmolested
in the early morning and the late afternoon.
Nothing more certainly causes partridges to
become unapproachable, and finally migrate to
distant farms, than the habit which inexperi-
enced men possess in beginning their sport
soon after dawn and relinquishing it only when
dusk veils the countryside.
Years ago, circumstances illustrating forcibly
the truth of this came under my notice. Through
the courtesy of a farmer owning and living on a
small freehold, I was allowed to ramble with dog
and gun about a sunny hillside overlooking his
ENEMIES OF THE PARTRIDGE 171
home. The old man was a true naturalist, in
every sense of the word ; and the days I spent
with him " looking for 'oodcock " were among
the happiest of my life. Every field on the hill-
side was in full view from the farmstead, and
poachers, aware that their presence would be
unwelcome, rarely, if ever, crossed the thick
boundary hedge at the brow of the slope,
except on a fair-day, when they believed that
the farmer would be from home, or on Boxing
Day, when by immemorial custom everybody
who owns a gun may " blaze away " to his
heart's delight on any farm whither his fancy
leads him, and, moreover, may claim the hospi-
tality of the festive board when he tires of
his fun.
On the farm, or, rather, on the particular
hillside I have mentioned, partridges were
always to be found in fair number during the
season, till the young paired off and sought
homes elsewhere. I shot also over the lands
between our village and the farm, and, early
in the season, could obtain sport on my way
to see my old friend. But those lands were
also frequented by men whose favourite even-
ing recreation was to take a stroll with gun
and spaniel. No very deadly marksman was
among the members of the party, but all were
expert in ascertaining the direction of a part-
172 THE PARTRIDGE
ridge's call-note, in creeping about the hedge-
rows, and in " spotting " the exact position
occupied by a covey that had collected to " jug ";
and all could shoot with some degree of certainty
at a motionless bird on the ground. Till I knew
that these fine sportsmen shared my privilege, I
wondered greatly why on the uplands between
the village and the farm the habits of the coveys
changed suddenly after mid-September, whereas
those of other broods remained unaltered except,
as might have been expected, at the ingathering
of harvest. The birds became as wild as hawks,
took wing directly I appeared over a hedge, and
sometimes travelled long distances before they
dared to alight. Later, I never found them in
their old homes, but I generally managed to
discover their new haunts, and there, with
caution, my dogs could approach them and give
me the chance of a " right and left."
Indeed till the dawn of the happy-go-lucky
Boxing Day, which upset all calculations of
sport, and generally ended, for me, the part-
ridge season, I could rely on finding, among
the rough pastures and stubbles of the sunny
hillside, any covey I had recently flushed within
a radius of a quarter of a mile. Also to a small
plantation on the slope came not a few of the
wild pheasants that had found discomfort in
adjacent woods. As the years went by, I became
ENEMIES OF THE PARTEIDGE 173
convinced that my luck, and the extraordinary
length of the season in which my setters could
be worked before rabbit shooting over spaniels
began, was attributable to the fact that I took
the utmost care never to disturb a brood of
partridges during the usual hours of feeding and
resting, unless, indeed, I required to do so in
studying the bird's habits, or in satisfying my
curiosity as to the ways of Philip, the moorland
poacher.
Many wild creatures are quickly driven to
seek new haunts beyond the reach of persecu-
tion. But partridges our home-loving little
" brown birds/' whose very presence on a farm
is suggestive of all that is idyllic in the rural
life of Britain seem reluctant, till the " local
migration " of spring becomes general, to move
further than is absolutely necessary from the
fields where they were reared. Their wing-
power is sufficient for long and frequent journeys
which would soon place many miles between
them and their old homes ; yet, apparently,
their dispersal over the countryside is similar to
that of plants, the seeds of which drop and take
root only just beyond the area required for the
further growth of the parent stem. The birds,
however, soon recognise the significance of night
attacks, from which they escape with the memory
of the frantic struggle of a wounded companion,
174 THE PARTRIDGE
and with the scent of blood fresh in their nostrils*
And they know, also, how impossible it is for
them to abide where food cannot be obtained
without continuous dread. The " moucher,"
sweeping the coveys by night, or shooting at
them while they feed and " jug " in the stubbles
at dusk, does far more mischief to the game
preserver than may be occasioned simply by the
loss of half a dozen brace of birds.
THE PARTRIDGE
IV
THE CHANGING YEAR
THE partridges of the moorland fed, like
the grouse, on young shoots of herbage,
tender seeds, and all kinds of soft-bodied in-
sects ; so also did the brown birds of the low-
land. The partridges on the wild mountain-side,
during periods of summer drought, were often
compelled to travel considerable distances in
search of food and water, and sometimes a
shepherd found a dead chick under a heather
spray beside a stony path mute witness that
little limbs had failed by the way, and that the
sun had not only given, but also taken, the sweet
fresh life of the year's late morning.
But the habits of the partridge on the old
carpenter's farm were slightly different. The
same sun that shone unpityingly on the famished
weakling of the mountain waste was not the
giver of death to the birds in the lush valley
stretching to the hills around the hamlet by the
brook. These loved the summer heat, which,
while seldom parching the cultivated fields,
176
176 THE PARTRIDGE
hatched countless insect swarms, ripened the
seeding tops of corn and grass, and caused the
red and purple berries to swell to full maturity on
hawthorn and bramble in the thickets of the
hedges. And even the longest drought failed
to dry up the waters of the brook.
Winter, too, was less distressing to the birds
in the sheltered fields around the farm than to
those in the barren wilderness that, on the far
ridges of the grey horizon, fronted the rough
tempests from the north. Even the adult
partridges of the uplands, so trained by hardship
that they gleaned and were satisfied where the
partridges of the valley would have found noth-
ing fit for food, often succumbed to the rigour
of mid-winter. But, except in some long season
of severest cold, the lowland birds obtained
sufficient provender with ease. They suffered
more in rainy weather, in the choking fog of an
autumn night, or in the drenching thaw following
severe frost and snow. Often after the mountain
had shed its rainfall in a hundred trickling rills
through gorge and dingle, the valley, despite
its deep and thorough drainage, held the moisture
as in a broad and shallow receptacle from which
vapour and flood alike could find no means of
escape ; and often, when clear sunshine or
moonlight lay on the breezy mountains, a pall of
thick darkness hung over the low-lying fields,
THE CHANGING YEAR 177
where the great silence was broken only by the
voice of the turbid brook.
Nests of brown and black and yellow ants were
numerous in the rough pastures and untrimmed
hedges near the farmstead ; and of the many
trifling delicacies in the partridges' bill of fare
none was more highly prized than were the larvse
and pupse found in the chambers hollowed out by
the industrious insects to form their underground
abodes. As spring advanced toward summer,
and when most of the " neuter " population in
each mound had hatched out, the small pupal
forms from which they had emerged gave place
to the much larger grubs intended for develop-
ment into " perfect " males and females. These
larger " ant-eggs," as the country people ignor-
antly called them, were for the partridges a
tasty, rich, sustaining food; they represented
the very essence of the soil and the air, first
absorbed through the life of a plant by Nature's
alchemy, and then transformed into the bodies
of insects.
The lives that had their being in those cham-
bered mounds at the roots of the grass were,
perhaps, even more wonderful than were the
lives of the feathered pillagers. After years of
ceaseless observation in field and wood and by
the riverside, I can suggest no more entrancing
occupation for a lover of Nature than the study
178 THE PARTRIDGE
of sociable insects, among which the first place
might safely be given to ants. The spectacle
of an ants' nest, robbed and ruined by a wander-
ing covey of partridges, is always to me a subject
for profoundest thought. The habits of birds
are, indeed, at all times full of interest, but I
venture an opinion that the intelligence of ants
is above comparison with the intelligence of
birds.
As summer passed, the ants' nests that had
escaped detection by the partridges became the
scenes of extraordinary labour. Hunting parties
of the " neuters " scoured the neighbourhood of
each hidden home. They would attack, in a
body, a creature much larger than themselves,
and, surrounding it, would strive to bite through
its joints, and inject the poisonous acid with which
they were armed. Or, spreading out like a pack
of eager hounds " in full cry," they would chase
untiringly through the grass some little quarry
that, aware of imminent peril, scurried with
utmost haste to a distant retreat. Others, like
jackals, would await the pleasure of some
animal or bird of prey feeding on its victim,
and then drag homewards the remains of the
feast. And others, again, would climb the trees
and the bushes, to filch the nectar distilled for
them by the patient aphids from the juice of
leaf and stem. Whether at home among the
THE CHANGING YEAR 179
dim nurseries, or abroad among the radiant
summer fields, the ants spent every hour of
day and night in preparation for the annual
exodus of the young swarms.
Presently, when the population of the formi-
caries had become congested, that exodus
began, and teeming multitudes of winged males
and females issued from the holes in the mounds.
Generally the males came first, scores of dim inn -
tive " neuters/' their jaws wide open, driving
them up the trees and twigs and stalks that there
they might stretch their wings in expectation
of the flight of the females. As these virgin
queens, daintily fluttering, like the males, to
the extremities of stalks and leaves, whence
they could quit their foothold without risk of
damage to their gauzy fans, rose singly into the
air, the males near them also left their resting-
places, and mounted in swift rivalry far up into
the air till lost to view in the dazzling sunlight.
For a time before these swarming movements,
and also while the movements were in progress,
the partridges cared for little else besides the
bountiful insect food which they so readily
obtained. But afterwards, when the queen
ants, scattered over the country-side, began
their work as founders of separate colonies, and
when the season of exodus was over in the popu-
lous insect-cities that had been their home?
180 THE PARTRIDGE
came autumn, when fruit and seed were every-
where strewn in the grass, and when " cater-
pillars innumerable " climbed down from bush
and tree and sought their winter quarters to
prepare slowly for the perfect life of spring.
For many kinds of insects, the year is made up
of only two seasons, the one, a brief summer of
rapid growth and momentous change, and the
other a long winter of continuous sleep. Their
summer consists of the three warm months ;
their winter stretches from August to May.
But among the less fragile forms of life which
are able to endure the slight frosts of late spring
and early autumn, hibernation is postponed till
after the fall of the leaf, and it lasts only
till the buds again burst open on the boughs.
Long before the great autumn change, when
myriads of familiar creatures seemed suddenly
to vanish from their accustomed haunts, came
corn harvest, with a swifter and more bewilder-
ing alteration in the aspect of the countryside
than that occasioned previously by the mowing
of the hay. While Twm with his assistant-
reapers worked in the cornfields of the valley
farm, the partridges there were not exposed to
such peril as in the meadows when the mowing
machine, in irregular, narrowing spirals, moved
along the edge of the waving grass ; for the
methods of corn harvest adopted by Twm and
THE CHANGING YEAR 181
his fellows were almost identical with those in
vogue a hundred years before. The scythe with
its curved " cradle " had not yet given place to
the reaping and binding machine ; Twm, with
clean swinging stroke, began his work on the
margin of the field, then, behind him and on his
right, the next labourer stepped into place, and
after him his fellow, till the slanting line of reapers
was complete, and the stalwart toilers advanced
in order towards the further edge.
Thenceforth, for a week, the harvesters came
daily to their task as soon as the sun had dried the
dew on the corn. At first the partridges, when
they heard human voices on the edge of the oat-
field, and the frequent swishing sound made by
the men in sharpening their blades with greased
and sanded wedges of wood, were more curious
than alarmed. But as, at intervals, the noises
continued, the birds gradually retired, crossed
the hedge, and wandered leisurely into the
furrows among the cool green turnip leaves. In
the evening, as was their wont, they returned
to the oatfield. The labourers had well-nigh
finished the work of the day ; only a few swathes
remained uncut beside the hedge. In alarm,
the partridges returned to the turnips, then, by
easy stages, made their way to the shelter of the
barley at the lower end of the green crop, where,
unmolested, they fed and slept within little arch-
182 THE PARTRIDGE
ways of the yellowing stalks. Every morning
in their wanderings the birds observed new signs
of denudation among the fields, till at last even
the barley beyond the root-crop had been cut
and garnered. Now, apart from the copses and
the brakes of ferns and furze and bramble where
they could not as a rule obtain the food they
most desired, the only places in which the
partridges remained close hidden as they searched
for seeds and insects were under the big leaves
of swede and mangold, or amid the patches of
clover springing up here and there in the stubble.
For a time, after harvest, the shorn lands seemed
so utterly desolate that the covey dared not
visit them when the sun was high. Occasion-
ally, however, towards dusk, the boldest of the
birds ventured a little way out from the hedges
to pick up the grains shaken by the busy har-
vesters from the sheaves, but generally they kept
to those spots on the farm where conditions
had not recently undergone a change.
In the crisp, calm autumn days, they were
often startled by the loud report of a gun.
Occasionally, as soon as the noise had died away,
a rabbit would be seen hastening across the
pasture to its burrow in the hedge ; or, at other
times, a covey from an adjoining farm would
fly in consternation to the root-field, and, not-
withstanding many attempts on the part of the
THE CHANGING YEAR 183
original occupiers to drive them out, insist on
prolonging their stay till twilight, when they
cautiously withdrew to their accustomed feeding-
places.
In the middle of November, when, in the
sheltered valley, the leaves of the oaks had
changed from green to yellow but not as yet to
brown, and when on the ash-trees the sere seed-
clusters still clung to the slender twigs, came the
first heavy snowstorm of the year, and for hours
the landscape was veiled by the close-drifting
flakes. In the afternoon the storm ceased, the air
became colder and still colder, and silence brooded
over the fields. At evening, across the blue and
yellow sky floated round grey clouds, their edges
touched with pink, the crescent moon hung pale
and lifeless above the hill, and the wide expanse
of gleaming snow reflected the hues of the
heavens. The glassy brook-pools down among
the rime-fringed reeds also mirrored, but more
clearly than the crystalled snow, the colours of
the dome. As the splendour of the early winter
sunset brightened, and glowed like liquid fire,
then faded, and was succeeded by a cold white
mist moving slowly along the western hills
beneath the dark indigo roof of night, the deep
silence was broken by the loud carols of the
robins, the hoarse notes of a carrion crow, the
frequent cawing of rooks on their way to the
184 THE PARTRIDGE
woods beyond the nearest hill, and the incessant,
angry twittering of hedgerow birds whose warm
night sanctuaries in holly and gorse bush were
being invaded by strangers that could find no
protection from the cold among the bare haw-
thorns where they had usually slept. All these
sounds, even the songs of the robins, seemed
mysteriously in accord with the desolate aspect
of hillside and valley.
Under the snow-laden gorse, the partridges
obtained a frugal meal of seeds and hibernating
insects by scratching away the shallow soil
covering the upper roots of the sapling trees.
The darkness deepened, the moon's ashen light
gleamed on the white waste, one by one the stars
peeped from the cloudless sky, and every voice
but that of a robin still singing by the brook was
hushed. The hare left her " form " in the hedge-
bank, and leisurely set forth on her night's
lonely journey ; and, along the margin of the
thickets, the rabbits played with one another, or,
after clearing away the snow from favourite
little patches of clover, nibbled the crisp leaves
exposed to view. The partridges, having with
difficulty found sufficient food and for that
reason prolonged their stay in cover till night-
fall, settled down at last on the leeward side of
some reeds in the rough pasture below the wheat-
field ; where, an hour later, a poacher, setting
THE CHANGING YEAR 185
snares for rabbits in the runways of the hedge,
saw them together asleep, but without disturbing
their slumber went his way.
The snow, hardened by successive frosts, re-
mained on the ground for more than a week, and
many animals and birds, unable to obtain food
except at noon when the sun brought on a slight
thaw in places screened from the wind, suffered
from privation. The partridges, ready at once
to adapt their habits to a change of circum-
stances, now frequented the borders of the woods
during the morning and the afternoon, instead
of roaming in the open fields, where, against the
white background of the snow, their movements
could have easily been followed. While occupied
with their toilet, or sporting with one another,
or looking for stray insects and berries near the
tangled undergrowth, they were quick to take
alarm, and if they suspected danger would scatter
each to a particular retreat, and squat, moveless,
among the protecting twigs. Always, however,
when the sun was warm and the frost began to
melt, they would steal away together, along by
the south side of the hedges or of the high-road,
where the crust of snow was often melted by the
heat and pressure of waggon-wheels and horses'
hoofs, and search for the miscellaneous provender
which now sufficed to allay their hunger. Thence
they wandered down the valley to the brook,
186 THE PARTRIDGE
and, among the willow roots beneath the arching
bank, sipped from the swift-flowing stream that,
even in the severest weather, was never entirelv
covered with ice.
Every action of the partridges, till the fields
again were moist and green, seemed to be guided
by a marvellous intuition of peril. Exposed to
view if they dared to walk or fly across the snow,
they were also often in danger when they fre-
quented the sheltered hedges. For there, many
others among the hunted dwellers of the field,
when sorely in need of food and warmth, fore-
gathered, and birds and beasts of prey were not
slow to observe the opportunity thus afforded
them, and to mark especially the spots frequented
by the well-conditioned partridges.
THE PARTRIDGE
A DAY WITH THE PARTRIDGE
HOWEVER inclined we may be to hold
tenaciously our own opinions, we surely
should recognise, in common fairness, that the
ideas of other men are worthy of respect. But
nowadays, even in field and covert, sport
threatens to partake of the nature of an exact
science, and many good sportsmen rebel against
the change, and long for a return of methods and
conditions associated with the past. Rather
ungenerously, perhaps, these sportsmen blame
the Master of Foxhounds who hunts his fox
in a way to please a fashionable crowd that at
all costs will " go the pace." An enthusiast
of the old-fashioned school is wont to protest
that there is nothing in fox-hunting nowadays
but " pace/' When he was young he loved to
see the hounds match their intelligence against
Reynard's many wiles, and to enjoy the winter
beauty of the countryside, as much as he loved
the long, hard gallop and the excitement of
leaping bank and ditch. Now, in his opinion,
187
188 THE PARTRIDGE
a fox-hunt is a steeplechase, and any element
of uncertainty afforded by Reynard might as
well be given by a man riding a devious course
and trailing a red herring at his horse's heels.
Indeed, says our disappointed sportsman, it
would be well at once to recognise the extinction
of the fox and make the hunt a " drag," for then
the Master could privately arrange his course to
the satisfaction of his followers.
The old-fashioned sportsman is equally bitter
against the changes which have taken place in
the shooting-field, but these changes are inevit-
able, while those in fox-hunting are, to some
extent at least, a matter of choice. In most
districts of England the farmer " cleans " the
harvest fields and trims the hedges and the
ditches so thoroughly that there no bird or
beast can remain unseeing and unseen ; conse-
quently new methods of shooting game have
been devised.
Not long since, while reading what is supposed
to be a clever work on shooting, I could not
help remarking how strange to me were the
phrases the writer used, how bare and uninterest-
ing seemed the facts, how into every page had
crept the luxury and the artificiality of twentieth-
century life. It appeared to me that the writer
considered the charm of partridge shooting to
lie entirely in the act of bringing down a fast-
A DAY WITH THE PARTKIDGE 189
driven bird, in making a record " bag," in doing
something to create a stir among the men with
whom he associated at his host's table. And at
the end of the treatise, he, in mood like Alexander
sighing for more worlds to conquer, complained
that partridges were not reared in sufficient
numbers on the estates over which he shot,
certain little corners of the fields having been
left untenanted by birds that should have nested
there. In vain I looked through that treatise
for the least indication of the finer feelings of
humanity I might as well have scanned the
pages of a gunmaker's catalogue. But the
picture in my mind as I closed the book was such
as no catalogue has ever suggested a picture
of wounded birds left for hours to struggle in
their misery around the butts, till the keepers
arrived on the scene to count and collect the
spoil.
Luckily partridge shooting, here in remote
districts of the west, may still be made to yield
precisely the kind of sport that our fathers and
grandfathers enjoyed. We bring up our pointers
and setters in the way they should go, and
though the modern " twelve " has taken the
place of the muzzle-loader, and we do not
venture out into the fields wearing long-tailed
coats and " chimney-pot " hats, incidents very
similar to those chronicled by our ancestors
190 THE PARTRIDGE
form the subject of the entries in our game-
books. The farmers over whose lands we shoot
adhere to old methods of husbandry, and suffi-
cient cover exists for birds to lie in imagined
security before our dogs. May the day be long
distant when setters and pointers shall never be
seen in the fields around my home !
If only for memory 's sake, I must needs go
forth into the autumn fields, and take the long
windward beats from hedge to hedge, while my
dogs, obedient and sure as they and their kin
have ever proved to be, range over root-crop
and stubble, eager to scent the hidden covey.
As I walk in my Arcadia, that since my childhood
has ever yielded new delights, I see, from the
hills, a little straggling village by a river, with
white pigeons circling about a dove-cote near
the bridge, and sunlight gleaming on the gardens ;
I hear the rumbling of laden wains along the
street, and even, if the wind be from the south,
the sound of voices as my neighbours wander
down the river path. In the fine air of the
autumn morning every sound is distinct, like the
chime of sweet-toned bells ; all objects before
my eyes seem brilliantly near.
I am brought to a sudden halt; Cora, my
Gordon setter, is at point in the middle of the
field, close to some ungarnered sheaves of
wheat. The " old lady," as my children call
A DAY WITH THE PARTRIDGE 191
her, seldom makes the least mistake. I was not
her trainer ; she came into my possession when
all but the finishing touches had been put on
her education, and some time passed before I
learned her ways, or taught her mine. I soon
decided, however, that Cora needed unusually
gentle treatment to make her a good sporting
dog. She differed greatly from any dog I had
previously possessed, and had evidently been
hardly used in puppyhood. She dreaded the
sight of a whip, and cringed and trembled at a
single angry word. But by patience I found
out most of her little peculiarities, how to
humour certain of her whims and to control
others ; I found, also, how, by praising and
coaxing, to lead her to comprehend that many
of her duties were well performed. How faith-
fully she has served me ! Hundreds of times
she has ranged the autumn fields and the wild
stretches of the winter moors, and always,
obedient as a child, and faithful as only a dog
can be, she has delighted in the work for which
her training fitted her. Cora is old now ; the
jet-black hair of the muzzle and around the eyes
is plentifully streaked with grey. Her reputation
is great in the village and among the farmers on
the countryside ; but a stranger, seeing her trot
before me down the street, would hardly take
her from me as a gift. " Handsome is as hand-
x
192 THE PARTRIDGE
some does ; " as the old Gordon stands staunchly
on her game, with her almost hairless " flag " out-
stretched, one almost hairless paw uplifted, and
lips and nostrils quivering with excitement, she
needs none of the silken beauty that adorned her
in her prime to increase my admiration. Steady !
old lady ; the birds are not wild to-day ; I need
not hasten to your side.
Moving leisurely towards Cora, I catch sight
of Random, my big Irish setter, standing
motionless away to my left. He has taken in the
situation at a glance, and is backing his com-
panion from a spot behind a wheat-stack.
Anxious for him to remain on his best behaviour
I raise my arm ; and at the signal he sinks
slowly to the earth and rests his head between
his paws. I go a few steps further, and with gun
in readiness stand behind the old Gordon.
She welcomes me with a single movement of
her tail, and tells me plainly, with one serious
look from her dark brown eyes, that business is
to the front ; then strikes an attitude slightly
stiffer, if possible, than that which she had first
assumed. With a gentle push of the knee, and a
whisper of command, I send her on to " seek/'
She moves a yard, and another, and yet another,
crawling on the ground. She stops ; not another
inch will she advance. I end the suspense by
stepping forward, the whir of many wings breaks
A DAY WITH THE PARTRIDGE 193
the morning stillness as a strong, full-grown
covey flies up almost from beneath my feet ;
two loud reports ring out, and the sport of
September is begun with a clean, well-distanced
right-and-left. For a moment I wait, calming
the excitement which both my dogs, though
trained to " drop to shot/' must keenly feel ;
then, cautioning Random to remain at " point/'
I give Cora the signal to " seek dead." She
ranges slowly ahead, careful lest some straggler
from the covey still waits to be shot; and
presently " sets " on the dead birds, which I
retrieve and deposit in my ancient game-bag.
Then Random is whistled "to heel," and soon
both he and Cora are sent ofi again across the
here now are the dozen birds that survived
the peril of the gun ? Doubtless they have
flown to the root-crop beyond the near
meadow. Later, on the down-hill beat, Cora and
Random will find them again. The stubble
small as are most of our fields in the west
yields nothing more towards the bag. I climb the
hedge, walk over a pasture where the dogs are
rested, because no cover exists for game, and
reach a second stubble. Cora trots away to the
left ; Random gallops to the right. Quickly
they turn and are almost crossing when the Irish
setter checks his headlong career, tries a back-
194 THE PARTRIDGE
ward cast, then works inquisitively up-wind,
with tail held low and swaying gently from flank
to flank. Off once more he gallops as far as the
hedge, returns, passes Cora, and checks on the
line of scent that he had previously detected.
But this time he works further into the wind, is
uncertain only for a moment, and then stands
rigid. Almost before he comes to point, Cora
is " down " in the ditch, watching him eagerly,
but not daring to move.
Boisterous Random needs firm handling. He
is not free from the failings of his careless puppy
days, and would dearly like to catch a rising bird
rather than see me shooting it. Nevertheless
his temper is of the sweetest, his power of scent
extraordinary, his speed and style are such that
Cora could never hope to rival him had she not
the experience of many an autumn day to aid
her in her quest. Random, in brief, is a type of
the rare combination of the show dog with the
worker. " Live-stock " journals have vied with
each other in describing his appearance on the
" bench " ; critics, promising for him a career
of triumph in the field, have sought to win him
from my ownership. But Random, the rollicking
pet of the household in the valley, is neither for
mart nor exchange.
Luck is not with my wild Irishman in his first
find. A " cheeper " brood, too weak and small
A DAY WITH THE PARTRIDGE 195
to tempt my gun, flies up, hastens towards the
hedge, and alights in a corner of the field amid a
rough tangle of briar and gorse. Fortune comes
a few minutes later. A " barren " bird dashes
out from the ditch, and is " grassed " on my
second barrel; and immediately I reload; and
her mate offers the easiest of shots as she flies
along by the hawthorns.
Afterwards sport slackens ; sometimes I try to
pick out the old birds of the covey, and fail, or
the young partridges are so small that the gun
hangs at the trail instead of leaping to the
shoulder. During the afternoon, in a turnip field
where partridges are scattered, both dogs work
exceptionally well ; and strong, quick birds are
flushed, and dropped with a precision which I by
no means frequently attain. After an uneventful
hour, another scattered covey is surprised. Then
Random and Cora, tried by their hard work
beneath the broiling sun, begin to show signs of
fatigue, so I call them to me, and rest beside them
on the stubble till evening pales in the west, and
the ke-wheet, ke-wheet of a partridge that has
lived through the experiences of the day sounds
faintly from the hill-top, and seems to remind me
that, like a true sportsman, I should leave the
birds in peace at supper-time.
The westering light gleams on my study
window far across the river valley. Perhaps,
196 THE PARTRIDGE
on the grass beneath that window, a budding
sportsman and a little, white-frocked com-
panion who already has tastes of her own and
loves a fox-hound and a setter dearly, are waiting
for my tale of the day.
WILD LIFE IN HAKD WBATHEE
"OITTEELY cold days, overhung with a light
JD mist that vanishes at noon, but in the dusk
of morning and evening floats like a dim blue
film over the red sun, and still colder nights,
bathed in unnatural brightness by the moon and
stars, have succeeded the rainy weather that
accompanied the advent of winter. Hardened
by frost, the snow lies thick on the fields. All
the broad pools of the river are icebound. To
the fast-flowing trout-reach below the bathing-
pool an otter comes every day at noon to fish
the stretch beneath the cottage gardens. If only
the watcher remain motionless and silent, the
creature continues a systematic search from bank
to bank, now and again showing itself at the
surface when it rises to breathe. Forced by
hunger to abandon many of its wild ways, the
otter is sometimes seen at night in the lane at
the end of the village, whence it is chased back
to the river by any wandering terrier which may
chance to cross its path. Its favourite resorts
are the refuse heaps in the gardens and beyond
the high wall built as a breakwater against the
197
198 WILD LIFE IN HARD WEATHER
river floods. During long-continued hard weather
every fish in the river apparently vanishes. The
trout are there, however, though not visible.
They have forsaken the streams for the still
pools, where the temperature beneath the ice is
not so variable as in the open water among the
rapids. The otter, unable, because of the ice, to
drive the trout from their hiding-places at the
bottom of the deep pits they frequent, is forced
to feed on anything it may find in the streams
an occasional " kelt " salmon, or salmon
" pink," or a stray morsel from the cottagers'
kitchens and finds the bill of fare well-nigh a
blank. Yet fortune sometimes favours it. A
half-pound fish, chased by a cannibal of its own
tribe, will now and then drop down from the
hollow of the pool to the shallows, where the ice
becomes thin and at last disappears on the edge
of the rapids. Here, if anywhere, a stray " blue
dun " is to be found loitering at the surface in
the brief sunlight of the winter noon. The trout
know this, and lurk among the ripples for half
an hour in the warmest time of the day. The
otter, learned in all the ways of its prey, has
forsaken its nocturnal habits, and spends most
of its time on the look-out for roving fish by
the fringe of the ice.
Around the trunks of the willows that grow
by the river are cleared spaces where the water-
WILD LIFE IN HAED WEATHER 199
voles have scratched away the snow in their
quest for food. Under the trees the ground
thaws more rapidly than elsewhere ; the latent
heat in the trees themselves is, in part, the cause
of this. Finding the earth comparatively soft
close by the willows, the voles have here and
there dug a shallow trench, that they may obtain
a frugal meal of grass-roots and reeds. They
are timid little creatures ; their burrows by the
waterside are like miniature dwelling-places of
the otter, one entrance opening on the top of the
bank and the other below the surface of the
stream. In summer the voles are rarely seen by
day, but when darkness falls they sit out with"
their families near the reeds at the margin of the
river. At the slightest disturbance they drop
into the water and enter their burrows by the
hidden passages. Like otters, they are night-
feeders. But hard frost causes a change in their
habits ; they now take full advantage of the
warmth of noon. In the least thaw the voles
must work hard, if life is to be kept aflame.
Perhaps only for a little while in the day can
the hungry creatures have easy access to the
succulent shoots of water plants and grasses
which form their simple diet, and then, in certain
unfrequented places, they throng the river bank.
None but the student of Nature recognises
how marked is the change in the life of the fields
200 WILD LIFE IN HAED WEATHER
after a week of uninterrupted frost. An unfore-
seen catastrophe has befallen the weaklings of
Nature's flock. No sufficient provision has been
made to meet the sudden cruelty with which an
erstwhile bountiful hand turns the key that
closes the storehouse door. Disinherited and
forlorn, the wild wanderers by wood and hedge-
row eke out a bitter existence in mute appeal
against the inexorable fate which has driven
them forth upon the bleak face of a barren world.
When the mildness of our climate is rudely dis-
turbed by piercing east or north-east winds
succeeding a fall of snow, the conditions of life
in our temperate latitudes are similar to those
existing in Arctic regions. But the habits of our
wild creatures are different. Along lines of migra-
tion known for ages, Arctic birds and animals
move southwards in the dusk of the darkening
winter night. Once arrived at their usual
resting-place, they for some unaccountable
reason seem disinclined to journey further
south.
Overtaken by unexpected severity of weather,
redwings and fieldfares die in thousands from
privation and cold. One morning, in a recent
winter, thirty-three of these birds were picked
up dead on a small farm of forty acres. Even
our native birds suffer greatly from any unusual
continuance of cold. Wood-pigeons, among
WILD LIFE IN HARD WEATHER 201
the hardiest of forest dwellers, collect in large
flocks and associate with the stronger-beaked
rooks. The sable legions fly from field to field,
and by unremitting labour among the furrows
labour directed by shrewdness and intelligence
manage in places to tear up the ground and
obtain the necessaries of life. The cushats watch
the resourceful rooks, and in the fresh-turned
earth find here and there some welcome morsel
rejected by their companions. But the wood-
pigeon is no longer the plump, fleet-winged bird
that filled the summer wood with soft and cease-
less cooing. Wasted by privation to a mere bag
of bones covered with feathers, it wearily wings
its way to the home meadows, and there alights
to pick a meal from the turnips provided by the
farmer for his hungry sheep.
By the river-side, the water-vole, as well as
the pigeon, discovers in the ubiquitous rook a
friend. The rook is a keen entomologist. Pon-
derous books would not suffice to contain all
the knowledge of insect life possessed by the
tribe-father of the rookery on the hill. In the
mysteries of pupa-digging, college professors are
as novices compared with the ploughboy's black
attendant. Every tree in summer sheltered
amid its leaves a hundred little families of
promising caterpillars, destined, if fate were pro-
pitious, to develop into delicate, soft-winged
202 WILD LIFE IN HARD WEATHER
moths. When autumn came these caterpillars
spun their robes of silk and passed into the
third, the sleeping, stage of their existence.
With the fall of the leaf they dropped to the
ground. Some, however, when about to sleep,
crawled down the trunk and burrowed in the
warm soil at the roots, before putting on their
garments of " chitine." All this is known to
the observant rook. In the thaw of the winter
noon the wise bird comes to the foot of the tree,
digs beneath the snow among the rotting leaves,
and, foraging for the hidden grubs, assists un-
consciously the little vole to hollow out a shallow
trench around the trunk.
The increasing cold of night drives every
creature to cover. The rooks forsake the elms
on the slope for the oaks in the valley below,
where they cluster together almost as closely
as leaves. Hares and partridges lurk in the furze-
brakes near the haunts of man, and at dawn
steal through the gaps into the home meadows,
to join the pigeons among the turnips or to pick
up stray grains near the feeding-troughs. Black-
birds, thrushes, and finches collect in the thickets
for shelter from the bitter wind. When morning
comes they, too, join the wood-pigeons in the
fields near the farm. The pheasant goes to roost
in the middle of the larch plantation. Shyer
than the partridge, the forest-bred " long-tail "
WILD LIFE IN HARD WEATHER 203
trusts to the woodland sanctuaries, and there,
during the day, searches the tangles on the
outskirts of the trees for acorns and berries.
Many creatures now become torpid. Others
fall into a state of lethargy from which the call
of hunger every day arouses them. Except
when thus awakened, the weasel, stoat, and
polecat lie curled up in the furthest corner of
their burrows, doubtless longing for winter to
pass away. Like the otter, they abandon some
of their wild ways at this season. Occasionally
the stoat is seen to peep from a hole in the farm-
yard wall, when hunting the rats that have
entirely forsaken the fields to take up an abode
in warmer quarters.
The members of the weasel tribe, were it not
for the rats and mice at the farm, would find it
difficult to live through a long period of frost.
The keen air of night benumbs them. After
dusk they seldom, if ever, venture forth from
their burrows. By force of circumstance the
habits of all three animals are changed. So
sensitive are these creatures to cold that they
choose the warmest part of the day for a visit
to the neighbouring warren or corn-stack. But
at that time the rabbits are generally abroad,
enjoying the slight thaw ; and the stoat and
polecat have no alternative but to pursue them
through the furze or along the hedgerows. Such
204 WILD LIFE IN HARD WEATHER
a hunt is seldom successful, unless time be at
the disposal of the hunters. Yet in the after-
noon, should the rabbits be driven to their
burrows, the raiders find their task an easy one,
for, caught in blind alleys among the galleries
below ground, the timid rodents choose rather
to submit to death than by one bold effort to
make their escape.
No satisfactory reason can be given for the
paralysing fear that possesses the rabbit directly
it ascertains the presence of a stoat. Nor can
it be explained why the rabbit should " bolt "
before its cruel foe more readily in the morning
than in the afternoon. For ages, from causes
which evolutionists have clearly described, those
creatures most capable of taking care of them-
selves have outlived their weaker and less in-
telligent brethren ; and, bearing this in mind,
we cannot understand how a strange stupidity,
which so often results in death, can have become
hereditary.
In hard weather the fox and the hawk ap-
proach the homestead. The kestrel descends
suddenly, like a stone dropped from the sky,
into the barnyard, and rises with a mouse in its
claws. The sparrow-hawk, bolder and more
cruel still, dashes along the hedgerow and
" stoops " upon a thrush that is trying to get at
a worm in the " miskin " near the cowsheds.
WILD LIFE IN HARD WEATHER 205
At night, when the unclouded moon shines from
the indigo sky with a strange, weird brightness
upon the white coverlet of the sleeping world,
the fox steals through the shadows of the woods
and enters the fowls' house at the farm. Pre-
sently, awakened by the cackling of the poultry
and the barking of the dogs, the farmer appears
at his window. A shot rings out into the silence.
Stung by a stray pellet from the old muzzle-
loader, Reynard drops his prey and, followed by
the loud-tongued dogs, disappears within the
woods.
Unsoiled, save by the firm footprint of some
lone labourer on his cheerless way to a neigh-
bouring farmstead, the snow covers the village
street completely. Regularly each night the
flakes are wafted by the wind against the
southern side of walls and hedgerows, and there
heaped in drifts which, lit by the grey light of
early morning, glisten with a soft, pearly splen-
dour like that of the hovering mist above the
curtained river-fall in the gorge. Fantastic
traceries, as of crystal pine trees, or like festoons
of flowers hung upon columns and archways,
are outlined on the window panes. When the
sun tops the hill, these become merely dainty
incrustations, having the appearance of obscure
cathedral glass, with fragile borderings which
slowly melt into radiating spangles, and increase
206 WILD LIFE IN HARD WEATHER
in transparency and beauty till they fade away.
Then the cold world without, of village street
and open field beyond, is plainly visible, all
mantled in the riftless snow. Meanwhile, before
the shafts of sunlight strike the window panes,
the grey, leaden sky changes and assumes the
colour of dull yellow. The vapours of the frost,
warmed by the risen but invisible sun, are
distilled from the meadows in a dense cloud
that hides the towering woodlands of Dol'llan.
Directly the thaw begins, the coldness of the
morning seems to grow keener than before, since
cold is more penetrating in a damp atmosphere
than when the air is dry. During a thaw the
air is laden with moisture to such a degree that,
if we stand still in the shade for any length of
time, our limbs become almost paralysed. Earlier
in the winter, night after night, a dense hoar-
frost, rising chiefly from the river and the ad-
joining water meadows, closed like a pall over
the valley. High on the slopes, beyond the
level of about a hundred feet above the river,
this unusually dense hoar-frost was not felt ;
when morning gilded the crests of the hills, the
sun shone uninterruptedly on the dry and supple
verdure of the uplands. But, within the fringe
of the great mist-cloud, every blade of grass,
every tree, and every stone were set stiffly in a
jewelwork of frozen dew ; light almost failed to
WILD LIFE IN HARD WEATHER 207
penetrate the dense rolling waves of gloom ; and
the very breath of the field life seemed stifled by
the heavy pressure of the humid fog- wreaths.
Then the cold was felt to be terribly severe, and
the raw dampness of the atmosphere chilled one
through and through.
As the morning advances the dense mist of
the frost is lifted by the growing strength of the
sun above the water meadows, and there, collect-
ing in a dense cloud, rolls past the wooded slope.
Soon, when the sun is high above the wood, the
cloud dwindles into a thin streak of blue fog,
which lies across the tree-tops near old Watty's
cottage at the entrance to the glade. This fog,
rent at its edges by innumerable shafts of ruddy
light, disappears at last ; and the bright, un-
clouded azure of heaven extends in a great in-
verted cup that rests on the rim of the moor-
lands, on the rugged crests of the far-off moun-
tains, and on the gentle undulations of the
sleeping upland pastures all a dazzling irregular
horizon of untrodden snow. Simultaneously
with the departure of the cloud from the wooded
slope near the river, the fairy fretwork of the
rime-frost vanishes from the stiffened boughs,
and the moisture drips from the pendent twigs.
Sometimes it trickles down the twigs, and,
meeting on the main branches, forms rivulets
that in turn become united where the branches
208 WILD LIFE IN HARD WEATHER
join the stem ; thence the melted frost flows in
one broad stream down the furrowed bark, and,
penetrating the snow, nourishes the gnarled
roots outspread beneath the soil.
As I leave the village by the hard, slippery
path leading to the woods, the voices of street
and farm mingle with those of the fields. A
babel of sounds the cackling of poultry, the
cooing of pigeons, and the lowing of cattle-
reaches my ears from the neighbourhood of
home ; while near me, on the shelving rocks by
the river, a dipper sings cheerily as he splashes
and runs through the ripples ; and still nearer,
hopping in and out of hawthorn and ash, then
hiding in the " trash " that still clothes the fence,
a lively wren, undismayed by the piercing cold
of the winter morning, trills his loud, audacious
lay disproportionate as coming from such a
diminutive songster and searches every likely
spot for the tit-bits of the day's first meal.
The wren is ever an optimist ; in summer and
winter alike he is the same cheery philosopher,
apparently revelling, with a keen eye for humour,
in circumstances which to others bring despair.
His actions are my only guide, however, and
though, like " the merryman, moping mum, who
sang because his heart was glum/' the wren, in
his comical postures and whimsical ripples of
gladness, may possibly hide with a mask of
WILD LIFE IN HARD WEATHER 209
burlesque those troubles, in the scarcity of food,
and danger from frost, which are brought him
by the keen breath of the winter wind, I cannot,
somehow, imagine that his indifference to ad-
verse conditions is assumed. Since childhood,
I have thought him possessed of a stout heart
in a tiny body, and with a strong, cheery voice
fit to proclaim his happy-go-lucky philosophy.
Like the hedge-sparrow when in full, unhesitating
song, the nut-brown wren commences his out-
bursts of joy with a high, shrill note followed by
a rapid, rollicking phrase. The wren sings all
through the year, except just after midsummer,
when, as if he noticed the lengthening shadows
on the grass by the hedgerow, he is silent for
three or four weeks, till, with the ripening of
the golden corn, he finds again that philosophy
which was in winter the secret of his merry life.
No wonder that the old Celtic bards loved the
wren, and his fellow winter songster, the sprightly
redbreast ! According to the old Cymric saying :
" Pwy by nag dorrith nyth y dryw,
Ni chaiff weled gwyneb Duw."
(He who breaks the nest of the wren
shall not see the face of God.)
Whereas the wren's music perpetually displays
the spirit of a bohemian, the robin's carol often
betrays a minor undertone of pensive melan-
choly, and recalls the beauty of a past summer,
210 WILD LIFE IN HARD WEATHER
instead of promising that a similar loveliness
will shortly rest on the fields.
Vast flocks of wood-pigeons wheel above the
trees from end to end of the wood. They pass
between the clumps of Scotch firs, and, as they
settle simultaneously on the leafless branches
around their favourite roosting-places, the flut-
tering of their wings seems for the moment like
the erratic spinning of a thousand slate-blue
leaves. Having alighted on the tallest twigs,
the cushats are conspicuous, like points of pale
light, against the sombre background of the
leafless oaks. Restless, they do not stay for any
length of time in one place, but soon move off,
and wheel to and fro along their previous lines
of flight. Their strange restlessness is, no doubt,
induced by hard weather. The cushats have
failed to procure their food ; till noon the iron
grip of the frost holds the woodlands, and denies
to myriads of hungry birds their meagre winter
fare. Even the jackdaws and rooks are unable
to obtain a meal ; but here and there the carrion
crows, wily and omnivorous, find at the margin
of the stream a few scraps of refuse wherewith
to satisfy their eager appetites, and the lapwings,
having come down from the moors, are busy in
places where the frost is not so keen as elsewhere,
and a trickling brook, hastening to join the river,
overflows its muddy banks. As I pass onward,
WILD LIFE IN HARD WEATHER 211
two or three snipe, with feeble notes of alarm,
rise quickly from the reeds beside the brook,
and, on pointed pinions, speed away towards
the Cerdyn valley. Then, with a sudden change
of flight, they top the woods and are gradually
lost to sight in the far distance of the sky.
Noon draws on, and the snow disappears from
the open fields and from the hillsides facing the
sun. The pigeons leave the pines, and settle to
feast on the acorns which the sun has exposed
among the open spaces in the oak-scrub, and
among the low-lying meadows in the hollow of
the valley. Their habits, perforce, are changed
with altered conditions. Now, instead of feed-
ing in the early morning and again towards
sunset, the pigeons must be content with little
more than their noonday meal. Their eagerness
in procuring the day's provender is more marked
than in mild weather. As the afternoon ap-
proaches, the flocks divide ; henceforward the
pigeons congregate only in parties of twenty or
fifty at most. If fortunate in finding plentiful
supplies of food, they return to the pines about
two hours after noon, leaving behind them those
which have not been successful. Thus, a con-
tinual stream of birds crosses and re-crosses the
wooded hillsides, the satisfied pigeons betaking
themselves early to roost in the firs, and the
hungry birds still wandering from place to place
212 WILD LIFE IN HARD WEATHER
in hope of discovering some hitherto unexplored
locality in which the fleshy acorns lie strewn
beneath the trees. Since the first of the frosts
occurred, I have noticed this decided change in
the habits of the wild pigeons.
Somewhat similar changes may be observed,
in methods of obtaining food, among nearly all
wild creatures ; and local migration, which ceased
during the mild weather at the beginning of the
month, is now plainly recognised by birds, and
also by certain mammals, as the surest method
whereby to find sustenance, and thus to prolong
life under adverse circumstances. One of the
most common instances within, perhaps, more
limited areas than those affected by the local
migration noticeable about the beginning of
winter, is shown in the altered habits of even our
most familiar birds. Our woodland inhabitants,
as a rule, keep to their usual habitats, for there
a grateful shelter may be found when in the
starry night the pitiless north-east blast, or that
tingling stillness which is almost as cruel as the
winter wind, brings the blight of the frost on the
open fields and moors. Birds would be destroyed
in countless numbers by hard weather, and the
balance of life in general entirely upset through-
out our islands, were it not for the sanctuaries
of the woodlands. To these, in time of famine,
our little friends resort as to a home where
WILD LIFE IN HARD WEATHER 213
Nature provides a crumb for consolation and a
little warmth for comfort, while the world with-
out is being sorely tried, and the fittest only are
suffered to survive.
Many birds, which in mild weather frequent
the open fields, change their places of abode
after a few days of hard frost. Indeed, the
absence of small birds in exposed meadows is
sometimes strangely noticeable. The members
of the thrush and finch families are found in
hundreds where before the frost hardly one could
be seen. I have observed even larks and sparrows
to take up their quarters in thick coverts of
Scotch fir when the frost binds the pastures with
its glassy fetters and leaves only the rich, loamy
soil of the woodlands free.
But, while in certain respects the habits of
many creatures have altered to a remarkable
extent, the rigours of winter have caused, on
the whole, comparatively little suffering this
year among the hills. Every day in the past
week has been alike hard frost in the shade,
and a quick, general thaw in the sun. And,
though the daily periods of release from the
conditions of famine are fully utilised by the
little dwellers in the wilds for obtaining nourish-
ment, the equally constant periods of frost are
beginning to tell on the life of field and wood-
land.
214 WILD LIFE IN HAKD WEATHER
The redwings and fieldfares, our typical winter
visitors from northern climes, are less shy than
they were a month ago, and even a few of these
have taken to the woods. As I pass along the
hard, dry road at the bottom of the dingle, on
which the slanting sun rarely throws a single
yellow beam, I see above me, where the sunlight
is breaking between the interlaced boughs on
the crisp carpet of oak leaves, a redwing busily
engaged, pecking at the withered heaps, scatter-
ing them, and seeking diligently and ravenously
for a few morsels of food beneath. The bird
scarcely heeds my approach, though the icy
road rings with the clatter of my well-shod feet.
When, an hour later, I return along the same
path, the redwing is still among the oak leaves,
but so weak from hunger and cold that I almost
succeed in capturing him. Desirous of knowing
a little more about the bird, I chase him up the
slope, but he finally eludes me by scrambling
through a clump of brambles, and I continue my
walk, satisfied that the unwonted exercise and
fright probably brought to the poor sufferer
more good than harm. I have read of a be-
numbed traveller desiring to sink into slumber,
and of his companions keeping him from the
fulfilment of his fatal desire; perhaps the red-
wing, but for me, would presently have slept
beyond awakening.
WILD LIFE IN HARD WEATHER 215
I have long desired to understand why such
apparently hardy birds as fieldfares and red-
wings, coming from higher latitudes than ours,
suffer even more than our native birds during
hard weather. It is a generally accepted belief
that migratory birds, or their young, return to
the same quarters by the same line of flight,
year after year. Supposing that the redwings
and fieldfares we now see are the descendants
of untold generations which have frequented
these fields and woodlands for countless winters
why, then, are they not inured, like thrushes
and blackbirds, to the hardships they at present
encounter ? Disasters, apparently similar to
those that have overtaken other birds, have
been the lot of redwing and fieldfare ; a similar
process of weeding out weaklings by these disas-
ters, and thus of causing a gradual adaptability
to surroundings, has taken place. Bearing this
in mind, I cannot readily account for the dis-
proportionate mortality among the birds. Our
northern visitors are doubtless affected by having
to change their diet after migration. But for
centuries they have been affected in the same
way, and so should have become accustomed to
the conditions imposed on them, in constant
succession, by Nature.
Musing over this problem one of thousands
which the naturalist cannot solve I return
216 WILD LIFE IN HARD WEATHER
homewards from the woods along the riverside.
As I reach the pool under the farm, a " bunch "
of teal starts up from the rushes, and, with a
great whirr and whistle, hurries away towards
the distant gorge. Over the now quiet pool
lingers the pale radiance of the passing day, and
I pause for a while by the brink, gazing at the
red glory of the sunset fading into the blue mist
of the dusk. Near the hedge a mothering sheep,
with head bent to the ground, keeps lonely
watch over her prostrate, new-born lamb. From
the distance comes the mournful cry of a restless
lapwing. Overhead, the moon, scarcely more
than half a disc, and wearing a resemblance to
some cold, time-worn face, looks down on the
shivering, sleepy world.
Often, in long-gone years, I have stood by
the pool, looking, as now I look, towards the
west, and waiting for the sun to sink behind the
hill, before the big rod came into play and the
gaudy salmon-fly shot out over the stream.
" There, sir, 'tis all in shadow at last ; now for
a twenty-pounder ! " Ah, I had fallen into a
reverie ; how clear seemed the voice of the old
gillie ! But that voice, except in memory, may
never again be heard during my daily rambles.
Let me continue my way, lest wistful fancy make
the world seem colder than it used to be in those
years that have now passed into silence.
INDEX
Ants, 177-80
Birds' feeding " preserves," 38,
88, 156, 169
songs, 46-7
Bird-watching, 32-40, 52-65,
75-7
Bittern, the, 124-38
courtship of, 131
fight with fox, 137-8
nest, 133
Caterpillars, 201-2
Dipper, the, 23, 67, 78-96
breeding, 88
food, 89
habits, 83-6
nest, 92-3
song, 78-9
Ephemerals, 22-5
Evolution, puzzles of, 204, 215
Fieldfares, 200-1, 214-15
" Fouling " scent, 150-1, 163-5
Fox, cub and partridge, 165
fight with bitterns, 137-8
Fox-hunting, modern, 187-8
Heron, the, 74-7, 107-10, 115-
23
courtship, 107
oil of, 113-14
* training of young, 116-17,
J20-3
Hibernation, 180, 202-3
Hunters and hunted, 147-8
Inquisitiveness of animals,
147-8
Kingfisher, the, 67-74
training of young, 70-4
winter habits of, 69
Migrants, return of, 19-20,
126, 130
Migration, local, 212-13
Moorhen, tragedy of bird life,
149-50
Otter, the, winter habits of,
197-8
Partridge, the, 139-196
brooding, 146, 152-3
courtship, 143-4
feeding habits, 170, 175-
80, 182, 184-5
flight, 166-9
nesting, 145, 167
a poacher's trick, 169
training young, 154-6, 160
Rabbits, foes of, 162-3, 204
Redwings, 200-1, 214-15
Rook, the, 201
Shooting, modern, 188-9
over dogs, 170-3, 189-96
Skylark, 46-7
217
218 INDEX
Sparrow-hawk, 160, 204
Spotted fly-catchor, 42
Swift, 42-3
Water-voles, 198-9
Weasels, 203-4
Whitethroat, nestlings of, 64
Willow- wren, the, 42-51
courtship, 49
habits, 44-6
nest, 48, 50
song, 38-9, 43, 47, 49, 50
! Winter, animal life in, 183-6,
197-216
Wood-pigeons in winter, 149,
150,201, 210-11
Wood- wren, the, 19-41
courtship, 24-5
food, 22
nest, 25-8
notes, 33, 37-8
plumage, 36
young, 30-2, 40-1
Wren, song of, 78-9, 208-9
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND
By A. W. REES
Creatures of the Night
A BOOK OF WILD LIFE IN WESTERN BRITAIN
THE OTTER-THE WATER-VOLETHE
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HARE-THE BADGER-THE HEDGEHOG-
NIGHT IN THE WOODS.
With fight full-page illustrations from drawings by Florence H.
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who love the wilder aspects of nature."
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