WILD NATURE'S
WAYS
BY R.KEARTON, RZ.S,
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM
PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN DIRECT
FROM NATURE BY
CHERRY it RICHARD KEARTON
j
BIOLOGY LIBRARY
WILD NATURE'S WAYS
WOOD WREN
LARGE WHITE BUTTERFLIES COVERED WITH DEWDROPS.
WILD NATURE'S
WAYS By R. KEARTON,
/,
r.Zs.o. Author of "With Nature and a Camera/*
" British Birds' Nests," etc. etc.
With 200 Illustrations
from Photographs taken
direct from Nature by
CHERRY and RICHARD KEARTON
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED
MCMIX
BIOLOGY
LIBRARY
filOLOGY LIBRARY
First Edition November 1903.
Reprinted December 1903, 1904, 1906, 1909.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . ix
DECEIVING WILD CREATURES i
SOME CURIOSITIES OF WILD LIFE 53
BIRDS OF MOORLAND, LOCH, AND TARNSIDE . . 91
INSECTS AND OTHER SMALL DEER AT WORK AND PLAY 121
BIRDS OF WOODLAND AND HEDGEROW . . . . 151
BIRDS OF BROADLAND AND STREAMSIDE . . . .184
FRAGMENTS FROM THE SEASHORE . * . . .224
WINTER SHIFTS How FEATHERED FOLK FARE DURING
SEVERE WEATHER . . . -263
M85571
LIST OF
ILLUSTRATIONS
Heading .....
Robin (Drawn i8th Century) .
Robin (Drawn igth Century) .
Robin (Photographed 2oth Cen-
tury)
Missel Thrush Contented,
Expectant, and Bored xiv,
Sunset on the Sea
Young Long-tailed Tit
Shouldering the Imitation Ox .
Mounted on the Imitation Ox .
The Stuffed Ox in Operation .
Skylark bringing Food to her
Young . .
Song Thrush Substance,
Shadow, and Reflection
Wood Pigeon ....
Turtle-dove ....
Stuffed Sheep ....
Sandpiper on Nest .
"Wheatears (Male passing over
Food to Female to take
to Young) ....
Young Wheatears
Artificial Rock ....
Dippers (Male passing Food to
Female) ....
Curlew Sitting with half-
closed Eyes
Curlew Walking on to her
Nest
Curlew about to sit down on
Eggs . .
Hiding Tent Covered with
Heather ....
Merlin on Nest .
Sod House for Photographing
Golden Plover .
xvi
i
2
3
5
19
20
21
23
28
29
30
32
33
38
Male Golden Plover Covering
Chicks ....
Female Golden Plover and
Chicks ....
Young Golden Plover
Photographing in a Cart-shed .
Female Blackbird watching
her Chicks settle down
into Cavity of Nest after
being Fed ....
Author Hidden under Wooden
Mask ....
Author with Wooden Mask Off
Grasshopper Warbler about to
sit down on Dummy
Eggs
View on the Avon
Photographing a Flying Bird
with a Gun Camera .
Song Thrush's Nest without
Mud Lining
Ring Ouzel and Young Ones in
a Nest on the Ground.
Eggs of English and French
Partridges in the Same
Nest
French Partridge's Nest Under
a Plant-pot
French Partridge Sitting on
Nest Under Plant-pot
Some Nests in Curious Places .
Gull's Nest on Stone in Loch .
Lesser Black-backed Gulls
Thrush Holding Food till her
Chicks Grow Hungry
Again. ....
Male Song Thrush Bringing
Food .
39
40
4 1
42
43
44
45
5 1
52
53
54
55
58
59
61
65
66
69
70
7 1
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VII
Robin Bringing Food to Young
Thrushes .... 73
Robin Looking at Young
Thrushes after having Fed
Them 73
Song Thrush on Nest . . 73
Stoat and Rabbit ... 83
Stoat about to Drag Dead
Rabbit Away ... 84
Bullhead Swallowing Loach . 86
Strange Attitude of a Frog
whilst being Photographed 87
Primroses Photographed in
First Moments of the 2oth
Century .... 88
Daisies Asleep, Photographed
Before Sunrise ... 89
Daisies Awake, Photographed
After Sunrise ... 89
Wild Canadian Geese . . 90
Descending a Cliff with Camera 91
Cock Grouse on a Stone . . 93
Hen Grouse Sitting on her
Nest 95
Young Grouse in Heather . 97
Arctic Skua about to Cover
her Eggs .... 99
Skua Going on to her Nest . 102
Short-eared Owl's Nest . . 104
Twite on Nest .... 105
Corncrake on Nest . . . 108
Red-breasted Merganser . .no
Young Red-breasted Mergansers in
Peewit on Nest . . . . 113
Peewit with Raindrops on Back
Plumage . . . .113
Snipe Covering Chicks . . 115
The Red-necked Phalarope
Swimming . . . . 117
Boys Driving Phalarope . .118
Phalarope. . . . .119
A Moorland Beck . . .120
Fritillary Butterfly . . .121
White Butterfly on Thyme . 122
Peacock Butterfly . . .123
Small Tortoiseshell Butterfly . 125
Brimstone Butterfly on Oxlip . 126
Red Admiral . . . .127
Blue Butterfly at Roost . .128
Tiger Moth . . . .129
Six-spot Burnet Moth, Cater-
pillar, and Pupae Case . 130
Emperor Moth . . . .131
Brimstone Moth . . . 132
Swallow- tailed Moth. . .133
Angle-Moth on dead Beech
Leaves ....
Angle-Moth on Grass Stems
Mimicking Moth on Rose-leaf .
Mimicking Grass Moth .
Plume Moth ....
Looper Caterpillars on Ivy
Caterpillars of Cinnabar Moth
on Ragwort
Processional Caterpillars on
Hazel Leaf
Eyed Hawk-moth Caterpillar .
Dead Rat lifted out of Grave
being Dug for him by
Sexton Beetles .
Rat being buried by Sexton
Beetles ....
Spider making Web .
Spiders' Webs laden with Dew
Spider carrying Ball of Eggs .
Family of young Spiders on
W ; eb between top Stones
of a Wall ....
Same Scattering to Safety.
Photographer on Author's
Shoulders ....
Young Long-eared Owl .
Female Sparrow-hawk Building
her own Nest
Sparrow-hawk Sitting on Nest .
Wood-wren on Hazel Twig
Jackdaw on Post
Young Jackdaws
Male Redstart ....
Female Redstart
Blackcap on Nest
Lesser Whitethroat on Nest
Hedge-sparrow Attending to
her Young ....
Garden Warbler on Nest .
Young Butcher-birds or Red-
backed Shrikes .
Bullfinch on Nest .
Yellow-hammer going on to her
Nest
Starling going to Nesting-hole .
Woodpecker going to Nest
Anxious enquiry : Woodpecker
Peeping out of Nesting-hole
Nightingale ....
Song Thrush Photographed by
Flashlight whilst at Roost
in Hedgerow
Nightingale Lane
A Typical Broadsman
PAGE
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
145
146
149
149
163
164
165
167
167
1 68
1 68
169
171
172
177
178
180
182
183
184
Vlll
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Redshank's Nest Concealed in
Grass Tuft . . .187
Redshank Walking on to Nest 187
Nest Revealed . . . .187
Redshank Covering Chicks . 189
Young Redshank . . . 190
Reed-bunting .... 192
Reed-bunting .... 193
Cuckoo ..... 195
Sedge- Warblers . . .197
Male Reed-warbler on Nest . 202
Female Reed-warbler holding
Food in her bill until her
Chicks grow Hungry again 203
Female Yellow Wagtail going
to Nest .... 205
Male Yellow Wagtail . . 206
Blackheaded Gull : Looking
for a Nesting Site. Ex-
amining the Situation.
Bringing Building Mate-
rials ..... 208
Male Bearded Tit on Nest . 211
Grasshopper Warbler on Nest . 213
Water Rail coming on to Nest . 215
Water Rail on Nest . . .217
Reed-covered Boat, with Author
Peeping from his place of
Concealment . . . 219
Young Crested Grebes . . 220
Great Crested Grebe on Nest . 221
Garganey Teal's Nest and Eggs 222
On the Broads .... 223
A Welsh Rock Stack . . 224
On the Cliffs, Ailsa Craig. . 225
Gannet about to Fly . . . 227
Gannet on Nest. . . . 229
Razorbills .... 230
Kitti wakes, Razorbills, and
Common Guillemots Breed-
ing together . . .231
Puffins
Stroking an Eider Duck on her
Nest
Lesser Black-backed Gull .
Arctic Tern on Nest .
Cormorants and Common Guil-
lemots at home .
Shag, or Green Cormorant,
Guarding Young
Stone House for Photographing
Oyster-catcher .
Oyster - catcher Approaching
her Eggs .
Oyster-catcher on Nest .
Ringed Plover on Nest
Ringed Plover about to Walk
on to her Eggs .
Common Gull coming to Nest .
Common Gull on Nest
The Bass Rock .
Robin Feeding upon Cocoanut
placed on Horn of Stuffed
Ox for Tits
Jack Snipe Commencing to
Feed .....
Wild Ducks on Ice .
Gulls on the Thames Embank-
ment .....
Moorhens on Ice
Rook
Song Thrush coming to Feed .
Hungry Sparrows at Breakfast
Blackbird and Apple.
Hedge and House Sparrows
Inspecting, Tasting, Enjoying .
Another Arrival, and Suspicion
Confidence ....
Hazel Nuts split by Great Tits .
Blue Tit
A Favourite Ditch for Snipe in
Winter
PAGE
235
2 3 6
238
239
241
243
247
249
251
255
2 5 6
257
259
262
263
26 7
269
275
2 7 8
279
282
283
284
28 4
288
286
28 7
28 7
289
2 9 2
INTRODUCTION
JOB said, " Speak to the earth, and it shall teach
thee/' and no man who has ever honestly taken
this advice to heart is in a position to gainsay
its truth.
To learn to appreciate the beauties of the
world in which we live is a great victory. It
establishes within us a never-failing source of
pleasure, and enhances the value of existence a
thousandfold. I would not exchange the every-
day joys of a healthy observant ploughman for
the worrying wealth and cares of a millionaire.
The idea that to be rich in gold is to be happy
is a dying, vulgar fallacy. Men are coming to
know that there are greater possessions than
those which can be measured by the surveyor's
chain or locked in iron safes. A love of Nature
is one of them, and it has the unspeakably good
quality of endurance.
Nature appeals to us in a thousand tongues
every one of which may be known and loved. The
x INTRODUCTION
whispering winds of summer swaying the birch
trees gently to and fro ; the blasts of winter
roaring through the leafless arms of the sturdy
forest oak ; the hollow boom and awe-inspiring
moan of the restless sea in some dark cave, where
the otter sleeps and the rock dove broods ; the
rich scent of the evening air floating across the
clover-decked machar of the Western Isles ; the
reeds reflected in graceful beauty on the placid
waters of a Norfolk Broad lying silent in the
mists of the morning; the sombre blackness of
a peat and heather shored Highland loch ; the
witchery of the soft blue sky studded with an
archipelago of fleecy white clouds ; the sun rising
in golden splendour out of the eastern sea,
and setting in sublime grandeur behind purple
mountain peaks ; the air palpitating with the
songs of innumerable happy birds ; the hum of
a vast multitude of insects at work or play; and
a great number of other happenings throughout
the realms of Nature, make us feel the joy of
being and witnessing what is going on around
us and for us and all men.
Ruskin says that " the greatest thing a human
soul ever does in this world is to see something
and tell what it saw in a plain way/' Precisely
such is the ambition of this book. Text and
pictures are a faithful relation of what my brother
and I have seen and heard whilst wandering up
INTRODUCTION xi
and down the quiet corners of the British Isles,
seeking patiently after a more intimate knowledge
of the ways of the wild birds and beasts that
roam over the land.
My life is now devoted to the task of interest-
ing my fellow-men in a new and bloodless way
of studying the wild life of the countryside, and
I am again and again told by people who have
been induced through my lectures or books to
use their eyes and ears that they never dreamed
Nature study was such a fascinating subject.
Especially pleased am I to be assured that boys
are giving up blowpipe and collecting-box for
field-glass and camera : in short, dropping mere
robbery for observation and thought.
This work is, as its title implies, an attempt
to show something of the most intimate relation-
ships of wild creatures at home, amidst their
natural surroundings, and entirely unaware of
the fact that they are under observation of any
kind whatsoever. It throws some new light
upon the habits, instincts, and intelligence of the
feathered inhabitants of our woods and fields.
I hope it is permissible for me to say that
books of this kind are produced at the expense
of a great amount of patience and physical
endurance. In fact, a good deal of the literary
and pictorial material which has gone to the
making of the present work would never have
xii INTRODUCTION
been gathered together at all had it not been for
the fact that our enthusiasm for the subject has
grown into a passion of such intensity as often to
bid defiance to danger and suffering of the most
acute character. I feel it incumbent upon me to
say this here because I have on previous occasions
laid myself open to the charge of making the
work of natural history photography appear too
easy, through not stating the difficulties and dis-
appointments my brother and I have met with
more emphatically.
I invite any reader who wishes to understand
something of the significance of this statement to
try either or both of the following experiments :
(i) Take a camera and use it whilst standing
absolutely unprotected on a ledge of rock no
wider than the seat of an ordinary chair, with a
chasm six hundred feet sheer yawning immediately
beneath. (2) Kneel in one posture for half an
hour and look steadfastly through the keyhole
of a door, multiply the time and pain by eleven,
and add a complete disappointment, when some
idea will be gained of what has happened to my
brother and myself over and over again during
the last few years.
Very few people indeed have any conception
of the extreme closeness which is necessary for
the lens of the camera to the shyest " sitter "
before such pictures as are scattered up and down
INTRODUCTION
xni
ROBIN
Drawn 18th Century.
this work can be obtained.
I therefore propose to give
two or three actual mea-
surements of distance.
The oyster - catcher on
page 249 was exactly nine
feet away, the common
curlew on page 29 within
sixteen feet, and the corn-
ROBIN
Drawn 19th Century.
crake on page 108 six
feet off. We are often
asked why we do not
make more use of the
telephoto lens. My an-
swer is because, for one
important reason, we
require to gather in-
formation as well as
pictures, and for another
ROBIN
Photographed 20th Centura-
XIV
INTRODUCTION
reason, the subjects we take, as a general rule,
are of such an exceedingly restless character.
The pictures
on the pre-
vious page
show the ad-
vantages of
the photogra-
phic method
of illustration
where faith-
fulness of de-
tail and form
are of the first
importance to
the student,
and incident-
ally prove
how rapidly
the world has
advanced during the last two hundred years
towards truth and accuracy. When one reads
a solemn declaration to the effect that the first
robin in the series was "exactly copied from
Nature/' as recently as 1737, and remembers that
the second appeared in a work published less than
twenty years ago, one feels truly grateful to
modern science.
That the camera is capable of catching the
MISSEL THRUSH
CONTENTED.
INTRODUCTION
xv
MISSEL THRUSH
EXPECTANT.
varying phases
of the avian
mind as express-
ed upon the
countenance
will, I think, be
conceded upon
an examination
of the accom-
panying three
pictures of a
missel thrush at
home. In the
first the bird
is at peace and happy. In the second she is
anxiously expecting something of importance to
happen in her nest ; and in the third she is
bored and an-
noyed, because,
do what she
will, her chicks
refuse to be
covered and
keep thrusting
their heads from
beneath her
plumage to gasp
for a breath of
MISSEL THRUSH r ,
BORED AND ANNOYED. U.C&U dil .
xvi INTRODUCTION
For valuable assistance given with great
kindness in the preparation of this book, I have
to thank gratefully Sir Arthur John Campbell
Orde, of Lochgilphead ; Mr. Erskine Beveridge, of
Dunfermline ; Rev. M. C. H. Bird, of Stalham ;
Dr. Mackenzie, of Scolpaig; Mr. H. H. Mackenzie,
of Balelone; Messrs. Charles and Frank Rutley,
of Birchwood ; Mr. Walpole Greenwell, of Marden
Park i General Sir Richard Thomas Farren, Wood-
bridge ; Major Petre, of Westwick Hall ; Mr.
Reginald Hudson, of Stratford-on-Avon ; Mr.
Alfred Richards, of London; and many other
friends and bird-lovers throughout the country.
R. KEARTON.
November, 1903.
WILD NATURE'S
WAYS
CHAPTER I.
DECEIVING WILD CREATURES.
T
O excel in deception is
not a very laudable
accomplishment, but the
heinousness of the crime
may, perhaps, be softened
m *ke e y es ^ *ke moranst
b y a knowle dge f the f act
that in this case the dupli-
city employed has been as
entirely harmless to the de-
ceived as it has been profit-
able to the deceiver.
Nature's children do not reveal their intimate
ways to the bustling, human noise-maker, and
he who would seek to know something of their
interesting daily doings must first of all acquire
the faculty to observe whilst remaining un-
observed, and hear without being heard. The
YOUNG LONG-TAILED
TIT.
WILD NATURE'S WAYS;
behaviour of nearly all wild creatures is one thing
when they know they are being watched, and
quite another when they are not aware of the
fact. Under the first condition, suspicion and
anxiety are written large in every action, whereas
under the second, confidence and peace of mind
illuminate each movement and expression.
I have learnt some of the sweetest secrets of
the sod by transfiguring myself into a gramini-
vorous animal, rock, tree, or other equally in-
noxious object.
As the Greeks of old entered Troy in a wooden
horse, it occurred to me one day that by the
employment of similar stealthy means I might
perhaps enter some of the secrets of the bird
world. I therefore went straightway to a butcher
and requested him
to buy the largest
fat ox he could lay
his hands upon, skin
it carefully, and send
the hide to my old
friend, Mr. Rowland
Ward, of Piccadilly,
who stuffed it so
well that during its
palmy days before
11 had been blown
IMITATION ox. over and otherwise
DECEIVING WILD CREATURES.
MOUNTED ON THE
IMITATION OX.
injured, it was
several times mis-
taken, when out in
the fields, for a live
animal.
One day, whilst
covering it over
with a cloth during
the on-coming of a
shower of rain, a
labourer walking by
on a path some
thirty yards away called out to me, " What's
wrong with him, mister ? " " Lost his clock-
works," I answered jocularly. My interrogator
growled something in the ruddy phrase of his
kind to the effect that he was in possession of
too many of the qualities of a fly to be deceived
by anything like the young of a goat, and went
on, considerably aggrieved by what he took to
be silly facetiousness on my part.
The skin of the bullock is stretched over a
wooden framework, rendering it strong enough to
carry the weight of a man, and at the same
time sufficiently light to be easily deported on
the shoulder as shown in our illustrations. Ad-
mission to the interior is gained through a long
horizontal slit in the skin of the underparts, and
the camera, minus the legs of the tripod, fixed
4 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
upon a little platform in the brisket. The lens
peeps out of a hole in the skin of the breast,
and through another and smaller aperture
above it the photographer watches his field of
focus.
Although an admirable hiding device, the
stuffed ox has one fatal drawback if used
during breezy weather, it is liable to be blown
over. I remember once returning to see how
my brother was faring whilst waiting for some
subject, and arrived upon the scene just in
time to witness man and beast occupying a very
undignified position. The back of the ox had
landed in a slight declivity, and the feet of both
biped and quadruped were pointing towards the
zenith. In order, therefore, to avoid accidents
of this character during windy weather, we take
four pegs and a quantity of string out with us.
The former are driven firmly into the ground,
and the bullock's legs lashed securely to them by
means of the latter.
We have included an illustration showing
the stuffed ox in actual operation. My brother
was inside it at the time the photograph was
made, but his legs and feet cannot be seen on
account of the wealth of dock stems and leaves.
Upon receiving the sham bovine from the
hands of the taxidermist we were naturally
anxious to test its qualities as a hiding device,
6 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
and quickly had it standing beside a skylark's
nest containing two young ones.
The bird was so completely deceived by the
lifelike solemnity of the great mild-eyed beast
standing within five feet of her nest, that she
came again and again, without hesitation, to feed
her chicks. She either failed to notice, or did not
heed, the centipedal appearance given to him by
the accession of a pair of human legs beneath
his body.
The pleasant satisfaction of having a long-
cherished idea so completely justified, and the
exhilarating rapidity with which pictures of the
lark were added, considerably mollified the effects
of the awful pain I began to suffer in my lumbar
regions through stooping over the camera so long
in the Jonah-like quarters afforded by the interior
of the ox.
Although at first startled by the unbovine-
like noise of the focal plane shutter, which was
being used for the making of rapid exposures
upon her, the bird never once appeared to suspect
my presence, so that when I was at last compelled
by sheer agony to drop from my place of con-
cealment whilst she was at home taking a rest,
she received a genuine surprise. Upon catching
sight of me, she sprang almost vertically into the
air, and, dropping amongst the grass a yard or
two behind her nest, stared with outstretched
DECEIVING WILD CREATURES.
SKYLARK BRINGING FOOD TO HER YOUNG.
neck in blank amazement at me sprawling beneath
the bullock.
My experiences on the following day were of
a very similar character. The realistic qualities
of the stuffed ox inspired so much blind confidence
in the skylark that she came and covered her
chicks whilst I had an exposure meter standing
on its edge within two or three inches of her nest.
For want of anything better, I had placed it
there in order to focus the figures on its face, as
representative of the markings on the feeding
bird's plumage before starting work for the day.
From a dietary point of view, young skylarks
commence their education early, for I watched
the pair of chicks try on several occasions to
8 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
catch winged insects that incautiously ventured
too near their home even a couple of days before
they fledged.
We next removed our hollow sham to the
edge of a small pond much frequented by thirsty
cattle and birds, where it distinguished itself by
completely deceiving every species of creature
that came to drink. The weather was exces-
sively hot at the time, and through the combined
causes of evaporation and consumption, the pond
grew delightfully smaller day by day, thus en-
hancing our chances of picture-making by the
natural reduction of area left for the birds to
stand upon whilst drinking.
Hen pheasants came on several occasions
with their families, but never drank much them-
selves, appearing always to be too much engrossed
in the welfare of their charges. While the chicks
sipped with great relish, or ran delightedly round
the tiny sheet of water, their parents walked
along high flood mark above, keeping a watchful
eye on the surrounding country. Once an old
cock pheasant and a jay arrived together, and
the suspicious looks they gave each other whilst
drinking were too ridiculous for words. To my
undying regret, through waiting for the latter
bird to assume a rather more typical attitude, I
missed the ornithological photograph of a lifetime.
Without showing any sign of being ready to take
SONG THRUSH.
SUBSTANCE, SHADOW AND REFLECTION
io WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
his departure, the jay suddenly sprang into the
air and flew away. I instantly released my
rapid shutter upon him, and, when I came to
develop the plate, suffered the extreme morti-
fication of finding that he had just managed to
get his head out of the plate, and his portrait,
with wings beautifully stretched out and legs
still ungathered in, was guillotined.
An old song thrush next came along, and
after sipping at the muddy water very leisurely
for a while, hopped on to a flint, which formed
a sort of miniature island in the pond, and stood
with drooping wings, contemplating a bath. I
made a slight noise in order to induce her to
listen, and then exposed a plate. The result is
reproduced in this volume, because of the some-
what interesting fact that the camera has
caught substance, shadow, and reflection, and
recorded all three on the same plate.
Small companies of greenfinches were con-
stantly arriving, and fully upholding the character
of their species for unadulterated selfishness. An
old male would, after enjoying a good drink and
first-rate splash-bath, take up his stand on the
stone in the middle of the pool, and openly defy
anybody and everybody of his kind to come
near, although there was still enough water left
to drown all the greenfinches in the county.
When the old bully had retired to preen himself
DECEIVING WILD CREATURES. n
in a neighbouring tree, the rest of the amiable
flock would squabble and fight in the most un-
seemly manner for places.
House sparrows were coming and going all
day long, their breathless haste and the oppressive
intensity of the July heat making them gape and
pant like dogs.
Ring doves and turtle doves came frequently,
and thrusting their bills almost up to the gape in
the water, obtained it, as Gilbert White says,
" by long-continued draughts, like quadrupeds."
I photographed representatives of both these
species one morning, and in the afternoon my
brother, who had come to relieve me by taking
a turn in the ox, where the temperature was of
melting torridity, also secured an exposure upon
each. When the plates were developed in the
evening, we were surprised to discover that by a
strange coincidence we had both photographed
WOOD PIGEON.
12
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
f* *r-*<
7 -:*^
J-~ --'&
TURTLE-DOVE.
our birds in almost identical actions, attitudes,
and situations.
One day a pair of barn swallows, busily
engaged in building a nest somewhere, visited
the pond ten times an hour for mud, and took
from three to fifteen pecks, according to its
consistency at the particular part where they
happened to alight. On an average they brought
a straw in their bills three times out of every
five visits.
Altogether the stuffed ox proved an un-
qualified success from a concealment point of
view, and by its aid we secured at the cattle
pond photographs of pheasants, jays, ring doves,
turtle doves, stock doves, song thrushes, black-
birds, yellowhammers, greenfinches, chaffinches,
and sparrows.
DECEIVING WILD CREATURES. 13
I reasoned with myself that if a stuffed bullock
could be made so useful in meadows and pastures,
a sheep treated in a similar manner ought to
prove equally efficacious amongst birds living on
moors and mountains, so requested my friend
Mr. Charles Thorpe, of Croydon, to buy and
prepare me the skin of one as a sort of extinguisher
for the camera.
As the. taxidermist's men said when they put
the stuffed sheep, neatly swathed in canvas, into
the van of the train by which I was travelling
through Croydon on my way to the North of
England, it had been " set up lying down," and
a hole left in the chest for the lens of the camera
to peep through.
Upon reaching Charing Cross and walking
down the platform to look after the transference
of my luggage to a cab, I found a small crowd
gathered round something opposite the open door
of the van, and discovered that my item of the
fold was providing the sensation. Some seeker
after knowledge had, in his eagerness to learn
what the strange-shaped package contained, un-
fastened the canvas round the sheep's head, and
it was gazing straight in front of it in that mild,
dignified, " I - know - a - green - pasture - far-away "
fashion of its kind. Several onlookers wished to
know if it were an " old favourite/' whilst others
solemnly enquired if it were alive.
I 4 WILD NATURE'S WAYS
It aroused a good deal of interest and amusing
interrogation wherever it was seen along my route,
but the best fun was provided by an aged shep-
herd, who had not the advantage of a close
examination.
Finding a sandpiper's nest in the bottom of
a lonely little ghyll far up in the heart of the
fells, I placed the camera, minus the legs of the
tripod, on a flat stone in front of it, focussed,
put a plate in position, and, attaching about fifty
feet of pneumatic tubing, extended its full length
in the direction that would give me the best
view of the bird's nest. After carefully placing
the sheep over the apparatus and tying the
wool on the chest back, so that none of it should
wave in front of the lens, I erected my little
hiding tent at the opposite end of the pneumatic
tubing, covered it with rushes, and retired inside,
to wait the home-coming of my " sitter." I
had not been concealed ten minutes before a shep-
herd arrived on the top of a steep hill above me, and
began to send his dog round the stuffed sheep
with the intention of herding it. When it failed
to move my animal, the old man broke into un-
printably hard terms concerning his canine as-
sistant's lack of intelligence, but the poor, libelled
brute knew more than his choleric master, es-
pecially when he came to leeward of the sheep,
and caught the aroma of the stuffer's workshop.
DECEIVING WILD CREATURES.
After the ungentle follower of a proverbially
gentle pastoral pursuit had taken his departure
the sandpiper came home in a hurry. She was
going straight back on to her eggs, when the
great black eye of the camera, staring at her
STUFFED SHEEP.
from the sheep's chest, suddenly arrested her
attention. This made her jump as if someone
had shot at her, and flying away down the little
moorland beckside, she did not return for hours.
This action puzzled me a good deal, seeing
that no exception had been taken to the lens at
the time it formed a chest eye in the stuffed bullock.
When the bird did eventually reappear, she
16 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
SANDPIPER ON NEST.
zigzagged warily to and fro at a respectful dis-
tance behind her nest, gradually growing bolder
and bolder, until at last she timidly ventured
home, and sat down. I was anxious not to do
anything calculated to destroy her growing con-
fidence in the harmlessness of the three-eyed
sheep innocently lying down to rest beside her
nest, so waited a long while before I made an
exposure upon her. At last I gave the air reser-
voir at my end of the pneumatic tube a vigorous
squeeze, and the sandpiper, leaving home with
suggestive haste, commenced to run agitatedly
back and forth across a piece of bare, storm-
swept, rock-strewn ground on my right, pro-
testing in her plaintive notes against something
that was evidently not to her liking.
DECEIVING WILD CREATURES. 17
I had now to face the distinct disadvantage
of having to reveal myself in order to readjust
the mechanism in the interior of my " old
favourite/' and it was two hours before the bird
would again venture on to her nest ; and I do
not believe she would have done so even then
had it not been for the confidence-inspiring
presence of her mate. Whilst she sat covering
her eggs, as shown in our illustration, the cock
stood on one leg upon a large stone close by,
preening himself in the most unconcerned matter-
of-fact way. Several times he stretched a leg
and a wing in that sweetly pretty way so common
amongst the waders.
During my long wait I was not quite idle.
From a peephole on one side of the rush-clad
tent I watched a pair of wheatears assiduously
entering and leaving a hole amongst some earth-
bound rocks on a steep brae side, wherein they
had a family of hungry chicks. I said to myself,
" It is your turn next," and after making a second
exposure on the sandpiper, moved the whole of
my plant lock, stock, and barrel over to the
new field of action.
I had noticed that nearly every time the
wheatears came along with food they alighted
for a moment on a view-commanding stone close
by their nesting hole. This I supposed to be
done in order to make quite sure that no enemy
c
i8 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
was near enough to secure the advantage of
attacking them whilst in their dark, subterranean
quarters, so focussed a matchbox placed on the
top of the stone to represent the body of a bird,
put a plate in, and the sheep over the camera.
Partly on account of the peculiar configuration
of the ground, and partly because I knew I was
dealing with a bolder species, the hiding tent
was erected much closer than before.
The male wheatear came along almost directly
I had completed my arrangements, with a fine
fat caterpillar in his bill, and was photographed
in serious contemplation of the strangest wool-
bearing animal he had ever seen. My reap-
pearance to attend to the camera sent him
off in a great state of alarm, and taking up his
station on the highest part of an old tumble-
down stone wall not far away, he chack chacked
angrily at me for a few minutes, and then,
becoming tired of that unprofitable occupation,
swallowed his caterpillar, and flew off in search of
more.
The female came along quite boldly, and
before I had time to fire off my focal plane shutter
upon her she had slipped down from the stone,
and the next thing I became aware of was the
rapturous chissicking of her young in the hole
below. She had completed her errand.
The male soon came along again with another
WHEATEARS.
MALE PASSING OVER FOOD TO FEMALE TO TAKE TO YOUNG.
20
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
YOUNG WHEATEARS.
supply of food in his bill, but was too shy to
venture nearer home with it than the usual post
of outlook. There he stood, and deliberately
waited until his mate arrived with her catch of
insects, when I figured him, to his eternal shame,
in the cowardly act of handing over his collection
for her to take indoors.
On the following day I did not use the sheep,
but sat in the tent and made a number of observa-
tions on the feeding habits of wheatears.
The nest contained a family of five well-
grown chicks gifted with most insatiable appetite.
At midday their parents were bringing them in
food to the tune of thirty-six times an hour, and
the pace gradually increased during the afternoon
until four o'clock, when it reached the extra-
ordinary maximum of sixty visits, counting, of
course, in each case the combined efforts of male
DECEIVING WILD CREATURES.
21
and female. Moths, flies, small beetles, and
caterpillars appeared to come along with the
indiscrimination born of mere chance in catch-
ing them. The prey was in no case, so far
as I could discern, killed before being carried
underground. Once a dipterous insect escaped
whilst being administered, and came out of the
nesting hole in a hurry, with its executioner in
hot pursuit. I felt sorry for the unfortunate
creature when it was recaptured and carried
back to the entomological dungeon, wherein a
fresh outburst of welcome on the part of the
chicks sounded its death knell.
When I came under the necessity of securing
ARTIFICIAL ROCK.
(Arrow marks position of Dipper's nest on boulder in the beck. )
22 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
photographs of ring ouzels, dippers, and other
birds of like habits at home amidst their craggy
surroundings, I again enlisted the assistance of
my friend Mr. Charles Thorpe, who always enters
enthusiastically into the carrying out of my
schemes for circumventing wild Nature. He made
me a limestone-grey artificial rock in five easily
adjustable pieces, to hide in with the camera,
and upon reaching my uncle's home amongst
the Westmoreland Fells, I speedily had it fixed
up near to a dipper's nest in a peculiarly ad-
vantageous situation for my purpose. It was
built on the top of a large boulder by the moun-
tain beckside, shown in our illustration, and after
leaving the counterfeit rock, where it is to be
seen, all night, I moved it the following morning
to a position close behind the crag, half buried
in the ground, on the right of the one upon which
the mossy, ball-like nest is resting.
As soon as I had retired within the hollow
rock, and quiet was restored, the female came
back up-stream, flying from stone to stone by
easy stages, and curtseying daintily all the while
until she arrived in front of her home, when she
flew straight in without allowing me the remotest
chance of taking a photograph.
By-and-by the male bird arrived upon the
scene with the larva of a stone-fly in his bill, and
after uttering a warning note of his coming,
DECEIVING WILD CREATURES. 23
rushed breathlessly straight into the nest. This
led me to believe that the pert little fellow would
fly away on larder work intent directly he re-
appeared, but he did nothing so prosaic. Instead
of this, he took up his station on a neighbouring
DIPPERS.
MALE PASSING FOOD TO FEMALE.
cobble, where the waters of the brook continually
washed over his feet, and warbled a divinely sweet
little song in soft, low notes, to his brooding
mate sitting in the wee castle of moss perched
on the crest of the boulder above him.
When this serenade ended, he commenced to
24 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
fly from stone to stone, all the while sidling
nearer and nearer to my hiding contrivance, one
corner of which projected over the sloping bank
of the beck in such a way as to leave about six
inches of open space. Presently he hopped on
to the grass, and took an enquiring, upward peep
inside. I kept perfectly still whilst he cocked his
questioning little head first on one side and then
the other, and eyed me over with manifestations
of the greatest curiosity. Directly this critical
inspection was over he flew away up-stream in
search of more food.
The behaviour of this bird was sometimes un-
accountably strange. Between his journeyings
after sub -aquatic prey, he frequently collected
pieces of moss, as if on nest-building intent, and,
dropping them into the swiftly flowing beck,
gazed proudly up at the home containing his
mate and five newly hatched chicks. Occasionally
he stood on a stone, yawning, and stretching his
wings and legs for minutes together.
Although the dippers were bold enough, I
found it exceedingly difficult to make photo-
graphic studies of them on account of the extreme
rapidity of their business-like movements when
near the nest, so left my place of concealment and,
putting the hen off, barred up the entrance hole
with a piece of selvyt which I always carry handy
for the removal of dust from lens and field-glasses.
DECEIVING WILD CREATURES. 25
The female returned directly, and stood on a
stone curtseying, whilst she made a careful
survey of the obstruction. Before she had time,
however, to formulate a plan of attack upon my
barricade, her mate arrived with a supply of food,
and there was enacted one of the prettiest scenes
of feathered domestic felicity I ever had the good
fortune to behold.
The breadwinner of the family passed his
dietary tit-bits over, one by one, to his mate
with the most delicate solicitude imaginable.
At first she held the food in her bill as if desirous
of saving it for her chicks, but changing her mind
presently, swallowed the whole collection of insects,
and twittered her thanks in low sweet notes as
each additional morsel was consumed. When the
last insect had been swallowed she opened her
mouth as if in dumb request of more, but it was
only a sign of overflowing affection, which the
male understood and appreciated, for, putting
his bill between her mandibles, they sweethearted
in the most touchingly tender manner several
seconds on end.
As soon as the cock had taken his departure
on another foraging expedition, the hen turned
her attention to what she no doubt regarded as
the unwarrantable liberty taken with her home.
She examined the obstruction which filled the
entrance hole from above and below, right and
26 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
left, and upon becoming convinced that it was
impossible to effect an entrance she appeared to
be overtaken by a fit of angry despair, and
dashed wildly into the limpid waters of the
stream from different stones upon which she
alighted. After a while, a much wiser course of
action suggested itself, and, poising like a humming-
bird on rapidly beating wings in front of the nest,
she seized a hanging corner of my square of
selvyt and gave it a vigorous tug. It yielded
encouragingly, and she repeated her tactics until
the offending material was completely withdrawn
and floated serenely down the rippling brook
below, when the happy, conquering mother-bird
promptly joined her family, and, as a reward for
affection and intelligence, was left in peace for
the remainder of the day.
In spite of the extreme difficulty of making
even rapid exposures upon these eternally curt-
seying creatures, I managed by a very liberal
expenditure of fast plates, to secure a good
series of pictures. A strange thing about the
male was that he manifested a decided predilection
for looking in my direction over his shoulder,
instead of, as desired, with his beautiful snowy
white breast towards me. I could have photo-
graphed him a hundred times in the former
position for once in the latter.
Having been told by a farmer of a common
DECEIVING WILD CREATURES. 27
curlew's nest in a limestone boulder-strewn pas-
ture not far distant, I carried my artificial rock
along, and fixed it up some sixty yards away, and
left it. Morning by morning for a week I moved
the structure nearer and nearer, until at last I
had it within sixteen feet of the nest and eggs
of what I think every experienced sportsman will
admit to be one of the shyest and wariest birds
in this country.
Then I made a fatal mistake. I went inside
with the camera to wait whilst being watched by
my astute "sitter."
For five hours and a half on end I knelt in
the cramped quarters afforded by the sham
boulder, and suffered indescribable agonies in my
nether limbs whilst the curlew walked round and
round, getting tantalisingly nearer and nearer,
and making me believe that another ten minutes
of waiting would put an end to my misery ; but
it did not, and I was very reluctantly compelled
to give in and admit defeat. During the last
half hour or two the pain in my knees was so
excruciating that I was (paradoxical as it may
sound) only sustained by cowardice, or, in other
words, a lack of the necessary courage to acknow-
ledge failure.
The long wait had worked such havoc with
my legs that I fell down and helplessly rolled
over twice whilst descending a steep hillside to
28 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
my uncle's house, but that temporary incon-
venience was not half so important as the lesson
I had learnt in regard to the folly of waiting for
a shy bird perfectly aware of my presence in
such close proximity to her nest.
The following morning my uncle accompanied
CURLEW
SITTING WITH HALF-CLOSED EYES.
me to the scene of action, and after tucking me
up and placing a stone or two on the top of the
artificial rock so as to make it look more realistic,
walked ostentatiously away across the pasture
with a couple of collie dogs at his heels. He had
not taken his departure more than fifteen minutes
before the curlew was, to my unbounded delight,
walking sedately on to her eggs. Just before
sitting down, the bird stood and gazed thought-
fully at all that could be seen of the lens, which
CURLEW
WALKING ON TO HER NEST.
WILD NATURE'S WAYS,
I had taken the precaution to have well within
the hole in the side of the sham rock, and I
made a time exposure upon her, which resulted
in the full-page illustration over leaf.
So completely was this characteristically cun-
ning bird deceived,
and so silently did
/ ^v I work in exposing
/.:. \*t\ plates and changing
/ - A dark slides, that she
/ i> " ,i\ never suspected any-
thing wrong, and in
her fancied security
kept closing her eyes
and taking brief
naps.
After a while,
photographing the
curlew on her nest
became a thing of
such monotonous
ease that I wanted
an opportunity of
securing more pictures of her in the act of coming
home, but was at my wits' end to know how to
dismiss her without undue fright or the giving
away of any information in regard to my presence.
At last, by a lucky inspiration, I hit upon the idea
of mewing like a cat. This made her all alertness
CURLEW
ABOUT TO SIT DOWN ON EGGS
DECEIVING WILD CREATURES. 31
and attention instantly, and I could not resist
the temptation of exposing another plate. By
increasing the volume of feline music, I accom-
plished my desire, and, stretching her long legs,
she walked slowly away, glancing furtively back-
wards over her shoulder as she retired. After
walking round and round, picking up and drop-
ping straws, thrusting her long bill enquiringly
down the earth-shafts of innumerable dung
beetles, and listening intently for a repetition of
the strangest noise she had probably ever heard
in all her life for an hour and a half, the whaup
(as the bird is called in Scotland) came quietly
back to her nest, and I made another study of
her about to sit down and cover her four beautiful
olive-green, brown, blotched eggs. This exposure
was made with a rapid shutter, as the uplifted
foot of the bird shows, and even the slight noise
of the mechanism sent her away in great alarm.
Once or twice when a member of the numerous
flock of sheep in the pasture grazed too near the
curlew's nest for her liking, she ran round in
front and tried to head the intruder off in some
other direction.
In spite of their long abandonment on the
previous day the eggs took no harm, and a
strong, healthy chick ultimately emerged from
each one of them.
Whilst studying Nature with eye and ear
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
HIDING TENT COVERED WITH HEATHER,
alert for every sight and sound, there is for me
a splendid charm about what many people would
cal) the solitary places of the earth. One day,
when wandering by a babbling heather-fringed
mountain beckside, my attention was suddenly
arrested by a familiar kek, kek, keking note over-
head, and, looking up, I beheld a bold little
merlin flying across the ghyil with business-like
directness. I watched him go down into some
deep heather, and making careful mental notes
of the landmarks lying between us, walked straight
towards the place. He rose when I arrived
within forty yards of the spot where he alighted,
but, taking no notice of him, I pursued my
course until his mate darted out of the heather
close to my feet, and revealed the whereabouts
of her eggs.
MERLIN ON NEST.
34 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
Early the following morning I erected my
little hiding tent which consists of eight iron
legs a quarter of an inch in diameter, six feet
in length, eyeleted at the top to a small ring,
and covered with a skirt-shaped light canvas
within a dozen feet of the nest, and thatched it
with heather, as shown in the picture on p. 32.
Upon completing this deceitful structure I went
away and concealed myself in a forest of tall
bracken growing on a view commanding the hill-
side about a quarter of a mile distant. In a very
few minutes I had the great satisfaction of seeing
the mountain falcon, or blue hawk, as the bird is
called in some districts, alight on the top of my
handiwork, and after surveying things a little while
from its elevation, go straight down on to her eggs.
During the afternoon I fell in with a friendly
shepherd, who kindly tucked me up inside my
hide-all, and went his way. In about ten minutes
from the time of the man's departure I was de-
lighted to hear the wing-folding flick of the merlin
just over my head, and waited with bated breath
and throbbing pulses. She speedily flew down
to her nest, but catching sight of the lens, instantly
left it, and astonished me by commencing to flop
about with extended pinions over the heather in a
way strongly suggestive of the tactics a teal had
just employed in trying to decoy me away from
the presence of her family of tiny ducklings.
DECEIVING WILD CREATURES. 35
As nothing made either sound or movement
she became gradually reassured, and her distrust
of the awe-inspiring eye staring straight at her
nest diminished, until she ventured back again
and stood over her reddy-brown eggs listening
intently.
I waited until she sat down, and the fierce,
dour look on her countenance had somewhat
subsided, and then fired off my fast shutter
upon her. The noise made by the apparatus
sent her away in a great hurry, but she alighted
over my head again much sooner than I expected,
and quickly going to ground, flapped her way
awkwardly over the heather to her nest again.
In two hours she became so used to the noise
made by my focal plane shutter, that she abso-
lutely refused to stir when I made an exposure.
When all my plates were exhausted there arose
the problem of how escape from concealment was to
be effected without unduly frightening the merlin.
I mewed like a cat, rapped on the ground focussing
glass of the camera with my knuckles, and rattled
the legs of the tripod, but all to no purpose ; she
saw nothing, and paid no heed to sounds. I
therefore thrust my right arm out under the
canvas at the back of the tent, and hurled my
water flask over it. Directly the missile had
left my hand, I quaked lest it should, by an
unfortunate fatality, fall on the back of the
36 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
sitting bird. Although it bumped down in the
heather within a few feet of the merlin, she
took no notice of it, but sat stubbornly on
until I was at last reluctantly compelled to give
away my secret by crawling into full view.
The following day being Sunday, and having
good reason to believe that the mountain falcon
would receive some attention from a local pro-
fessional collector, I dismantled my tent, and
hid everything away in an abrupt declivity not
many yards distant.
Determined to save the bird's eggs from the
ruining blast of the blowpipe, I rose at 4.30 next
morning, and walking up the hills with a good
supply of sandwiches in my pockets, took up my
station amongst the deep bracken already men-
tioned, and waited and watched all day.
On the Monday I tried to secure some more
pictures of the merlin at home, as nearly all
those I had already taken showed movement in
the wind-waved heather around her. My luck
had, however, completely forsaken me. After
waiting an hour without any sign of the bird, I
imagined I heard somebody whistling a popular
air, and peeping out of a hole in the cover of
my tent, was dismayed to see the small boy I
had taken up from a shepherd's house to act as
decoyman for me, and whom I had told to return
straight home again after I had gone into hiding,
DECEIVING WILD CREATURES. 37
calmly sitting astride a stone wall some sixty
yards away, waiting, as he afterwards explained,
" to see t'haak cum hoam." A thunderstorm
broke in blinding hail soon afterwards, and the
following day, alas ! I found that some member
of a herd of hill-grazing cattle had trodden on the
merlin's beautiful eggs and crushed them. Thus
is the naturalist photographer's patience tried.
I love the golden plover's plaintive cry,
because it brings back to me the memory of days
of unforgettable sweetness, when, as a boy, I
wandered, happy and hungry, from one trout
stream to another, across wide stretches of breezy
Yorkshire moorland, with rowan tree fishing-rod
over my shoulder, and a home-made horsehair
line of such visible strength dangling at the end
that I now marvel how any fish gifted with
ordinary eyesight could have dared to venture
near it.
After having tried hard, and failed ignomini-
ously, to find a nest belonging to this shy. wary,
and misleading species on the great stretches of
moorland lying between Shunnerfell and Water
Crag during May of last year, I met a shepherd
one morning who told me that he had found a
nest the previous evening containing a brace of
newly hatched chicks and two chipped eggs. I
saw at a glance there was little time to be lost, and
having no hiding contrivance of any kind with
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
SOD HOUSE FOR PHOTOGRAPHING
GOLDEN PLOVER.
me at the time, asked the man to secure a spade.
Armed with this and the camera, we hied away
up the hills. When we arrived at the place
where the nest was situated, we discovered that
the female and two chicks had completely dis-
appeared, and that the remaining pair were just
out of their shells and left in charge of the male
until they should gain sufficient strength to
enable them to run through the coarse herbage.
Placing my cap over the beautiful downy
creatures in the nest, I set to work and built a
sod house five feet away with giant turves cut
for me by my powerful companion. We soon
had the horseshoe-shaped walls of the structure
high enough for the roof, to support which we
DECEIVING WILD CREATURES.
39
borrowed liberally from the dilapidated remains
of a neighbouring sheep-fold gate.
Taking the camera inside, I focussed my cap
through a narrow horizontal slit, left for the purpose
in the turf wall, and after the shepherd had
handed in my headgear and securely walled up the
doorway behind me, he departed to tend his flock.
In a very few minutes the cock golden plover
ran down towards the nest, calling reassuringly
as he advanced, and sat down to cover his chicks
without more ado. The lens being far back
amongst the dark peat turves, and consequently
in deep shadow, I suppose he failed to detect its
attention-arresting presence. At any rate, he
MALE GOLDEN PLOVER
COVERING CHICK.
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
FEMALE GOLDEN PLOVER
AND CHICKS.
sat unconcernedly still until I made an exposure
upon him by the aid of my focal plane shutter,
when he jumped up and commenced to run
hurriedly away, full of misgivings.
As the light was growing poor, owing to a
temporary gathering of clouds, I deemed it
advisable to substitute my silent time shutter,
in case the brooding bird favoured me by the
giving of a second opportunity to figure him.
In about an hour he returned with suspicion
and fear plainly written in every look and action,
and sat down on the younger and weaker of the
two chicks. Before he had time to coax its
companion crouching beside him beneath his
sheltering wing, I made an exposure upon the
pair, and promptly began to reverse the position
of my dark slide with all the deftness I could
command, intending to indulge in another shot ;
DECEIVING WILD CREATURES.
but he heard me, and, running away, commenced
to call loudly to his mate for what subsequently
turned out to be a change of places.
When the female arrived upon the scene, she
proved to be an exceedingly shy and wary fowl,
walking round and round, back and forth, calling
to her young ones al] the time, but never once
venturing to sit down and cover them. I man-
aged, through a fortunate improvement in . the
weather, to secure one snapshot of her, and then
abandoned all further effort, having knelt for
two and a half hours, with water dripping steadily
down the back of
my neck from the
roof sods of the
emergency hide-
up. The chicks
were soon strong
enough to leave
the nest, and I
photographed one
of them directly it
had done so.
On rare occa-
sions the natural-
ist photographer
is favoured by
circumstances in
the matter of YOUNG GOLDEN PLOVER.
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
PHOTOGRAPHING IN A CART-SHED.
hiding with his apparatus near to a bird's nest.
The accompanying illustration shows how my
brother secured our series of lantern slide pic-
tures representing the domestic life of a pair of
blackbirds. Their nest was situated in a thin,
straggling hedgerow running parallel with the
back of an old wooden cart-shed, and about
FEMALE BLACKBIRD WATCHING HER CHICKS
SETTLE DOWN INTO CAVITY OF NEST
AFTER BEING FED.
44
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
AUTHOR HIDDEN UNDER
WOODEN MASK,
four feet away. I cut two circular holes in the
boards one for the lens and the other for the eye
of the photographer, and the birds never appeared
to suspect anything wrong whilst the silent time
shutter of the camera was being used upon them.
The female on the preceding page was figured
whilst admiringly watching her chicks settle down
into the cavity of the nest after having been fed.
For bird-watching purposes I had a reversible
jacket and cap specially made a year or two ago,
and have found them of considerable service on
a good many occasions when other methods of
hiding have not been practicable. They are dead
DECEIVING WILD CREATURES
45
grass brown on one side and living field green on
the other, and, chameleon-like, I change my
colour according to surroundings.
Feeling convinced that the human face is
almost as awe-inspiring and distasteful when in
close proximity to a wild bird as that of a cat, I
made a wooden mask for myself one day out of
a hollow ash stub, selected and cut for me by an
old woodman. I chiselled a great deal of the
interior away, so as to lighten the burden on my
shoulders and make plenty of head room, and
then cut a pair of eyeholes in it.
AUTHOR WITH WOODEN
MASK OFF,
46 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
Turning the green side of my reversible
jacket outwards, and donning this odd piece of
headgear, I secreted myself in the middle of a
small hazel bush growing within six feet of a
water-tub let into the ground in a wood for the
convenience of pheasants, and waited develop-
ments. By-and-by along came a family of
bullfinches to drink and wash. The chicks were
the first to descend, and seemed fascinated with
the delights of bathing. Standing on a number
of slightly submerged flints in the middle of the
old tub, they flapped their little short wings in
ecstasy, and made the spray fly in all directions
whilst their parents stood on the edge waiting
their turn, and admiring the proceedings. Several
times a bedraggled chick would return, like a
small boy, for just another dip, which he indulged
in with juvenile gusto.
Once a member of the company actually
alighted on the old stub in which my head was
enveloped, and the telephonic qualities of the
wood made the noise produced by its feet sound
as if a rook had settled there.
When the bullfinches had taken their departure,
a robin came along and enjoyed himself for several
seconds, ducking and splashing, although I never
once saw him take a drink. Whether he detected
my eyes staring at him through the holes in the
mask, or noticed a branch which I was partly
DECEIVING WILD CREATURES. 47
leaning against vibrating in response to the heart
beats taking place in my body, I cannot say,
but he suddenly stopped in the middle of his
ablutions, and listened with a sharp, enquiring eye
turned in my direction, and presently flew away
with suspicious haste and directness.
Studying the intelligence and affections of
birds is a most engaging pursuit.
I have often exchanged blackbirds' eggs for those
belonging to a song thrush, and vice versa , without
any notice whatever being taken of the substitu-
tion by either species, and once played a selfishly
mean trick upon a redshank. Her eggs began to
chip before the weather allowed me an opportunity
of making photographic studies of her going on
to the nest ; so I exchanged them for those
of a lapwing breeding close by, and compelled
the unfortunate bird to incubate another week.
The fraud was either undetected or unheeded,
for the birds hatched off, and took away each
other's broods in safety, and I can only hope that
no domestic complications arose in either family
afterwards.
With a view to making further experiments
in the discerning qualities of the avian mind, I
had four wooden eggs carved for me by a local
joiner of the size and shape of those laid by a
song thrush. My wife painted and varnished
them for me, and as soon as they were dry I
48 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
took them out into the fields, and substituted
them for a clutch of eggs in the nest of a mavis.
Returning half an hour later to ascertain what
had happened, I found the thrush sitting tight
and cosy on my wooden counterfeits. When
she took wing, I noticed something drop from
her nether plumage as she scurried out of the
hedgerow, and going to the spot where it fell,
picked up one of my substantial shams, only two
of which remained in the nest. The great heat
of the bird's body had melted the varnish, and
made the eggs adhere to her feathers, and I
make no doubt she suffered something in the
nature of a shock when she rose to fly away and
found two of them clinging to her garments. I
quite expected this uncanny experience would
make her forsake the nest, and as she did not
return to it again within reasonable time, I took
her eggs and distributed them amongst other
song thrushes and blackbirds I knew to be due
to hatch out about the same time as she would
have been in the ordinary course of things.
When the varnish on the remaining members
of my clutch of dummies was thoroughly dry I
experimented upon a blackbird with complete
success.
Whilst in Westmoreland on one occasion I had
a starling's nest containing three newly hatched
chicks shown to me in a ventilation hole in one
DECEIVING WILD CREATURES. 49
of the substantial walls of an old stone barn.
The aperture was about eighteen inches high
and two inches wide on the outside, and a little
over a foot in width on the inner, which opened
on to a great loft. The hole had been stuffed
up on the inside with a quantity of old hay,
through which I made a small tunnel in order to
watch the brooding bird at home. It was an
ideal place from which to make observations,
because, being dark on my side and light on that
of the bird, it enabled me to watch every action
on her part from a distance of only a few inches
whilst remaining absolutely unseen and unsus-
pected myself.
Taking the chicks out of the nest, I put my
wooden eggs in, and waited with one eye glued
to the small circular hole in the stopping of old
hay. In a few minutes back came the starling
with a rush. She gazed in wonder at the contents
of the nest for a few seconds, but, quickly making
up her mind to accept the strangely altered
condition of things, she sat down on the bits of
painted wood without a trace of discontent in
either look or action.
Putting her off again, I reversed the order of
things, and waited. Upon returning, the starling
stared in amazement at the change that had
come over the scene during her absence ; but
her curiosity soon vanished, and she commencecl
50 WILD NATURE'S WAYS,
to brood her chicks in the most matter-of-fact
way.
A severe method of testing how far blind
maternal passion had subverted her intelligence
now suggested itself to my mind, and, tapping
the wooden floor of the loft with my heel, I fright-
ened her away again. Taking the chicks out, I
thrust my bared arm through the hay, and, placing
my hand, knuckles downwards, in the cavity of
the nest, waited not very hopefully, I must
admit to see whether the bird would detect the
imposture. Presently in she came, and, without
making any preliminary inspection of the con-
tents of her nest, sat down, and actually brooded
my fingers. She hustled two of them up between
her thighs and her body, and astonished me by
the extraordinary heat which she imparted. She
only brought food in once during my experiments,
and that was whilst her offspring occupied the nest.
It is only fair to add that the bird was to
some extent handicapped by the comparatively
small amount of light penetrating the hole she
occupied ; but the same cannot be said of peewits
dropping their eggs beside imitations crudely cut
out of a piece of wood with a pocket-knife. An
old Norfolk marshman whom I knew years ago
used to add to his maintenance by gathering
plovers' eggs for the market, and when they were
commanding the handsome price of ten shillings
DECEIVING WILD CREATURES 51
per clutch at the opening of the season, every
single egg was a consideration to the finder. In
order, therefore, not to suffer loss at the hands
of any competitor roaming the same land, the
astute old fellow used to leave each bird that
GRASSHOPPER WARBLER
ABOUT TO SIT DOWN ON DUMMY EGGS.
had not finished laying a wooden egg when he
carried off the money-making realities.
As an illustration of the ease with which
cuckoos must impose upon small birds when
carrying out their parasitic habits, I may mention
that the grasshopper warbler figured herewith
was photographed when about to sit down on
52 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
her nest, containing two of my wooden song thrush
eggs, which were about twice the size of her own.
I watched her cover the dummies over and over
again, and never once did she show the slightest
sign of suspicion in regard to the deception.
I tried my counterfeits upon a ringed plover
one day, but her intelligence proved superior to
unreasoning maternal passion. The incubating
bird would not sit down upon the shams, which
she hammered with her bill in a most sceptical
fashion. When I had given her a fair trial, I
took one of the three wooden eggs away, and
added two of the bird's own. In a little while
she came back, and tried to turn the deceptions
out of her nest, but, failing to accomplish her
desire, reluctantly sat down and covered good
and bad alike.
VIEW ON TH5 AVON,
CHAPTER II.
SOME CURIOSITIES OF WILD LIFE.
PHOTOGRAPHING A FLYING
BIRD WITH A GUN CAMERA.
TN the present chapter I
* propose to speak of a
few extraordinary happenings
of the countryside, in the
hope of stimulating the in-
terest of readers who do not
trouble to observe what is
going on from day to day
around them.
Among the greatest de-
lights of natural history are
its surprises. You can never say with cer-
tainty that the conduct of the individual wild
creature whether bird or beast will be exactly
that of the species to which it belongs. Mind,
disposition, and circumstance all play their part
in the doings of Nature's children to a far greater
extent than is generally supposed.
One partridge will forsake her nest and eggs
merely because you have discovered their where-
abouts, whilst another will stand by her home
with so much devotion that she will even come
54
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
SONG THRUSH'S NEST WITHOUT MUD LINING
back and brood after you have inadvertently
trodden her tail quills out and smashed half her
treasures.
You may find a thousand nests belonging to
the common song thrush all plastered with mud
in the same orthodox fashion, but you cannot
say that circumstances will not one day compel
a member of the species to build for herself a
home similar in every respect to that of her
relative the blackbird. As a matter of fact I
found three or four such nests some years ago on
the Surrey hills. A long period of droughty
weather had rendered it impossible for any
mavis breeding within a certain area to find the
usual materials wherewith to line the interior of
RING OUZEL AND YO'UNG ONES
IN A NEST ON THE GROUND.
56 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
her home, and fine dead grass was, in consequence,
used as a substitute. The illustration on p. 54
represents one of the nests in question.
A whole volume might be written upon the
subject of birds' nests in odd situations. Robins
are notorious for their vagaries in this respect,
but individuals of species far less associated with
man and his doings often make wide and ap-
parently needless departures from the unwritten
rules of their family. I have during the last
thirty years found scores of ring ouzels' nests in
braes, banks, holes in old stone walls, tumble-
down buildings, and amongst rocks, and never
regarded the species as one productive of varia-
tions until quite recently, when I met with a
nest in a rush-grown moss bog where nothing
but a wild duck or snipe might have been ex-
pected. A strange thing about this case was
that it was one of deliberate preference rather
than necessity, because plenty of ideal situations
were in existence within one hundred yards of
the site chosen.
Having just read an American book in which
the writer detailed his experiences on the subject
of shifting birds' nests containing young from
dark corners to light, open spaces, in order that
he might photograph the restless parent birds
attending to their domestic duties, I set to work
and built a rough stone wall immediately behind
CURIOSITIES OF WILD LIFE. 57
the rushes figured in the illustration. When
my task was completed, I carefully lifted nest
and young from their hollow in the rain-
sodden ground, and placed them in a hole
purposely left for their reception about a couple
of feet from the base of the newly built stone
wall, and then went into hiding in my artificial
rock standing less than two yards away.
In a few minutes the female ring ouzel arrived
with a splendid array of wriggling worms in her
bill. Her astonishment was unmistakable. She
cocked her head on one side, stared intently into
the declivity recently occupied by her nest and
chicks for some moments in silence, and then,
uttering a distressed cry, dropped her food, and
flew to the top of my stone wall, where she sat
listening and looking a veritable picture of
maternal misery. Her huddled form and doleful
looks made me, I must confess, feel something of
a barbarian, and I was seized with a great impulse
to replace the nest straightway. I think I should
have done so, had not the male bird arrived upon
the scene with a supply of greenish-brown grubs,
and engaged my attention in his behaviour. He
also showed considerable surprise at the absence
of his callow brood, but did not allow distress to
interfere with appetite for swallowing the grubs ;
he flew away, and did not reappear during the
remainder of the time I spent at the place.
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
EGGS OF ENGLISH AND FRENCH
PARTRIDGES IN THE SAME NEST.
After thinking the matter over maturely on
the top of the stone wall, the mother-bird flew
down to re-examine the site of her departed joys,
and whilst hopping round, discovered her nest
in its new situation. I naturally thought that
distress would now give place to rejoicing, but it
did nothing of the kind. Instead of sitting down
and brooding her chicks, she stood on the edge
of the nest; and, to my bewilderment, began to
pull the lining out in great billfuls, and in a fit
of uncontrollable anger scatter it to the ground
below. How I sighed for my camera and a
gleam of sunshine whilst this was going on !
Desiring to give the American naturalist's
experiments a fair trial, I stayed for nearly three
CURIOSITIES OF WILD LIFE.
59
hours with the ring ouzels, and as the weather
was dull and cold, I was compelled to keep the
chicks alive by warming them, three at one time
and two at another, against my own body. At
last, when it became quite apparent that the
mother-bird would be more likely to desert her
offspring than reconcile herself to the new situa-
tion of her nest, I returned the structure to its
original site, and within fifteen minutes of this
taking place she was covering her brood again
with a look of restored happiness.
I have, since the above occurrence, conducted
similar experiments on many birds of this and
other species, but have never fallen across another
FRENCH PARTRIDGE'S NEST
UNDER A PLANT-POT.
60 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
instance of the love of an odd nesting situation
apparently outweighing maternal affection.
The red-legged or French partridge, as it is
also called, was introduced into England some
two hundred years ago, but has never gained a
footing either in Scotland or Ireland. It is
generally supposed to be inimical to the interests
of its British representative, which it is said to
drive away. As if anxious to refute this accusa-
tion, a bird of either species laid in the same
nest, and commenced to share the labours of
incubation side by side with sisterly amiability
in Essex last spring. My brother journeyed a
long way in order to secure pictorial records of
this unique sight, but, unfortunately, a disastrous
flood robbed him by an ace of his opportunity of
doing more than show the nest and eggs after
the water had subsided.
An uncle of mine living in the North of England
once found a nest full of eggs belonging to a red
grouse and a common partridge. The former
bird took entire possession, and hatched off all
the young.
The red-legged partridge's eggs figured on the
previous page were photographed in the spring of
1901, and although the inverted flower-pot was
situated in a kitchen garden surrounded by a
flint wall, the parent bird speedily conducted her
downy family under a small wicket-gate and
FRENCH PARTRIDGE SITTING ON
NEST UNDER PL.ANT-POT.
62 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
away to the open fields beyond. The fractured
piece of old earthenware was allowed to lie un-
disturbed in the hope that the bird, or one of
her descendants, might re-occupy it the following
breeding season; but it remained untenanted,
and I arrived, without difficulty, at the con-
clusion that some sportsman's gun was responsible
for my disappointment. I had a very pleasant
surprise, however, last May, when my friends
informed me that a French partridge had com-
menced to lay again under the old plant-pot,
where my brother, after a considerable amount of
trouble, eventually succeeded in photographing her.
Some birds appear to court disaster by the
very daring they display in the selection of a
nesting place. During the last four years I have
known a partridge, a blackbird, a pied wagtail,
and a robin attempt to breed in a target, pit,
where bullets hail at least three or four days a
week, and the sergeant responsible for the up-
keep of the range practically lives. The first-
named bird deserted because every nettle which
formed her cover was cut down by fugitive bits
of lead ; but the last two would undoubtedly
have brought out, if not reared, their young had
the markers not robbed them.
The reason for the selection of odd nesting
situations by birds belonging to many different
species is well-nigh inexplicable.
CURIOSITIES OF WILD LIFE. 63
I placed the old tin can figured on page
65 against the trunk of a tree growing in a
wood containing thousands of eligible sites, and
yet a blackbird came and built in it. If her
idea was one of safety, she was mistaken, for
some enemy sucked all her eggs.
Again, it is difficult to conceive why a pair of
swallows made their nest in the old shoe shown
in our combination page of pictures, seeing that
there were plenty of better situations available
in the same boatshed.
At the house where the nest photographed
on a bell fastenings was secured, another pair of
swallows reared a brood in one which they built
on the frame of a picture hanging in an occupied
bedroom, the windows of which were left open
night and day.
The shallow structure with a large chick in it
was built on a ceiling lath which had become
detached at one end, and was so pliant that it
swayed up and down like the slender branch of
a tree. Here the swallows had every excuse for
their selection, because the store-room contained
no other available site.
The house martin's hemispherical nest also
figured on the same page is of considerable in-
terest to ornithologists, because it has been
asserted that the bird never builds a structure of
this shape. It is very difficult to understand
64 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
why this pair of birds should deliberately have
chosen a situation which necessitated such a
radical departure from the architectural style
common to their species, seeing that there was
plenty of available building room alongside the
homes of their neighbours. They certainly secured
no advantages, because they had twice the
amount of work to do in making their own roof,
and ran far more risk of drippings being blown
against them than they would had they con-
tented themselves with an ordinary site. My
brother secured his photograph just as one of
the birds was in the act of leaving the nest.
I have on several occasions found the stock
dove breeding in a rabbit burrow, and one day
was astonished to discover one nesting on the
roof of a summer-house in a wood close to
Caterham Valley. A gale of wind had torn the
outer half of one of the sheets of zinc which
formed the covering of the wooden roof loose
and folded it back over the other half, which
remained fixed in such a way as to form a
kind of pocket, in which the bird made the
nest shown in our illustration.
Birds of prey often exhibit the most sublime
tenacity in their love for a favourite old breeding
haunt. I know places scattered up and down
the country that appear to exercise a positive
fascination over falcons,, ravens^ and hawks of
BLACKBIRD'S NEST IN TIN CAN. SWALLOW'S NEST ON LATH.
SWALLOW'S NEST ON BELL FASTENINGS.
HOUSE MARTIN'S HEMISPHERICAL NEST.
n
STOCK-DOVE'S NEST ON ROOF OF SUMMER-HOUSE.
SOMF MP.QT55 |M mimmic DI nr^cc
SWALLOW'S NEST IN OLD SHOE.
66 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
GULL'S NEST ON STONE IN LOCH.
different species. No amount of persecution seems
to make them waver for a moment in their alle-
giance. If either member of a pair should fall
a victim to gun or trap, the survivor straightway
disappears in search of a new mate, and I have
known the second wife or husband, as the case
might be, brought home within twenty-four hours
of the calamity to the departed.
Even if male and female should both suffer
death in one season, a fresh pair of birds will
frequently arrive the following year to battle,
with pathetic bravery, against odds of infinite
length.
Stranger still, hereditary rights would appear
to be maintained by some birds in a nesting site
even at the cost of violating a family habit. The
common gull is a gregarious bird, yet from time
CURIOSITIES OF WILD LIFE. 67
immemorial a solitary pair has bred every year
on the stone depicted in our illustration on the
opposite page, situated in the middle of a small
Hebridean fresh-water loch.
It is by no means an uncommon occurrence
for two birds belonging to widely different species
to make use of the same nest with alterations
and improvements during a single season. Last
May a blackbird built and used a nest in a young
oak tree near my home, and in July a turtle-dove
added a storey, and occupied it.
This utilitarian record is, however, easily
beaten by the experience of a Birmingham orni-
thological friend, upon whose accuracy of observa-
tion and veracity I can place complete reliance.
A magpie built her nest, and a kestrel hawk took
possession, and laid a clutch of eggs in it. She, in
her turn, was, however, robbed by a collector,
and the structure was afterwards successively and
successfully utilised by a tree sparrow and a great
tit for the propagation of their kind.
Open avian robbery of an unsuspected char-
acter occasionally takes place.
A blackbird has been known to annex the
home of a song thrush and line it with fine grass
whilst it was occupied by eggs, which she re-
spected to the extent of not covering over.
At the Fame Islands a year or two ago an
eider duck and a lesser black-backed gull nested
68 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
in close proximity to each other. One day, both
birds were frightened away from their incubating
operations, and the latter, returning home first,
took the opportunity to devour her neighbour's
hopes and expectations. There was nothing very
wonderful or un-gull-like in this, but the eider
duck's subsequent retaliatory behaviour was cer-
tainly novel. She turned the tables upon her
enemy by taking complete possession of her nest
and eggs, and undertaking the work of nidification
for her.
I am sometimes told by people whose acquaint-
ance with what I would call the operative side
of natural history is somewhat limited, I fear,
that all the interesting facts connected with
British ornithology have long ago been discovered
and chronicled in books. Experience has per-
suaded me that Nature, although alluringly rich,
does not yield up her secrets in such an easy,
wholesale way as to render this possible. She
has her unguarded moments, of course, but
generally insists that the discoverer of her ways
shall work hard for the little he learns, and I
would not like to confess how many hours of
cramped misery it has cost me to find out a few
things that would perhaps be regarded as mere
trivialities by many people : for example, to
establish the fact that nearly all wild birds that
feed their young on insects like to deliver the
CURIOSITIES OF WILD LIFE.
69
LESSER BLACK-BACKED
GULLS.
food alive into the mouths of their hungry off-
spring. If the unfortunate victims should die,
through being grasped too long or hard between
the mandibles of their captors, they are either
dropped to the ground or swallowed by the old
birds, and a fresh supply promptly sought after.
In spite of the jealous way in which Nature
hides her secrets, it sometimes happens that the
student stumbles upon little scraps of curious
information quite fortuitously.
One day, I found the nest of a song thrush
in a small chalk-pit close to my home, and deter-
mined to secure a series of sun pictures of the
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
SONG THRUSH ON NEST.
parent birds at work, brooding and attending to
the multifarious wants of their chicks. I accord-
ingly erected my little hiding tent close by, and
covered it carefully with twigs, dead grass, and
whatever other flotsam and jetsam of the woods
I could find lying around. As soon as the birds
had become thoroughly convinced of the harm-
lessness of my contrivance, I entered it early one
morning with the camera and a prodigious supply
of plates.
It was not long before the female throstle
(distinguished by her lighter and larger spotted
breast) came along with a protesting crowd of
wriggling worms, which she distributed very im-
partially amongst four little yellow mouths opened
wide in supplication. The weather was very
chilly, and after feeding her chicks, the mother-
bird sat down in the nest and puffed out her
CURIOSITIES OF WILD LIFE. 71
plumage in such a way that no breath of cold
morning air could reach her featherless and almost
downless brood beneath.
As the day grew on apace, and consequently
became warmer, the bird left her nest, and went
away in search of food, which her husband was
bringing in beggarly quantities, and with no great
frequency.
From a supplementary peephole in my hiding
tent I discovered a pert cock robin feeding his
wife, sitting on a nest upon the opposite side of
the chalk pit. His industry and solicitude were
so great that his mate's appetite became satiated
to the extent of an utter refusal to open her bill
for the most tempting morsel, and, to my astonish-
ment and delight, her husband kindly brought
the, food over and gave it to the grateful baby
MALE SONG THRUSH
BRINGING FOOD.
72 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
song thrushes in front of me. My surprise was
so complete that during his first visit I utterly
forgot to use the camera. This neglect on my
part proved of little consequence, however, for
he afterwards gave me plenty of opportunities
of exercising my skill. His assiduity knew no
bounds, and the comical way in which he cocked
his little head on one side and gazed at the open-
mouthed recipients of his charity was an ornitho-
logical treat such as I may never enjoy again.
Once, when he arrived with food and alighted
on a hazel twig growing immediately over the nest,
the female song thrush happened to be at home,
and there was an exchange of looks. By one of
those aggravating mischances, unfortunately not
uncommon in the experience of the naturalist
photographer, I missed a wonderful picture of
avian expression. From whatever impulse the
generous action of the robin sprang, the owner
o.f the nest made it unmistakably plain that
his assistance was not appreciated by her, at
any rate. Redbreast did not stay to argue,
but discreetly retired into the wood beyond,
and waited until the back of the mavis had
been turned in search of more victuals, when
he promptly re-appeared upon the scene and
opened the floodgates of his charity more
widely than ever. He brought food at such an
astonishing rate that when the thrush came back
ROBIN BRINGING FOOD TO YOUNG THRUSHES.
ROBIN LOOKING AT YOUNG THRUSHES AFTER HAVING FED THEM.
THRUSH HOLDING FOOD TILL HER CHICKS GROW HUNGRY AGAIN.
74 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
with her somewhat insignificant-looking catch,
her chicks would not open their mouths to receive
it, and she was therefore placed under the rather
humiliating necessity of sitting down, as shown
in our illustration, and holding it in her bill until
such time as they should grow hungry again.
Wishing to ascertain what relationship existed
between the affection and intelligence of these
two species of birds, I ran over and borrowed a
couple of young thrushes that were covered with
feathers and almost ready to fledge from a nest
not far away, and, taking the food-surfeited chicks
out of their home, put the strangers in, and
retired with the callow brood into my place of
concealment to await developments.
When the male song thrush arrived with food,
he gave it to the changelings without taking the
slightest heed of the fact that they did not belong
to him. His mate certainly did notice that
there was something radically wrong, judging by
the expression on her countenance, but very soon
became sufficiently reconciled to the situation,
not only to feed, but to sit down and cover the
strangers.
I now turned my experimental attention to
the robin sitting on the opposite side of the
chalk-pit. Exchanging her clutch of eggs for
two of the baby song thrushes in my hiding tent,
I retired again to wait and watch. As soon as
CURIOSITIES OF WILD LIFE.
75
all was quiet, back flew the redbreast in a hurry
to her home, and received a very unpleasant
shock. Directly she set foot on the edge of her
nest, the young thrushes shot up their heads and
opened their mouths wide in request of food.
This startled the robin into precipitate flight and
the liberal use of very uncomplimentary avian
language. She scolded for several minutes whilst
maturely considering the situation from a safe
distance, and then timidly ventured to indulge in
a second inspection of the strange phenomenon,
with a precisely similar result.
After a good deal more reflection, and many
angry exclamations, she returned a third time,
and boldly stood her ground until the chicks,
weary of begging in vain, gradually subsided into
the -cavity of the little nest. Then she hopped
in, and attempted to brood them. This was
immediately the signal for a fresh outburst of
dumb demand on the part of the young birds, and,
vigorously shooting up their heads, the robin
slipped awkwardly between them. Quickly con-
vinced that there was nothing to eat being given
away, the callow impostors settled down and were
covered by their duty-accepting foster-parent.
By-and-by, along came cock robin with a
supply of food. I was anxious to ascertain
something of his powers of perception, but his
mate did not gratify me. She sat tight on the
76 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
nest, and the male fed her whilst standing on
her shoulders in the same way that meadow
pipits and other small birds may frequently be
seen feeding young cuckoos after they have left
the nest.
I now changed things all back to their original
condition of existence, and although there was a
certain amount of mild surprise visible in the
attitudes of both the female song thrush and
redbreast, everybody quickly became used to, and
apparently well contented with, the old order.
These and similar experiments already men-
tioned, convince me that the parasitic path of
the cuckoo is an extremely easy one.
Strange accidents sometimes befall birds.
Whilst in the Highlands of Scotland last summer,
trying to secure photographs of red-necked pha-
laropes swimming on the surface of a small pool
close to a favourite loch, a couple of bare-legged
boys came to watch me at work, and volunteered
to drive the confiding little birds within my field
of focus. As there were no stones available for
casting, with a frightening splash, into parts of
the loch too deep for the boys to wade, the elder
of the two took a number of stale eggs from a
deserted moor-hen's nest and began to hurl them
beyond the birds. To my amazement and great
grief, one of these clumsily thrown missiles struck
a phalarope on the head, and killed it instantly.
CURIOSITIES OF WILD LIFE. 77
A year or two ago I found the remains of a
lapwing that had perished miserably on the
Westmoreland Fells. The luckless creature had
got one of its legs entangled in a piece of coarse
sheep's wool attached to a growing heather stalk,
and by its struggles to free itself had twisted the
wool into a yarn of such consistency and strength
as to render escape hopeless and starvation
inevitable.
During a natural history trip to Broadland
last spring, I had a brood of unfledged yellow
wagtails under daily observation. One morning,
when I visited the nest, I found a member of the
otherwise happy thriving family showing signs
of great distress. The chick was gasping in such
a convulsive way as to suggest that it would
soon bid adieu to all the dainty flies and other
pleasant things of this world. I lifted the little
sufferer from the nest, and was surprised to find
that a companion accompanied it a couple of
inches away and upside down.
A cursory examination proved that all the
trouble was caused by one end of a fine piece of
nest lining fibrous grass having become entangled
about the neck of one chick and the other twisted
round the thigh of its companion. I quickly
released both birds, and thereby re-established
the comfort and harmony of the whole household.
The remarkable behaviour of another brood
78 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
of yellow wagtails, living in a nest close by, illus-
trates the extreme rapidity of mind development
in young birds. One day when I visited them,
although open-eyed and well advanced in feather
dress, they shot up their heads like jacks-in-
boxes, and opened their mouths in greedy re-
quest ; but the very next, although I had not
handled them, and am certain that no one else had
done so, they crouched low in the nest, and made
no sign, except one of anxiety to hide from me.
Such a complete reversion of mental attitude in
less than twenty-four hours is difficult to under-
stand when it is considered that I did absolutely
nothing calculated to form an object-lesson in
the dangerous.
Although it is a well-known fact that many
members of the duck family lose their flight
feathers so rapidly during the moulting season
that they are unable to make use of their wings,
such a calamity rarely befalls any passerine bird.
One instance has, however, come within my
experience. Whilst staying with some friends in
the North of England, I had a perfectly plump
and healthy missel thrush brought to me, unable
to fly. Examination and experiment revealed the
interesting fact that the bird had lost such a
large number of quills from her right wing as to
unbalance her completely.
It is by no means an uncommon thing for a
CURIOSITIES OF WILD LIFE. 79
humble bee to take possession of a wren's nest and
use it for her own domestic requirements, but
I imagine it is not often that such a small creature
aspires to either the room or elevation afforded
by a squirrel's drey. Three years ago, whilst
searching a plantation on the slopes of the Pennine
range, the small boy who was doing my tree-
climbing for me suddenly withdrew his hand
from a squirrel's nest I had requested him to
investigate, and made a startled exclamation.
In response to an enquiry on the subject of his
alarm, he answered, " Tharr's summat quear
aboot this ! " And he hurled the whole thing
viciously to the ground before I could stop him.
I naturally expected to find an ill-fated family
of baby squirrels in the shattered structure, but
my surprise was as great as that of the boy's
when I found a humble bees' nest and a dead
stoat amongst the moss, dry grass, and twigs.
The trunk of the fir-tree was branchless for
a yard and a half from the butt, and the drey
between thirty and forty feet from the ground,
and how the stoat which had apparently been
dead before the humble bee took possession
came there is a mystery to me. I cut his tail off,
and brought it away as a souvenir of the strange
occurrence.
A friend of mine, whilst taking a walk one
day through a Surrey wood, heard a jay com-
8o WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
mence to shriek piteously not far away, and
hurrying in the direction of the sound, was
astonished to discover that the wary bird had
been caught by a stoat. His presence put an
end to the encounter, and the bird (which had
been rolling over and over upon the ground, a
confused bundle of feathers) flew away, apparently
little the worse for its perilous experience.
In all the course of my observations of wild
Nature, which has been by no means inconsider-
able, only twice have I seen stoat and rabbit
encounters.
In one case I arrived upon the scene just in
time to witness the beginning of the struggle
near to some burrows, ran to a house about one
hundred yards away for a gun, and got back, to
find the bloodthirsty murderer in a steel trap
and bunny gone.
The other struggle of which I was an eye-
witness ended less happily for the rabbit.
Immediately behind Caterham Valley, wherein
I reside, is another waterless little ghyll, given
over almost entirely to the propagation of rabbits
and the learning of marksmanship by men who
are not likely to be asked to test their skill upon
the rabbits, but upon their own kind in the event
of war.
During certain days of the week, in spring
and summer, it is much used, and not a safe
CURIOSITIES OF WILD LIFE. 81
place to wander near, because whatever the red
flags you see fluttering gaily on the surrounding
hill-tops may signify to you, they do not by any
means prevent stray bits of lead from wandering
a long way beyond the area they enclose. A
ricochet bullet passing close over your head sings
a nasty song, and I expect if it hit you, would
leave an equally unpleasant mark.
Requiring a sun picture of a rabbit rather
urgently one day, I took my camera into a field
immediately behind the rifle range, and not far
from the targets, focussed the mouths of some
exposed holes in a big burrow half overgrown
with nettles, put a plate into position, and began
to call rabbits out to be photographed.* At
this juncture a number of marksmen commenced
volley-firing, with the result that ricochet bullets
began to screech their uncertain way over my
head. The first suggested that my position
might not be quite safe, the second convinced
me, and in less than ten minutes the third made
me decide to leave, although rabbits were stirring
amongst the nettles and rushing excitedly from
hole to hole.
* My ability to do this has been questioned, but I am quite
prepared to demonstrate my skill in this direction to any reput-
able person in exchange for a similar piece of information (not
already known to me) in fieldcraft. Many things that appear
very wonderful and mysterious to the lay mind are mere common-
places to the man who has specialised,
G
82 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
Picking up my apparatus, I walked away in
the direction of home, filled with annoyed con-
tempt for the marksmanship of citizen soldiers.
I had not retreated forty yards before a rabbit
began to scream amain outside the burrow I
had just left. Returning to pick up what cir-
cumstances naturally suggested would be the victim
of a stray bullet, I beheld a three-parts-grown
rabbit kicking its way convulsively out of a
little forest of stinging-nettles, half of which
grew on one side and half on the other of a rough
fir slat fence dividing the rifle range from the
field in which I stood.
When almost in the act of stooping to pick
the unfortunate animal up, I was astonished to
discover that it had a stoat holding viciously
on to the back of its neck. I involuntarily
raised my foot with the intention of wreaking
vengeance on the assassin, when it flashed across
my mind that as it was manifestly too late to
save the rabbit, why not try to photograph the
pair ? Upon espying me so close, the stoat's
malignant little eyes fairly blazed, but instead
of releasing his hold, as I had expected, and
beating a hasty retreat, he simply turned the
head of his victim with the resolute determination
of a capable rider on a restive steed, and the
next struggle carried both beneath the fence and
on to the range beyond.
CURIOSITIES OF WILD LIFE. 83
By this time I had forgotten all about the
dangers of ricochet bullets, and with trembling
haste excitedly pushed the lens of my camera
between two palings, focussed, put a plate in,
and fired off the focal plane shutter. But alas !
hunter and quarry had now got so much hidden
amongst grass and nettles that there was small
room left to hope for a successful negative. This
induced me to leap over the fence and place the
rabbit (which was now quite dead) in an opener
and, consequently, more favourable position for
my purpose. The stoat retired under pressure
beneath some stunted blackthorn bushes, but
reappeared again directly I got my apparatus
ready ; and quiet, save for the intermittent crackle
of rifles six or seven hundred yards away, was
restored. Following a rabbits' track which ran
parallel with the fence, he came and peeped im-
pudently between two bark-clad slats at me,
as I knelt beside my
camera, and, quickly
making up his mind
that I was nothing of
a very dangerous cha-
racter, bounded away
in search of his prey.
I had taken the
precaution to drag
the rabbit along the STOAT AND RABBIT.
CURIOSITIES OF WILD LIFE. 85
ground from the place where I found it lying
to the open space where I desired to photo-
graph it and its slayer , but the stoat did not
appear to be guided by scent in his search for
it. He leapt about in the grass until he dis-
covered it by sight, and I secured the illustrations
herewith reproduced of him in the act of taking
re-possession of his victim.
My efforts at securing pictorial records of his
doings became too persistent for stoat patience,
and, ruefully giving up his prize, he returned to
the burrow from which he had recently emerged.
In less than five minutes there was another piercing
scream, and rabbits of all ages began to bolt,
helter-skelter, north, south, east, and west. A
half-grown one came and sat for a moment in
front of me. The quivering nostrils and blazing
eyes of the little fugitive told a pathetic tale of
terror. It was followed almost immediately by
its relentless foe, but, contrary to expectation,
instead of giving up the struggle and abandoning
itself to helpless fascination, it bolted, and I
watched it run without stopping in an almost
straight line for four or five hundred yards. The
stoat followed for about half the distance, and
then gave up the chase, and returning to the
burrow, I saw him no more.
Whilst photographing loaches and bullheads
in shallow parts of the River Eden on one occasion,
86 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
BULLHEAD SWALLOWING LOACH.
a boy who was reflecting light for me with a
mirror, suddenly exclaimed : "I can see a bully
with a tail at either end of his body, mister." This
somewhat startling assertion proved to be liter-
ally true. The fish had just caught a loach
more than half its own length, and had succeeded
in swallowing all of it except the portion shown
in our illustration.
In the days of my youth I have tickled trout
with bullheads, members of their own kind, and
even water shrews in their mouths, but how such
a slow, easy-going fish as a bullhead could make
one so nimble and vigorous as a loach captive
is to me a mystery, I must confess. It might
have been sickly or injured, of course ; but no
evidence supporting such a theory could be
traced when the prisoner was released from its
captor's jaws.
The behaviour of even the lowliest of wild
CURIOSITIES OF WILD LIFE. 87
creatures is sometimes difficult, if not impossible,
to explain. Requiring a photograph of a frog
on one occasion, and finding a specimen amongst
rushes and other coarse herbage, rendering it
difficult to figure the amphibian, I placed it on
the top of a lichen-clad rock. Immediately this
was done the creature staggered me by placing
its fore-feet in front of its eyes, as shown in
the illustration below. Directly my back was
turned to focus, the frog dropped its spoilt
child antics, leapt down from the rock and
away as hard as its gymnastic methods of pro-
gression could carry it. I brought it back again
to my prehistoric studio chair, but it was a long
time before it would again assume the interesting
attitude of bashfulness displayed at the com-
mencement of our interview. Whether the rep-
tile's strange behaviour had its origin in mere
STRANGE ATTITUDE OF A FROG WHILST
BEING PHOTOGRAPHED.
88
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
sulkiness, or was the result of pain caused through
my hand pressing too heavily on some old and
invisible injury, it is difficult to say.
The closing days of the nineteenth century
were so mild that primroses were in bloom in
many woods throughout the south of England.
PRIMROSES PHOTOGRAPHED IN FIRST
MOMENTS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.
Wishing to celebrate the commencement of the
new century by some photographic exploit, we
got a root of these flowers under focus during the
last evening of the old one, put a plate into the
camera, charged our magnesium flash-lamp with
powder, and waited for the last stroke of midnight
to boom from a neighbouring church steeple.
Directly that happened, we fired, and secured
DAISIES ASLEEP.
(PHOTOGRAPHED BEFORE SUNRISE.)
DAISIES AWAKE.
(PHOTOGRAPHED AFTER SUNRISE.)
90 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
the foregoing record during the first moment of
the twentieth century.
Many people miss the pleasures of the country-
side through their inability to see the interest-
ing changes that are constantly going on around
them. I have been told by scores of men and
women who have lived in the country all their
lives that they had no idea there was so much
difference in the appearance of daisies asleep
and daisies awake until they saw enlargements
on the lantern screen of the pictures reproduced
on the previous page.
The photographs were taken near to London,
before the sun had risen and afterwards.
WILD CANADIAN GEESE.
THE DESCENDANTS OF BIRDS INTRODUCED
TO A NORFOLK MERE FORTY YEARS AGO.
CHAPTER III.
BIRDS OF MOORLAND, LOCH, AND TARNSIDE.
WHEN I first opened
my eyes, I beheld
fair hills, clad in the glory
of purple heather, and
filled with the sweet music
of the moorcock ; and so
much of original instinct
remains within me that,
when irry life work is done,
I long to return thither for
the sleep that knows no
waking.
Man is a creature of
strange follies, and my
heart goes out in feminine
tenderness to the poor fellow who lost a situa-
tion and three hundred pounds a year because
he could not resist the temptation to run away
to his beloved native hills when, in fancy, he
heard the grouse becking whilst lying in his bed
at dawn, on the twelfth of August, in a far-
away, grimy manufacturing town.
DESCENDING A CLIFF
WITH CAMERA.
92 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
Considerably less than a century ago poor
men made a living by shooting the lordly grouse
in the romantic old way over dogs ; but so
fashionable has the sport become, that it is now
almost exclusively the pastime of millionaires and
combinations of prosperous merchants, who pay
fabulous sums for good moors, and engage small
armies of men to repress the natural enemies of
the bird. Not long ago, whilst in the Highlands
of Scotland, I counted no less than eighteen
heads of ravens nailed up in a gamekeeper's
vermin museum.
The call-note of the female red grouse is easily
imitated, and, when well done, proves a most se-
ductive attraction, as most poachers are aware, to
the males. By repeating it, my brother drew the
old cock figured in the illustration on the oppo-
site page within practical range of his gun camera.
Grouse are very talkative birds, and there can
be no more glorious experience for either orni-
thologist or sportsman than to sit hidden in
some deep moss hag during the dappled dawn of
a fine autumn morning and listen to them.
At the first peep of day the females commence
to cry yow, yow, yow, and are answered almost
immediately by their companions springing into
the air on whirring wings, and calling out in
loud, far-sounding notes, birbeck, goback, goback,
goback. I have many times seen members of the
BIRDS OF MOORLAND AND LOCH. 93
COCK GROUSE ON A STONE.
species, in the exuberance of their joy when com-
pleting this song, throw back their heads, and
elevate their tails, until they almost touched each
other. They also have another note, generally
uttered whilst they are on the ground, which is
an exceedingly plain and emphatic cock-away,
cock-away. All sounds made by the male red
grouse have so much of the quality of the human
voice in them that they have frequently been
mistaken by people unacquainted with the wild
life of the moors.
Some years ago an old man named Birkbeck,
living amongst the Westmoreland Fells where
the name is pronounced Birbeck had a little
domestic tiff with his wife in the middle of
the night, and decided to end matters rather
94 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
drastically by getting up and going away, never
to return. He had been gone from the house
some hours, when his spouse, becoming alarmed
lest he should have gone out to destroy himself,
got up, and rousing some neighbours, induced
them to form a search party and go to look for
her husband. These men had not proceeded fan
before they observed the old man coming down
from the hills. When they met him, they enquired
how it was that he had changed his mind so
speedily. " Well/' replied the veteran, " when
I got upon the moors and the grouse began to
awake, they commenced to say, ' Birbeck, go back
go back, go back,' and I thought as the very fowls
of the air had taken to giving me sensible advice,
I would adopt it and return to my dear old wife
after all."
The red grouse is a bird capable of assimilating
a certain amount of education, as most modern
sportsmen who have taken the trouble to study
its habits are aware. Some years ago I knew an
old man who held absolute sway over a piece of
heather-clad property situated almost in the
middle of one of the best grouse moors in the
world. When the twelfth of August came round,
he never fired a shot, but set thousands of fine
copper- wire snares in the sheep tracks, knowing
full well that when his neighbours began to drive
and shoot, the birds would be likely to fly on to
HEN
GROUSE SITTING ON HER NEST.
96 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
his property, thinking it to be a haven of rest,
instead of a veritable death-trap. This man told
me rather admiringly that he had watched an
old cock grouse run past and leap over no less
than eighteen snares set in succession.
The brooding moor-fowl as the bird is called
in many localities is rather a close sitter. Two
years ago, whilst in the North of England, I
started out nest-hunting on the hills one morning,
unhampered by photographic impedimenta, on
account of the unpromising character of the
weather. In the afternoon I found a hen grouse
sitting on her nest in an exceptionally open place.
The bird was so tame that she allowed me to
stroke her back plumage, and only clucked in a
soft, motherly note when I put my fingers gently
beneath her body. The skies had cleared, and
here was a chance of picture-making that raised
my enthusiasm to boiling-point. Away I rushed,
three long miles down the hills, for my camera
and plates. In due time I returned, hot and
tired, but filled with a great hope. Throbbing
with excitement, I fixed up in front of the nest,
but, alas ! just as my head was about to dis-
appear beneath the focussing cloth, there was an
ominous whirr, and I was left to gaze broken-
heartedly on four newly hatched chicks and
three chipped eggs. A few days after this trying
experience my brother, who was working in
BIRDS OF MOORLAND AND LOCH
97
YOUNG GROUSE IN HEATHER.
Derbyshire at the time, sent me a print of the
picture reproduced on page 95. He had se-
cured the photograph and I the disappointment.
When danger threatens a family of young grouse
the chicks scatter for safety in the heather.
The Arctic skua, otherwise known as Richard-
son's skua, although a bold pirate of the seas,
resorts to moors in the Hebrides, Shetlands,
Orkneys, and on some parts of the mainland of
Scotland, to breed, and I have found its nest in
close proximity to those of the red grouse and
golden plover.
It has been my good fortune to witness the
interesting tactics of this winged buccaneer whilst
engaged in open robbery on several occasions.
As soon as he espies a number of smaller sea-
gulls feasting upon a shoal of surface-swimming
fish, he marks out a successful member of the
H
98 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
party, and promptly gives unremitting chase. It
does not matter how the fugitive twists, doubles,
or dives through the air, the robber's swifter
wings always secure to him the advantage until
the terrified gull is at last reluctantly compelled
to disgorge its prey, when it is allowed to go its
way without further molestation. If the harried
bird should attempt to seek safety by alighting
on the water, its unrelenting oppressor quickly
disconcerts it by a series of tremendous down-
ward swoops, which generally have the desired
effect of inducing the wretched sea-mew to take
wing again. My friend Mrs. Jessie Saxby has
seen an enraged skua even strike and kill an
obstinate gull that would not relinquish its catch
of fish.
The illustration of an Arctic skua appearing
on the opposite page cost me a good deal of
trouble and a horse and trap the journeying over
forty-eight miles of rough road. I heard of a
distant Hebridean gamekeeper, who had a nest
belonging to the species under observation for
me ; but alas ! when I reached the place, it was
too late the chicks had already taken their
departure. My field-glasses and a little patience,
however, soon rectified the consequences of this
misfortune, and in brilliant, breezy weather, I
fixed up my hiding tent near by a second nest,
and went inside to wait and hope.
ARCTIC SKUA ABOUT TO COVER
HER EGGS.
ioo WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
For over two hours the female skua did nothing
but fly overhead, and alight on different knowes
from sixty to a hundred yards away, and critically
survey my handiwork, whilst the male danced
servile, and what appeared from the indifference
of his spouse to be unappreciated, attendance
upon her. Convinced that the vibratory move-
ments of my little tent before the strong wind
were responsible for this, I furled canvas, and
took the whole thing away a gunshot, and a half,
and, stretching myself at full length in the heather,
awaited the coming of the gamekeeper, who was to
return to me at a certain hour. In less than five
minutes the bird was covering her eggs with a
look of restored peace of mind on her countenance.
When the keeper, who had been delayed by
some unforeseen business, arrived with a bottle
of tea his wife had good-naturedly made for me,
it was getting well on into the afternoon. I
related my discouraging experiences to him, and
propounded a scheme for the erection of a turf
hovel in which to hide with the camera. His
native shrewdness and the experiences of his
vocation were on the side of my idea, and he
immediately went off in search of a spade. With
this we dug a hole almost hip deep in the ground
for the accommodation of my feet and legs, and
then placing the tent irons in position over it,
covered them with great strips of turf, and left,
BIRDS OF MOORLAND AND LOCH. 101
Immediately we had turned our backs, the skua
rose from the knoll where she had been sitting
with her mate intently watching us, and, flying to
her nest, sat down with as little regard for our
hollow excrescence as if it had been an ordinary
heather knowe which, indeed, we had striven to
make it resemble as much as possible.
This was as satisfactory to my companion as
it was encouraging to me.
If you want to find the way to a gamekeeper's
heart, show him some scheme by which to outwit
effectually the cunning of a wild animal, and when
he has proved by experience that your idea is
fuller of reason than fancy, you have made a
friend for life of him.
Next morning the weather proved to be dull
and windy, with a drizzling mist that made the
loch peppered moor look black and dismal, and
photographic chances gloomy in the extreme.
However, remembering that the disappointment
of the morning is often only the : black bag in
which the opportunity of the afternoon is hidden,
I went forth to try.
The weight of the turves had driven my
slender tent irons far down into the soft peat
earth, but, in spite of this unavoidable reduction
of space, I managed to squeeze the camera and
myself into the dank apartment. The game-
keeper placed a large sheet of turf over the
102 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
hole through which I had just crept, and went
his way.
Tn ten minutes the skua came back with the
evident intention of dropping on to her nest
right away, but catching sight of the lens peeping
from beneath a shaggy eyebrow of heather on
the side of the artificial knowe, she sheered off, and
thought the matter over maturely whilst crouching
SKUA GOING ON TO HER NEST.
out of the wind behind a knoll thirty yards to
leeward. Half an hour afterwards she tried again,
but when she saw, in the slightly altered language
of the poet,
" The great cyclops with one eye
Staring to threaten and defy,"
her heart failed her, and she alighted a few yards
away, and, like the females of many other ground-
builders, when afraid to venture on their nests,
BIRDS OF MOORLAND AND LOCH. 103
commenced to crouch and hustle in a make-
believe sort of way that she had eggs under her.
This hollow pretence at brooding was evidently
very unsatisfying, for in two minutes she gave it
up, and, flying forward against the wind, pitched
lightly on her nest, and engaged in the real thing.
The darkness of the weather made it almost
impossible for me to indulge in rapid exposures,
and the waving of the bent grass and heather,
to say nothing of the constant head movements
from side to side of the bird, rendered slow ones
exceedingly difficult. However, on the principle
of " nothing venture, nothing have," I made a
number of more or less haphazard shots, one or
two of which turned out good beyond all ex-
pectation. In two hours I made ten exposures,
and, then waited for a further period of like
duration in an achingly cramped and more than
moist position for a fresh supply of plates, which
my companion discovered he had forgotten only
when he arrived within a hundred yards of my
hiding-place.
The unfavourable character of the weather
and my physical condition, decided me not to
wait until the keeper returned with the reserve
plates, which he was anxious to fetch.
Whilst retracing our steps along the shores of
a small loch, we saw a short-eared owl hunting
for prey, and her peculiar erratic flight could be
T04
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
likened to nothing so much as a piece of brown
paper being carried up and down hither and
thither by a fickle wind. She had a nest close
by containing two chicks and two unfertile
SHORT-EARED OWL'S NEST.
eggs, the remaining three members of the
family were like those in the nest, of vary-
ing sizes, and scattered about in the sur-
rounding heather at distances of from fifteen
to fifty yards from their old home. The short-
tailed field vole shown in our illustration had
106 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
evidently only just been caught, because it was
quite warm.
The bold little twite is a bird of the heather
and brae side, but at the same time very partial
to shrubs growing in Highland gardens for nesting
purposes. Whilst in Scotland on one occasion,
a lady friend showed me a nest belonging to this
species in an ivy geranium trained against the
inside back wall of a lean-to greenhouse. The
parent birds were busy feeding a family of chicks,
and found their way in and out of the building
through a broken pane in the glass roof.
I found two more nests belonging to members
of the species in the garden. One was in a stunted
gooseberry bush, and the other in a straggling
young honeysuckle plant tied back to the stone
wall surrounding the enclosure, and close by the
much-used doorway, giving entrance to it. This
latter specimen I kept under dailv observation
for more than a fortnight.
On the I4th of June it contained the first
of six eggs, and on the igth the last. When I
paid my morning call on the 28th of the month,
the bird had three chicks ; thus the full com-
plement of eggs was only in the nest seven clear
days.
My experiences in photographing the brooding
bird at home are not worthy of recital, because
her boldness reduced my task to the point of
BIRDS OF MOORLAND AND LOCH. 107
simplicity, however near the camera was placed
to her nest.
One day we were visited by a deluge of rain,
which was driven by a strong wind against the
wall occupied by the twite. Knowing that the
straggling branches of the honeysuckle afforded
her very little shelter, I went out, and cutting a
large rhubarb leaf, suspended it like a curtain in
front of the nest, and stood on one side to see
what would happen. In a minute or two back
came the uneasy little bird, full of maternal
anxiety to resume her duties. She eyed the
obstruction over critically, and hesitated, but her
indecision lasted only for a moment, and, creeping
behind the rhubarb leaf, she sat down and en-
joyed its shelter with an air of great satisfaction.
A stone's throw from the garden a girl, seeking
lay-away hens' eggs, found a corncrake's nest in
a bunch of nettles growing close to an old dry
wall, one Saturday afternoon, and I had it shown
to me the following morning.
The dear old soul who took me to see it did
not recognise the enormity of her offence against
Providence until some mischievous member of a
numerous family of Skye terriers brought a dead
corncrake home. This was at once interpreted
as a judgment for showing me the bird's . nest
on the Sabbath. I pointed out that the faith
within me was far too small to believe in the
v*V>"
CORNCRAKE ON NEST.
BIRDS OF MOORLAND AND LOCH. 109
righteousness of punishing the innocent to the point
of annihilation, and allowing the guilty to go free,
and straightway went to discover the bird seated
on her eggs, well and happy.
After a good deal of trouble in hiding the
camera, I succeeded in figuring her at home.
A curious thing about a brooding corncrake
is that when covering her ten or eleven large
eggs, she almost assumes the dimensions of a
common partridge, but directly she rises to her
feet, which she does with a peculiar kind of
quiet grace difficult to describe, she shuts up
like a book, and slips away with the noiseless
stealth of a shadow into the surrounding herbage.
This species is very numerous in some parts
of the Hebrides. One day a crofter's boy and
I found four nests, and on another two, and in
each instance they were not fifty yards away
from the. swampy shores of a loch. I have
noticed that in large clutches of ten or eleven,
one egg is frequently much lighter in ground
colour than the rest.
The red-breasted merganser is quite a common
bird on many Highland lochs where trout are
plentiful. In Inverness-shire I have found as
many as three nests on an island of no greater
area than the ground upon which the average
suburban villa is built, and our illustration of a
brooding female was secured on the mainland
no
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
RED-BREASTED MERGANSER.
close by. This bird sat so closely that she allowed
me to take her off her eggs, and appeared to
have a -regular track in the deep heather leading
down to the edge of the loch, where I frequently
saw her fishing in the evening.
One day when I passed she was just in the
act of escorting her downy family from the cosy
old nest to the water, and although the youngsters
scattered very cleverly when I disturbed the
procession, I managed to find and secure a pair
of them.
It is a melancholy reflection that one of the
most beautiful and useful British birds is nearly
everywhere steadily decreasing in numbers, owing
to the fact that its eggs are being more and
BIRDS OF MOORLAND AND LOCH. in
more persistently sought after as breakfast-table
delicacies.
I know one favourite haunt of the joyous
lapwing not far from a North Country tarnside,
where, luckily, the foot of the egg-gatherer seldom
treads, and it is still possible to go and find as
many as four full-clutched nests in an hour.
On one occasion I fixed my hiding-tent up
close to a peewit's nest at this particular spot,
and covering it with plenty of rushes and bent
grass, went my way. Next morning I returned
with the camera and a supply of plates, and
spent several hours of fruitless waiting under the
canvas. The bird had watched me go into
hiding, knew perfectly well I was still there, and
YOUNG RED-BREASTED MERGANSERS.
H2 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
was consequently in no hurry to face the ordeal of
resuming her work of incubation with an enemy
in such close proximity. She passed her time
in flying overhead suspiciously, crying peeweep,
peeweep in a voice much more raucous and less
musical than that of her mate ; or running about
agitatedly on the ground, pretending to pick up
food which had no existence except in her ima-
gination. Frequently she would stand in deep
meditation for a few seconds, and then suddenly
rise and wing her way to a neighbouring hill-top,
as if about to abandon the whole matter in despair.
But distance ministered not to her mind's unrest,
and she quickly came back again.
At last I became convinced that my way of
contending with such great natural shyness was
vanity, and withdrew.
My next attempt was made under such a
radical revision of tactics that the lapwing was
completely deceived. I induced a friendly shep-
herd to stand by while I entered the place of
concealment, and then to walk slowly away in
pursuit of his duties. Within five minutes of
the time the anxious bird had escorted the man,
and his attention engaging dogs to a safe distance,
she was sitting contentedly on her nest, and I
had secured her portrait.
So completely was the guileless creature taken
in by my shepherd ruse that she either did not
PEEWIT ON NEST.
PEEWIT WITH RAINDROPS ON BACK PLUMAGE.
H4 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
notice the lens peeping from the rushes and bent
grass, or did not heed it. At any rate, she showed
the measure of her satisfaction with existing
arrangements by frequently closing her beautiful
dark eyes, and indulging in a momentary nap.
During the morning a gentle shower com-
menced to fall, and in order to show the fidelity
of the camera, I photographed the peewit with
a multitude of raindrops gleaming and twinkling
on her back plumage. In the afternoon the
skies cleared, and the sun rode in uninterrupted
splendour through blue seas of space. The
weather grew so oppressively hot that the bird
gaped and panted where she sat, and several
times left her exposed quarters to assuage her
thirst in a neighbouring rill.
In the spring of 1902, whilst hunting for a
ring ouzel's nest, in order to secure illustrations
of the adult birds for our edition of " White's
Selborne," I accidentally made the acquaintance
of a pair of bonny wee baby snipes crouching in
their soft coats of down amongst the coarse
herbage of a moss bog. Fixing up my tent
which a boy was carrying for me close beside
them, I entered it, and awaited developments,
with no great exuberance, of hope, I must confess,
on account of the terrifying way in which a
strong wind was shaking my hiding contrivance
about. Judge of my surprise, however, when
SNIPE COVERING CHICKS.
n6 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
within ten minutes, the brave mother-bird thrust
her long bill through the trailing rushes behind
her chicks, and began to call them in all sorts of
endearing little notes, of which I did not pre-
viously think the species vocally capable. As
they did not immediately respond to her maternal
blandishments, she crept through into the open,
and, depressing her tail and elevating her breast,
invited them to come under her by all sorts of
affectionate signs and sounds. As soon as she
had succeeded in getting them beneath her
sheltering plumage she sat with the proverbial
boldness of brass, and allowed me to photograph
her over and over again.
My surprise had been great when the female
came along so readily under discouraging cir-
cumstances, but it was still greater when the
male bird boldly walked up with a supply of
food, the precise nature of which I could not
very well make out, owing to the accommodating
length of his bill and the restricted character of
my peep-hole of observation. As soon as he had
divided his dietary treat between the chicks
under his mate's approving supervision, he took
charge of one, and she the other, and they sat
for ten minutes side by side, Darby and Joan
fashion, looking a veritable picture of matri-
monial felicity.
This action on the part of the male snipe
v
1
-L* '' ' *-
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
proved conclu-
sively that the
birds had suf-
fered some loss,
and that the}^
only had two
instead of four
chicks the
usual number
reared by the
species.
The red-
necked phala-
rope is one of
our rarest,
tamest, and
most elegant
summer visit-
ors. It still
breeds or, to put it more accurately, attempts to
do so in one or two old haunts in the Hebrides,
and elsewhere.
I have spent a good deal of well-repaid time
in studying its engaging and confidential ways
and can unhesitatingly assert that there is no
species capable of affording the student of bird
habits more unalloyed pleasure. Last summer I
waded knee-deep in the silting-up bay of a loch
for seven hours on end, studying and photo-
BOYS DRIVING PHALAROPE.
BIRDS OF MOORLAND AND LOCH.
119
graphing the members of a small colony, consist-
ing of three or four pairs. The different couples
appeared to have their own favourite pools and
shallows, which they diligently hunted morning,
noon, and night for food. They swam along very
hurriedly, looking from side to side in busy,
eager haste, pecking here and there as if there
was not a moment to be lost and the welfare of
the whole universe depended upon their exertions.
I obtained a beautiful series of photographs
of both males and females by focussing some
particular part of the surface of a favourite pool,
and then standing on one side with my pneumatic
tube and waiting unti] a bird swam across it.
One day, a couple
of schoolboys volun-
teered to help me,
by driving the pha-
laropes within my
field of focus, and
by this novel sport-
ing method enabled
me to expose several
plates. On the follow-
ing day I was all
alone, and the birds
seemed to have been
so used to my ap-
paratus, that by dint PHALAROPE .
120 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
of care and patience I secured a number of
exposures with the camera only some six or
seven feet away from the bold little swimmers.
I also obtained a wetting. Through standing
so long in one place, I sank mid-thigh deep, and
one of my boots became so obstinately fixed in
the mud and silt at the bottom of the loch that
I fell down, and was compelled to drag myself
ingloriously out on all fours.
A strange thing about the phalaropes was that
they would swim much nearer the camera when
there was absolutely no inducement to do so
than they would when it was fixed up in front of
a nest with a clutch of half-incubated eggs in it.
A MOORLAND BECK.
CHAPTER IV.
INSECTS AND OTHER SMALL DEER AT WORK AND
PLAY.
I
FRITILLARY BUTTERFLY.
T is difficult to conceive
that the study of ento-
mology was held in so little
esteem a century or so ago
that an attempt was made
to set the will of a distin-
guished personage aside be-
cause its maker collected
insects, and must therefore
needs be considered a lunatic.
Happily, all this has long
ago been changed. Prejudice has been hope-
lessly overthrown by reason, and vast numbers
of people now find an inexhaustible mine of
recreative pleasure in studying the beautiful
forms, interesting habits, and wonderful instincts
of butterflies, moths, bees, beetles, spiders, ants,
and other small forms of life with which our
woods and fields literally teem.
Butterflies claim first place in the esteem of
the great majority of students partly, no doubt,
122
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
easier
from aesthetic
reasons, and
partly because
their diurnal
habits render
the acquire-
ment of know-
ledge in re-
gard to them
and pleasanter
than in the case of
<^R&$p r some of the other
^^/ classes of subjects
enumerated. They are
not by any means so
easy to photograph,
however, during fine,
sunny days, when they
are full of playful flittings from flower to flower,
as might at first sight appear. In order to secure
a picture of a large white specimen, my brother
watched the behaviour of a number one fine sum-
mer's day until he thought he had succeeded in de-
tecting a favourite piece of wild thyme for them to
alight upon. Focussing this, he put a plate into posi-
tion, and attaching his pneumatic tube, stood as far
away as it would reach, but alas ! as soon as ever
the recording eye of the camera was fixed on the
flower, the butterflies took a fancy to another
WHITE BUTTERFLY ON THYME.
INSECTS AT WORK AND PLAY. 123
some distance away. The apparatus was changed
again and again, with precisely similar results.
At last, when on the verge of despair, it occurred
to our photographer to focus one favourite flower,
and then pull up all the others right round about,
and within half an hour of this being done the
illustration opposite was secured.
The frontispiece to the present work was
secured more or less by accident. We suffered
a very sudden fall in the temperature one after-
noon in September, 1901, on the Surrey hills,
and the butterflies were so benumbed by the
cold that they were compelled to go to roost
practically wherever they found themselves.
Going for a walk in the evening, I discovered
PEACOCK BUTTERFLY.
124 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
the pair of large whites asleep on a flower,
and rushing back for the camera, made a number
of exposures upon them, but to small purpose,
as development proved that there had not been
sufficient light whereby to make good negatives.
Determining to rise before the butterflies next
morning, I left my bed at daybreak, and went
forth with the apparatus, to find that a very
heavy dew had fallen throughout the night
Upon reaching the scene of operations I dis-
covered that the wings and antennae of the
butterflies and petals of the flower upon which
they rested were covered with minute beads of
dew. This greatly interested me, and after ex-
posing half a dozen plates, I stood by and waited
until the sun rose to see what would happen
when it had attained sufficient power to dissipate
the moisture. Directly the globules of water had
evaporated, the butterflies jumped up, and flew
away, apparently not one whit the worse for
their night's outing in unorthodox quarters.
The blue butterfly (Lycczna icarus} habitually
sleeps in exposed places where it is swayed to
and fro by the wind, lashed with rain, and be-
sprinkled with dewdrops, but always more or
less upside down, as shown in the illustration
on page 128.
The peacock butterfly is one of our largest
and most resplendent diurnal iepidopterous in-
INSECTS AT WORK AND PLAY.
125
SMALL TORTOISESHELL
BUTTERFLY.
sects, but by
no means easy
to photograph.
The specimen
represented
above was fig-
ured in an East
Anglian garden
in the autumn.
Although the
small tortoiseshell butterfly is said to be much
less common in this country than it used to
be, I know many nettle-clad tracts of land
where it may fairly be described as abundant.
In a sheltered spot near my home I have
watched members of the species on fine day-
during nearly every month of winter entering or
leaving a number of old rabbit burrows in which
they hibernated.
Curiously enough, during each of my five or
six visits to the Fame Islands I have found
specimens of this insect, alive or dead, in every
room of the ruins of St. Cuthbert's Tower. I
suppose the explanation must be that they are
carried across the four or five miles of sea from
the mainland by adverse winds, and seek refuge
within the substantial stone walls of the ancient
building.
The courtship of these butterflies is exceed-
126 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
ingly interesting to watch. One balmy April
day I was sitting down on a sunlit bank resting,
when a pair came and alighted close in front of
me, and went through a series of strange love-
making antics. The wooed one stood still, with
her wings erect, about two inches in front of the
male, who spread his gorgeous organs of flight
out to their fullest extent, and made them vibrate
BRIMSTONE BUTTERFLY
ON OXLIP
INSECTS AT WORK AND PLAY
127
in the same
t r emulou s
way that
many small
birds move
theirs during
the pleasant
days of
courtship.
When
this had gone on for a little
while, the suitor grew bolder,
and gradually lessened the
distance between himself and
the object of his affections,
until the beloved one suddenly
sprang round and faced her admirer. Then, with
one accord, they rose into the air, and after
enjoying a little playful winged excursion up
and down, alighted again, and went through
precisely the same kind of performance.
The handsome red admiral is a comparatively
easy butterfly to photograph late on in its autumn
season, because it is so fond of honey that it will
stay almost any reasonable length of time on a
smeared flower. Cupboard love is a powerful
factor even in the insect world, and I have had
a member of the species alight on my finger in
an open field to partake of honey, for the sweets
12?
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
of which I had made it long madly by baiting a
favourite flower near at hand.
As an illustration of what may be done with
a drop or two of honey, I have this very day so
tamed a bluebottle fly that found his way into
my study, by
feeding him
j udiciously
upon it, that
he would allow
me to carry him
BLUE BUTTERFLY AT ROOST.
all round the room
on my finger whilst
he was industri-
ously imbibing, and
even to touch his
well-groomed, much -
cared-for wings.
The powerful flighted, hardy brimstone, sup-
posed by some authorities to have suggested the
idea of " the butter-coloured fly," is an exceed-
ingly difficult creature to photograph. It is, like
other insects, subject to great seasonal variation
in numbers. In this neighbourhood it was very
INSECTS AT WORK AND PLAY, 129
TIGER MOTH.
abundant in April, 1902, but during the corre-
sponding month of the following year compara-
tively scarce.
J
130
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
SIX SPOT
BURNET-MOTH
CATERPILLAR
AND COCOON.
I have
on several
occasions,
whilst
walking along primrose-decked
drives in woods, been struck
by the complete harmonisa-
tion of this butterfly with the
flowers when it happened to
alight upon them.
Moths, although as a rule creatures of the
night, are much easier to figure with a camera
than butterflies, because, when found by day,
they are generally quiescent, and may be easily
attracted to a given spot during the calm, warm
hours of summer darkness by what ento-
mologists call " sugaring," which consists of
INSECTS AT WORK AND PLAY. 131
besmearing the trunks of trees with a decoction
made of rum, treacle, and essence of jargonelle
pears. They may then be photographed by the
aid of a magnesium flash-lamp.
The tiger moth is a handsome fellow, subject
EMPEROR MOTH.
to great variation in colour and markings. It
is the imago or perfect insect of the common
" woolly bear," well known in almost every part
of the country where anything in the nature of
a garden is kept.
During the summer of 1902 I had nocturnal
132
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
BRIMSTONE MOTH.
visits paid me in my study by several of these
lusty creatures, and when the shadow of their
wings, with an expanse of from two to three
inches, fell across the page of my book, it was
like that of a bat or bird. Throughout the
very rainy summer of 1903 I only saw a single
example.
The female emperor moth figured on the
previous page was found and photographed, just
after it had left its pupa case, amongst rushes on
the Norfolk Broads.
The seasonal fluctuations of insect life are
nothing less than wonderful. Two or three years
ago six spot burnet moths literally swarmed in
INSECTS AT WORK AND PLAY.
133
Caterham Valley. The caterpillars formed their
tough, boat-shaped, yellowish cocoons everywhere
on garden palings, doors, the glass of windows,
inside and out, and even on zinc pails in daily
use. In 1903 things were entirely reversed, and
both this diurnal moth and the common meadow
brown butterfly were suffering from a parasite
which is somewhat similar in shape to a dog tick,
scarlet in colour, about half the size of a pin's
head, and able to run about freely.
Although the brimstone moth is said to be
common, I have very seldom met with it either by
day or by night. The specimen figured herewith
SWALLOW-TAILED MOTH
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
was accidentally dis-
covered whilst hunting
for a redstart's nest in
an old stone wall in
Westmoreland.
I have met with
the swallow -tailed
moth close to London
on both the northern
and southern sides, and
one of our greatest
living authorities has
stated that it is not
uncommon in sub-
urban gardens.
Mimicry, or " the
close external likeness
which causes things
really quite unlike to
be mistaken for each other/' is one of the most
fascinating bypaths of natural history.
The upper parts of many British moths bear
such a remarkable resemblance to patches of
lichen that, when resting on the shady sides of
stone walls and the trunks of trees, they are
readily mistaken for something belonging to the
vegetable instead of the animal kingdom.
The wings of the lappet moth bear a wonderful
likeness to a dead brown leaf, not alone in colour,
ANGLE-SHADES
MOTH ON DEAD
BEECH LEAVES.
INSECTS AT WORK AND PLAY.
135
but also in shape. Those of the angle-shades
moth during diurnal repose are so folded as to
render their owner easily mistaken for a small
grub-eaten ; curled-up, dead leaf. The specimen
figured in our illustration was difficult to detect
ANGLE-SHADES MOTH ON GRASS STEMS.
when at rest amongst the leaf-strewn autumn
grass, and much more so when it reclined amongst
the dead leaves of beech twig.
I have frequently mistaken the small moth
figured in our illustration on the next page for a
sparrow's droppings in my garden.
136
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
MIMICKING MOTH ON ROSE-LEAF.
Many small moths mimic grass seeds, and
thereby, no doubt, frequently deceive even the
sharp eyes of hungry birds. The example depicted
in the illustration opposite is very difficult to find
when it has flown a few yards away, and alighted
amongst thousands of ripe grass seeds, which it
matches to a nicety in coloration.
The large white plume moth is evidently not
counted amongst the desirable edible trifles which
insect-eating birds hunt after all day long, for it
suspends its conspicuous body in all sorts of
avian haunts without appearing to suffer harm
through the publicity in which it indulges.
INSECTS AT WORK AND PLAY.
137
PLUME
MOTH
MIMICKING
GRASS.
times ap-
Many caterpillars are protected by mimicry.
The loopers, as they are called, fix themselves by
their claspers to a branch, and by making their
bodies stand out rigidly from it give themselves
the appearance of little twigs, as shown in the
illustrations on page 139.
The devastation wrought by
butterflies, moths, and beetles
in the caterpillar stage
of their existence
amongst plants
is some-
Z^>^ r \\\ - -
palling. Whole
forests are de-
nuded of their leaves,
and hedgerows transfigured
in their appearance from the vernal
wealth of summer to the beggarly
bareness and brown desolation of
winter.
Our first illustration (p. 140) shows
a portion of a ragwort plant killed by caterpillars
of the Cinnabar moth, and the second (p. 141) a
colony of caterpillars of the Buff-tip moth destroy-
ing a hazel leaf the ninth attacked in their all-
consuming advance from the end of the branch.
The speed at which these creatures can eat
is nothing less than marvellous. Last spring I
made some observations on the gastronomical
138 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
LARGE WHITE PLUME MOTH.
accomplishments of caterpillars of the drinker
moth, and found that in from five to ten seconds
they could cut a piece out of a coarse strong blade
of sedge grass one-sixteenth of an inch in width
and a quarter of an inch in length.
The beautiful caterpillar of the eyed hawk
moth figured on page 142 was found feeding on an
apple tree in my brother's garden. Although
not a rare insect, it hardly ever occurs in sufficient
numbers to cause real harm to the fruit tree
which forms its favourite food.
Of the three common British humble bees, the
species with transverse black and yellow bands
seems to be by far the most numerous in the
south of England, where, according to my ob-
servations, the entirely yellow kind is comparatively
INSECTS AT WORK AND PLAY
rare. As far
north as York-
shire the two
species are
very nearly
balanced as
to num-
bers, but
when we
reach the Uists
in the Outer
Hebrides the
LOOPER CATERPILLARS ON IVY.
positions are
entirely reversed.
The black bee
with the orange-
tipped abdomen
appears to be
much more
evenly distributed,
140
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
from a latitudinal
point of view,
than either of the
above-mentioned
species.
Last June, whilst
in the Western Isles,
I spent several days
on the shores of a
shallow loch, and
was struck by the
great abundance of
white clover, yellow
bees, and short-
tailed field - mice
and shrews. The
nests of bees and
mice were every-
where amongst the rushes and bog grass. Upon
opening several of the former, I found that the
single females in them always repaired the
damage by carrying the moss backwards.
Wasps are exceedingly interesting creatures to
study. They visit my beehive in search of any
unconsidered trifle they can pick up, and it does
not appear to matter whether they find the
newly thrown out body of a drone or a member
of their own species, it is cut up and carried away
to their nests for the benefit of the voracious larvae.
CATERPILLARS OF CINNABAR
MOTH ON RAGWORT.
INSECTS AT WORK AND PLAY.
141
Impregnated females hibernate during the
winter months, and it is interesting to note that
during this period of quiescence they hold firmly
on to something with their mandibles, and depress
the wings until their tips lie under, instead of
over, the end of the abdomen.
On the last day of January, 1901, I found a
torpid wasp inside my stuffed ox standing in
the garden, and placing it in a matchbox, took
it indoors in order to note its behaviour in relation
to tempera-
ture. In a
fireless room,
with the ther-
mometer reg-
istering 43
Fahr., there
was no sign
whatever of
life in the
creature.
When taken
into a heated
room, there
was no move-
ment shown
until 54 had
been reacned, PROCESSIONAL CATERPILLARS
at which ON HAZEL LEAF.
142
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
EYED HAWK MOTH CATERPILLAR.
temperature a concertina-like action commenced
in the abdomen, and a twitching action of legs.
At 55 the insect commenced to clean antennae,
at 56 to walk out of box, and at 70 to fly about
room quite briskly. I tempted it with honey
and other kinds of food, but in vain. At no
temperature would the untimely awakened wasp
eat.
Upon the temperature being allowed to fall,
the creature gradually grew less and less animated,
INSECTS AT WORK AND PLAY. 143
until 44 had been reached, when it retired into a
hole and went to sleep. After allowing it to
rest an hour or two, I again tried it with a rising
thermometer, and found that the second time it
commenced to stir at 48.
Although insects annoy, punish, and rob man,
they also do him incalculable service. Flies,
beetles, and ants all combine to dispose of the
dead bodies of animals, and accomplish their
task with such astonishing rapidity that it has been
asserted that three bluebottle or flesh flies will
devour a dead horse as quickly as a lion. The
larvae of this fly grow so quickly that in a single
day they increase their weight two hundredfold.
Beetles are par excellence Nature's scavengers,
and work, not in thousands, but in millions, to
rid the surface of the earth of noxious matter,
DEAD RAT LIFTED OUT OF GRAVE BEING
DUG FOR HIM BY SEXTON BEETLES.
144 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
RAT BEING BURIED BY SEXTON BEETLES.
and although engaged in a dirty occupation
always keep themselves beautifully clean.
One afternoon, a spring or two ago, I noticed
a dead rat lying in a field near to my home, and
happening to pass that way a day or two after-
wards, was surprised to discover that it had more
than half disappeared in the ground, and that
a small hillock of mould had been thrown up
near to it. Raising the carcase with my walking-
stick, I found a couple of great sexton beetles in the
grave beneath. The excavation measured five
inches in length, two in width, and two and a
half in depth. At one end the little miners had
made for themselves a small underground safety
chamber, into which they retired to rest, or for
safety when disturbed in their work.
For scientific attainments, affection, and cun-
ning few creatures in the world of minor beings
INSECTS AT WORK AND PLAY.
145
can compare with spiders. They are weavers,
hunters, aeronauts, telegraphists, preservers of
meat, magicians, devoted nurses, and many other
clever things, according to species and circum-
stance.
Spiders' webs are, as a rule, like mushrooms-
growths of the night. The individual figured in
the illustration below was photographed by
magnesium flashlight between ten and eleven
o'clock on a still summer's night whilst she was
in the act of commencing to build a web between
two palings of a garden fence.
It is only during early autumn mornings,
when everything is powdered, so to speak, with
minute beads of dew, that we really become
aware of the immense service spiders renders us
SPIDER MAKING WEB.
K
146
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
in clearing the air of a vast number of troublesome
flies. The illustration below shows the dew-
laden spiders' webs set on a very limited portion
of a hedgerow, and makes one wonder how any
winged insect lives to tell the tale.
Whilst in Scotland last summer, I caught a
beautifully variegated female spider amongst some
ling, and placed her in a matchbox in my pocket.
In a few days she laid a ball of eggs as large as
a dried pea, and embedded the whole in a beautiful
cushion of silk of exactly the same tint of yellow
as that of the paper by which the chip-box was
bound together. For weeks I carried her about
SPIDERS' WEBS LADEN WITH DEW.
INSECTS AT WORK AND PLAY.
in my pocket ,
feeding, her from
time to time, and
giving her an air-
ing on my hand.
She became quite
tame, but would
never venture far
away from the
matchbox and her beloved eggs. Whether
she had run the allotted span of her species,
or was overtaken by a premature decline of
health, I do not know, but she seemed aware
of her impending doom several days before
SPIDER CARRYING
BALL OF EGGS.
148 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
death overtook her. Instead of eating her food,
she sealed it all up, and made a sort of larder of
tinned meat for the consumption of the young, that
fate destined her never to see. It was quite pathetic
to watch the creature working down to almost
the last available moment of life and strength.
Some species of spiders form a sort of gossamer
umbrella or bower in the grass, and sit beneath it,
nursing a great ball of eggs, such as that shown
in the photographic reproduction on the previous
page. They exhibit the most wonderful devotion,
and will die rather than desert their charge.
Others place their eggs in a cocoon, and then
weave a silken cage of great strength right round
it. Inside this cage they sit and watch for enemies
that would soon work irreparable havoc amongst
their newly hatched young. Such a wonderful
wealth of affection have these spiders for their
offspring that I have known them, even when
badly maimed by an accident which has over-
whelmed their home, heroically set to work
collecting the scattered eggs and repairing the
damaged cocoon.
The artifices they employ in order to deceive
their enemies are nothing less than astonishing.
Whilst on the Broads on one occasion I dis-
covered a species which appeared to be conscious
of the fact that it matched in colour the reed stems
upon which it rested. It had a long straw-coloured
INSECTS AT WORK AND PLAY.
149
FAMILY OF
YOUNG
SPIDERS
ON WEB
BETWEEN
TOP STONES
OF A WALL.
SAME SCATTERING
TO SAFETY.
body and legs, and, when disturbed, ran to the
back of the reed stem on which it lived, and
stretching some of its legs straight in front of it
150 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
and the remainder equally straight and close to
each other behind, clapped flat and motionless,
and thus rendered itself difficult to see.
On the Westmoreland Fells in June the
stone walls are numerously tenanted by a medium
sized spider, which suspends its web from the
projecting " throughs," and when disturbed,
magically vanishes into a small grey cloud of
mist. By a series of indescribably rapid motions
it makes the web upon which it rests vibrate
until it becomes invisible.
When the little members of a family of spiders
leave the cocoon in which they have been hatched,
they spin for themselves webs upon which to
take exercise and enjoy the sunshine.
One day, whilst walking alongside an old
dry wall, I noticed a peculiar black knob between
two of the top stones. At first sight it appeared
to be attached to nothing at all, but a closer
inspection revealed the fact that it was a family
of baby spiders resting on a crude and scanty
web, which harmonised so completely with the
grey sky behind as to render it almost invisible.
After photographing the happy assembly as
I found it, I put another plate into position, and
touching one of the threads of the web, made it
vibrate. There was an instant stampede, and I
re-photographed the tiny creatures scattering for
safety as shown in the picture on page 149.
CHAPTER V.
BIRDS OF WOODLAND AND HEDGEROW,
W7OODS are frequently
VV solitary and silent,
||^W or restless with life and
/ITiB ringing with song, accord-
I \ 1 ing to the character of the
/ trees growing in them.
In Southern England,
where hazel - bushes, ash
stoles, and slender birches
grow in clumps with
bramble - clad glades be-
tween, and occasional oak
and beech trees sending forth their giant arms to
shadow primrose or bluebell-decked banks, there
will the ring dove clatter his wings and coo softly
to his mate, the nightingale ravish the pale
moonlight with sweetest song, the inquisitive jay
chatter and the willow wren warble all day long,
to say nothing of a dozen other species.
The deep shadows and solitude of pine forests
suit the habits of few birds, saving such as the
long-eared owl, and are generally painfully silent,
PHOTOGRAPHER ON
AUTHOR'S SHOULDERS.
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
YOUNG LONG-
EARED OWL.
except for the
occasional
twitter of an
adventurous
tit hunting
the needle-
clothed boughs high
overhead.
I know many
bird and wind-
planted woods of ash,
rowan, hazel, white,
thorn, and holly high up amongst the hills in the
North of England that are tenanted by few
species, excepting carrion crows, tawny owls,
sparrow hawks, and occasional pairs of missel
thrushes, chaffinches, and wood wrens during the
breeding season, although they supply vast stores
of food for the winter consumption of redwings
and fieldfares.
BIRDS OF WOODLAND AND HEDGEROW. 153
In such a wood I found a sparrow hawk's
nest during June of last year, and as it was rather
low down on the horizontal branch of a mountain
ash growing on a steep hill side, I determined to
try to photograph the bird at home. In spite of
these exceptionally favourable conditions, how-
ever, I discovered, upon fixing up my apparatus,
that the elevation necessary for the acquisition
of a good view of the birds' eggs even in the flat-
topped structure they occupied, sent me such a
long way up the hillside that the nest only figured
about the dimensions of a small hazel-nut on
my plate. The place was far removed from the
haunts of firewood-gathering village children, and
every tree was allowed to lie and decay where it
fell, so I set to work and dragged together such
trunks and branches as were movable by one man's
strength. For these materials I found lodgment
behind the stems of two tall old hazels growing
a little way above the tree containing the hawk's
nest, and by dint of much labour built for myself
a huge elevating stack of dead wood. On the
top of this I fixed my hiding-tent, and covered it
over securely with green rowan twigs and moss.
Several times whilst I was at work the sparrow
hawk gave expression to her uneasiness of mind
by plaintive notes uttered in the distance, or
demonstrated it by dashing at lightning speed
through the neighbouring tree-tops, and making
154 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
the smaller branches clatter and swing violently
to and fro in consequence of accidentally striking
them with her powerful wings.
Although the day was far spent, I could not
resist the temptation of going into concealment
and trying my hand upon the birds. To my
dismay, I discovered that the air-ball by which
both the shutters of the camera were worked
was missing. It had, in all probability, been
caught between two top stones of one of the
numerous walls I had climbed, and been forcibly
torn away from the pneumatic tubing to which it
was attached. I had no reserve air reservoir of
any kind with me, but thinking I might be able
to release the mechanism of the rapid shutter
with my fingers, I propped the slow one in front
open with a piece of stick, and got everything
ready.
In less than five minutes the sparrow-hawk
was back at her nest, but took her departure
again before I could, in my handicapped condition,
make an exposure upon her. She had espied the
lens, and for over an hour she darted back and
forth through the trees, saying distinctly un-
pleasant things about it. When she did settle
down to the duties of incubation, it was quite
too dark for the making of rapid exposures, so
I sat still awhile to listen, learn, and admire.
Presently I heard a stone clink ever so softly in
BIRDS OF WOODLAND AND HEDGEROW. 155
the bed of a dried-up beck at the foot of the hill,
and, peeping cautiously through a hole in my
tent cloth, I beheld an old hare limping daintily
towards me. She sat up and listened for a while
within a couple of yards of my pile of worm-eaten
timber, and then went her way in the same
leisurely gait in which she had crossed the brook.
Not more than ten minutes elapsed before she
was followed by a second, and then a third, all
travelling in the same direction to their common
feeding-ground. The last, like the first, sat up
and listened intently for a few seconds when
close to my place of concealment, and by way
of experiment I snapped a wee twig at my feet.
The slight crack instantly broke the spell ; the
hare bounded away up the hillside, and the hawk
left her nest in a great hurry.
As the place was so utterly secluded, I deemed
the camera safe enough from molestation for the
night, and, unscrewing the lens, put it in my pocket
and went away, satisfied that to-morrow had
something in it worth striving after.
Early the following morning I started out for
the lonely ghyll, under the depressing influences
of an unpromising change in the weather. When
I had covered little more than half the distance,
a heavy shower of rain drove me beneath the
friendly shelter of a holly tree. Whilst waiting
anxiously for the skies to clear, I heard a magpie
156 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
give voice not far away, and putting a blade of
grass between my thumbs, answered him in his
own vernacular. He was not long in responding,
but the discovery of a human being instead of a
member of his kind disagreeably astonished him,
and he promptly took his departure again.
Upon reaching my destination and going into
hiding, the day grew so dark and gloomy that
photography of any kind was quite out of the
question, so I determined to utilise my time in
the making of observations.
When the hawk returned, she stood for a
minute on the edge of the nest, listening and
making a careful survey of everything within her
range of inspection. As soon as she became
satisfied that all was well, she stepped awkwardly
forward, and, sitting down, raked her eggs under
her breast with her hooked bill and chin, and
finally hustled them into position beneath her
by the usual side to side movements that always
seem to give incubating wild birds so much comfort
and satisfaction.
In a very short time a heavy shower of rain
began to fall, and she found constant and annoying
employment in shaking the accumulating drippings
from the foliage above off her head and neck.
During the afternoon the weather improved
somewhat, and the male bird arrived upon the
scene, and commenced to call very persistently
FEMALE SPARROW-HAWK BUILDING
HER OWN NEST.
158 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
from a little distance. At first the sitting hen
appeared to take no notice whatever, but pre-
sently grew more alert, and, suddenly springing
off her eggs, went away to join her mate, who,
judging from the skeletons of several peewits
lying on moss-grown knolls and fallen tree-
trunks round about, had in all probability brought
her some dainty morsel. She had not been gone
many minutes before the male pitched lightly on
the edge of the nest and admiringly examined
the eggs. I expected, from his interested de-
meanour, that he was about to sit down and
cover them, but after gratifying his vanity, he
dashed off like an arrow through a vista in the
trees, and I beheld him no more.
The following day proved finer, and I suc-
ceeded in making a number of studies of the
sparrow-hawk at home, and then moved my
wood stack nearer still, and doubled its height.
The bird tried to neutralise this further familiarity
on my part in a strange way. She commenced
to fetch small dead birch twigs and place them in
position on the front edge of the nest, and I
photographed her with one in her bill, which, I
think, goes some way towards proving that the
species is capable of building its own nest, instead
of always adapting the old home of a crow
squirrel, magpie, or wood-pigeon, as some natur-
alists have contended.
BIRDS OF V/OODLAND AND HEDGEROW.
159
At this time I was conducting a systematic
photographic campaign in the North of England,
and hearing from my brother (who was working
in the South) that he had secured pictures of
SPARROW-HAWK SITTING ON NEST.
the chiffchaff and willow wren for our edition of
" White's Selborne," I made desperate efforts to
complete the gallery of the three confusing
British warblers by adding an illustration of the
rarer wood wren.
160 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
By the assistance of two farmer's sons, I
managed to find a nest belonging to this species,
but, alas ! it was in a small partly wooded pasture
tenanted by a huge bull, of threatening aspect
and sullen demeanour. More than one dangerous
experience having taught me never to risk an
unauthorised interview with one of these ferocious
brutes without a reliable lethal weapon in one
pocket and a cheque-book in another, I sought
hard and long, but in vain, for a wood wren's
nest in quarters affording greater personal safety.
It was obvious that I could not take my tent
or any other hiding contrivance, such as the
stuffed ox, into that pasture for had the bull
come along whilst I was in situ obscura, he would
have had me at considerable disadvantage so
donning my reversible jacket and cap mentioned
in the opening chapter of the present work, and
carefully loading a heavy army revolver, I sallied
forth.
When I reached the place where the nest was
situated, on a green grassy bank running up rather
sharply from a small stream, on the farther side
of which a number of tall larch trees grew, the
bull was nowhere to be seen or heard. Noise-
lessly fixing up the camera, I focussed a hazel
twig purposely stuck in the ground near the
wren's nest for her to alight upon, put a plate in,
j covering the whole apparatus with a grass-
BIRDS OF WOODLAND AND HEDGEROW. 161
green cloth, sat down to wait under the shadow
of a small bush growing close behind my appa-
ratus.
The bird appeared to be very shy, and con-
tented herself with flying uneasily in and out
amongst the branches of a giant sycamore that
almost overshadowed her nesting-place, all the
while uttering her doleful tway, tway, tway note.
Casting about for reasons to explain this shy
conduct, I discovered one. The bull had loomed
so large in my mind, that I had forgotten to
reverse my cap and jacket, and was sitting, an
island of dead grass brown in a sea of vivid green.
Directly a change was made, the wood wren
showed her appreciation by alighting in the bush
over my head.
From this moment our acquaintance ripened
rapidly, but, unfortunately, the bird did not
expedite my departure from the uncongenial spot
by giving away many favourable opportunities of
figuring her. Instead of alighting on the hazel
twig I had under focus when she brought food to
her young, she more frequently hovered over the
nest like a humming-bird for a second or two,
and then dropped straight down to it.
Although she received no assistance from her
mate, who was for ever reiterating his cluttering
song in the tops of the larch trees across the
brook, she had no difficulty in securing an ample
L
162 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
supply of food for her chicks, as May flies were
abundant, and greatly relished.
Between industrious bouts of feeding she would
frequently creep into her little domed house, and
take a rest, but with a feeling akin to that of
being in " the valley of the shadow of death/' I
drove her forth again and again to a resumption
of her labours and the affording of photographic
opportunities. Several times she utterly refused
to go to her favourite hazel bush in search of
insects, and either flew straight back to her nest
or alighted for a brief moment on my twig. She
grew so bold that on one or two occasions, when
I moved my hand stealthily towards her to see
how near she would allow me to approach before
stirring, she actually pecked at my fingers, struck
with her wings, and hissed like a little fury.
Up to this time the bull had neither put in
an appearance nor made himself heard, although
I knew he was in the small pasture ; but presently
his terrible voice began to make the little ghyll
rin^, and, fearing he would soon discover me,
either by sight or scent, I drew my revolver,
and made the last two or three exposures in the
best light I had had during the day, with the air-
ball of the camera in my left hand and the weapon
of death in my right.
Jackdaws, although to the casual observer
birds of the church steeple and ruined tower, are
BIRDS OF WOODLAND AND HEDGEROW. 163
WOOD-WREN ON HAZEL TWIG.
nevertheless very fond of breeding in cliffs situated
in woods and in clumps of hollow trees growing
round old farmsteads. My brother photographed
the specimen shown on the following page whilst
in the act of hammering some edible trifle which
he had just stolen from a neighbouring swine
trough.
This species is endowed with very small eyes, but
great intelligence. On one occasion, whilst stay-
ing at an hotel in Dumfries, I threw some pieces
of bread into the garden for the birds. One
jackdaw, bolder than his fellows, ventured close
up to the window through which I was looking,
for the food, and sensibly took away two crusts
with him at once into a tree, where he held them
down to a branch with his feet whilst he vigor-
164 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
JACKDAW ON POST.
ously hammered them with his bill into pieces
small enough to be swallowed.
The self-satisfied pair of young jackdaws
figured in our illustration were photographed
directly after they had left their home in a
hollow tree.
In little scattered woods, high up amongst
the Welsh mountains, also in the heart of the
Cumberland and Westmoreland Fells, a great
many pairs of redstarts may be found breeding.
They utilise small holes in trees, rocks, and old
dry walls, as a rule ; but one day, I was surprised
to find a nest in a little corner on a grassy bank
where a meadow pipit might have built.
Placing the stick, figured in our illustrations
BIRDS OF WOODLAND AND HEDGEROW. 165
on page 167, in the ground hard by for the birds
to alight upon when they brought food for their
chicks, I pitched my hiding tent close at hand, and
covering it with colt's-foot leaves, left it for a day
or two, in order that the redstarts might get
thoroughly inured to its intrusive presence before
I started my photographic operations.
It is an interesting problem as to how far
wild birds credit each other's fears and alarms
without some kind of support being lent by the
evidence of their own senses. Experience has
YOUNG JACKDAWS.
166 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
led me to believe that they do so to no great
extent.
I waited my opportunity to enter the place
of concealment whilst both the male and female
redstarts were away, collecting food ; but, un-
luckily, the latter returned more quickly than I
had anticipated, and espied me crawling beneath
the colt's-foot leaves and canvas. She straight-
way swallowed the small green caterpillars she
held in her bill, and taking up her station in an
ash-tree close by, rattled out her alarm cry with
as much earnestness and persistency as if I had
been a marauding cat. Presently her mate came
upon the scene, and in silence took up a position
beside her. She told him a dreadful tale of the
dangers of approaching their nest, but in the
absence of anything either to see or hear, he
evidently did not believe a word of the alarming
news, and flew straight down to my stick, and
thence to deliver the wriggling throng he held
between his mandibles to the hungry youngsters
in the breast of the bank. Again and again he
came, with such wilful and complete indifference
to his mate's warnings and entreaties, that she
grew tired of her occupation, and went away. In
course of time she ventured timidly home, and
I figured her with an expression of suspicious
alarm on her countenance, which contrasted
greatly with the bold, confident look of the male.
BIRDS OF WOODLAND AND HEDGEROW. 167
MALE REDSTART.
easiest to study at the
nest. The male bird
assists in the work of
incubation, but I have
never yet heard him
beguile the tedium of
his task by song, as
has been asserted.
The lesser white-
throat (p. 168) was
photographed whilst
taking a rest on her nest
Blackcaps, lesser
whitethroats, and
hedge sparrows are
frequenters of woods
of varying sizes and
thick hedgerows.
The first bird is,
in addition to being
the sweetest singer
next to the nightin-
gale visiting this coun-
try, one of the very
FEMALE REDSTART.
i68
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
BLACKCAP
ON NEST.
full to the brim of
well-grown chicks, in
a small bramble-cum-
bered Surrey wood.
The industrious
little hedge sparrow
attending to her
household duties,
after having given
her voracious young ones the food she had
brought, was also figured at the same place.
Not long ago I had an incubating member of
this species under daily observation, and when I
visited her one morning, discovered that she was
pathetically sitting on an absolutely empty nest.
Something or somebody had robbed her of her
five beautiful turquoise blue eggs, and thinking
that I might save her time and an amount of
LESSER WHITETHROAT
ON NEST.
BIRDS OF WOODLAND AND HEDGEROW. 169
heart-searching, I ran over to a chaffinch's nest
not far away, and borrowed two eggs, but although
I waited a goodly while in hiding, she never re-
turned, and I had to replace them in the nest
of their rightful owner.
One day, whilst making some ornithological
investigations in a small birch and hazel wood, I
accidentally found a garden warbler's nest in a
low whitethorn bush.
The female owner convinced me that birds do
not always sing from pleasure, for again and
again when I approached with the camera, in-
tending to figure her on the nest, she quietly
slipped off, and commenced to imitate her mate's
song, but in a weak, creaky kind of voice, not
at all approaching his fine mellow notes, which
were being poured forth at the same time in a
different part of the little thicket.
HEDGE SPARROW
ATTENDING TO HER YOUNG.
170 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
The building of a birch and hazel screen
behind which to hide the camera enabled me
finally to overcome the bird's suspicions, and
secure an exposure just before the breaking of a
heavy thunderstorm.
I have been singularly unlucky during the
last two breeding seasons in my efforts to photo-
graph a male red-backed shrike or butcher bird
in the act of feeding his offspring.
In July, 1902, I found a nest in a thin,
straggling hedge, containing such a well-feathered
brood of young ones that I deemed it expedient,
on two heads, to sit up all night. The advanced
stage of development reached by the chicks made
it plain that there was not a moment to be lost,
and feeding at dawn is generally fast and furious,
and consequently fuller of chances than ' later
periods of the day. I was too late, however, for
directly I fixed up my paraphernalia the pert
little shrikes left their old home one by one, in
response to the earnest invitations of their food-
bearing parents, and I had to content myself
with vignettes of them seated on elderberry and
other sprays in the dilapidated hedgerow.
Upon returning from the Highlands in the
corresponding month of last year, and sitting
down to write the present work, I was one day
astonished to see a splendid male butcher bird
revolving his tail on the uppermost of twenty-
172
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
eight telegraph wires immediately in front of my
house. Presently, down he glided across the
road, and secured an insect on a patch of grass
beneath the window through which I was looking,
YOUNG BUTCHER BIRDS
OR RED-BACKED SHRIKES.
and carried it off to his mate sitting on a nest,
containing four eggs, in a dust-smothered dog
rose-bush not twenty yards from my front door.
All day long he fed her, with hundreds of carriages,
carts, motor-cars, and bicycles rattling past within
BULLFINCH ON NEST.
174
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
YELLOW-HAMMER GOING ON TO HER NEST.
twenty feet on one side, and trains constantly
rushing up and down a double line not more
than fifty on the other.
Day by day I zealously guarded the nest
against the attentions of mischievous cats and
boys, the old cock giving me unfailing notice of
the dangerously close approach of either by his
harsh chack, chack alarm note.
In due season the young were hatched, and
both parent birds were kept busy in the com-
missariat department. The nest being in such
a public place, I was anxious not to attract
undesirable attention to it by fixing up my
apparatus in the busy hours of the day, so made
arrangements to commence operations at sunrise
BIRDS OF WOODLAND AND HEDGEROW. 175
one morning. To my dismay, I was baulked
again by finding all the young ones dead in the
nest.
The male 'and female hung round the place
for a week afterwards, the former feeding the
latter with all the tenderness and gallantry of
sweethearting days, thereby leading me to be-
lieve that they might attempt the rearing of a
STARLING GOING TO NESTING-HOLE.
176 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
second brood ; but I suppose it was too late in
the season, and they disappeared, to my great
regret, childless.
The bullfinch is one of the birds that has
distinctly benefited by the Wild Birds' Protection
Acts, and may now be fairly described as
numerous. Incubating females of this species sit
very closely. The individual figured in our illus-
tration (on page 173) allowed my brother and
our friend, Major Petre, to part the branches in
front of her without concern.
Bullfinches sometimes breed very late in the
season. Whilst in Essex some years ago, I found
a nest containing only half-grown young ones in
the middle of September.
The yellow-hammer is also another late
breeder, and a great lover of hedgerows and furze
bushes. Its short, oft-repeated song is probably
better known than that of any other British bird^
and, although accounted monotonous by some
people, is, I must confess, a welcome sound of
the countryside to me, in spite of its hackneyed
syllabic rendering.
The nest is generally situated on or near the
ground, although I have on several occasions
found it at an elevation of four or five feet in
hedgerows. Some years ago I discovered one
close to the permanent way on a railroad embank-
ment, where the sitting bird was shaken all day
BIRDS OF WOODLAND AND HEDGEROW. 177
WOODPECKER GOING TO NEST.
long by the passage of heavy mineral trains, to
which she did not pay the least regard.
Some of wild Nature's ways are not at all
commendable from a moral point of view.
Two species of birds in this country constantly
surfer loss by having their nests stolen from them,
M
178 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
ANXIOUS ENQUIRY: WOODPECKER
PEEPING OUT OF NESTING HOLE.
and made use of by two others. The ubiquitous,
bullying sparrow takes forcible possession of the
house martin's nest, and rears unwelcome broods
of young in it, and the starling persistently steals
the green woodpecker's home. I have watched
a pair of the last-named birds hewing away at
intervals for a fortnight, and as soon as they had
completed their nesting hole, they were impu-
dently driven forth to start their labours all anew
by a pair of untidy old starlings. Indeed, it is
doubtful whether many green woodpeckers are
now able to breed in England at all until the
starlings have been accommodated with nesting
quarters.
By selecting a nesting hole in a low-down
situation in the trunk of a tree, and building a
BIRDS OF WOODLAND AND HEDGEROW. 179
hiding bower close by, my brother was recently
enabled to secure the brace of illustrations on
pp. 177 and 178 of a green woodpecker about to
enter her home, and peeping out with an ex-
pression of anxious enquiry plainly depicted on
her countenance.
Not long ago, whilst seated beneath a decaying
ash-tree, watching an industrious wryneck feed
her family of lusty appetited chicks scattered
amongst the lower, and yet living, branches, an
old woodpecker of the above species arrived with
a young one amongst the upper dead limbs.
Their behaviour was both curious and interesting.
The old bird jerked her way up one side of a
branch, hammering and searching, whilst the
young one kept parallel on the other, with an
ever-ready mouth held round the side to receive
any lurking trifle that its parent might secure.
The nightingale is justly the greatest favourite
of all the feathered vocalists that throng the
grove. He sings as much by day as he does by
night, although comparatively few people seem
to be aware of the fact, and makes a model hus-
band, dropping the frivolities of song, and helping
his wife with a will to feed the chicks as soon as
they are hatched.
Towards midnight on the seventh day of May,
1902, we had a thick white fog in Caterham
Valley (where I live), yet, in spite of that de-
NIGHTINGALE.
BIRDS OF WOODLAND AND HEDGEROW. 181
pressing circumstance, the nightingales were
singing as blithely as if they had been exercising
their marvellous vocal powers under the most
cheerful conditions.
The power of vision in birds is very wonderful.
Owls can make far more use of even the rays of
a noontide sun than is generally supposed. One
day I found a tawny owl sitting on two eggs in
an old carrion crow's nest which had been built
in a small ivy-encumbered ash-tree growing on
a steep hillside. I opened the place out, so as
to obtain a good view of the nest and its contents
from an advantageous point on the precipitous
bank above, and left. Next day the sun shone
brilliantly, and, fondly imagining that I had
nothing to do but go and photograph the owl
sitting with her eyes closed, I sallied forth. To
my surprise, the bird took her departure directly
I commenced operations. Determined to give her
a fair trial, however, I fixed up the camera,
focussed the nest, put a plate in, and attaching
the longest piece of pneumatic tubing in my
possession, dragged it up the steep hillside, and
then went into hiding under an overhanging
crag ten or a dozen yards beyond.
I could tell exactly where the owl was located
in the wood from the chivvying and scolding of
the blackbirds and chafnnches, and by-and-bye
heard her uttering that rather peewit-like cry
182
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
common to the species. Nearer and nearer she
came, with her tormentors making an increasingly
prodigious din, until at last she flew on to the
nest, and sat down, with the sun blazing full in
SONG-THRUSH PHOTOGRAPHED
BY FLASHLIGHT
WHILST AT ROOST IN A HEDGEROW.
her face. I allowed her plenty of time in which to
get settled down, and then attempted to creep softly
down to the air-ball at the end of my pneumatic
BIRDS OF WOODLAND AND HEDGEROW. 183
tubing. But she saw me directly I stirred, and
instantly took her departure. I tried again and
again, but with equally disheartening results.
Whilst photographing the song-thrush repro-
duced herewith at roost by flashlight, one moonless
night in April, we accidentally frightened a member
of the species off a nest containing four far-incu-
bated eggs. I knew that the chicks could not with-
stand the fatal effects of the frosty night air for
long, and did not consider it probable the owner
of the nest would find her way back in the dark.
She must have done so, however, for two days
afterwards the nest contained four lively chicks.
NIGHTINGALE GROVE.
CHAPTER VI.
BIRDS OF BROADLAND AND STREAMSIDE.
A TYPICAL BROADSMAN.
apart from the
attractions of great
avian wealth, East Anglia is
one of the most charming
places on the face of God's
fair earth. To the toil-worn
man or woman in search of
such excellent restoratives
as peace and sweetness I
would unhesitatingly say,
" Go to the Norfolk Broads,
for there you will find the loveliest pages of
the great book of Nature lying wide open to be
gazed upon with never-ending wonder and delight."
I have slept on them when bleak November
blasts have flecked their dark bosoms from end
to end with zebra-Hke stripes of foam, and there
has not been a sound except the low cadent
rustle of a million reeds swayed violently to and
fro by the mad fury of the storm ; also in June,
when the mists of morning have lifted like an
elfin curtain and the rising sun has flooded every-
BIRDS OF BROADLAND AND STREAMSIDE. 185
thing with light and fragrance to the music of a
thousand happy birds, making the air palpitate
with their notes of gladness.
In addition to this particular part of Britain
being a favourite halting-place for migrants on
their journeyings north or south, according to
the season, it has a splendidly varied and in-
teresting list of breeding species, a few of the
most, characteristic of which I propose to deal
with in the present chapter.
The birds of Broadland may be roughly
divided into two classes those you see and hear
a great deal of and those you generally only hear.
The redshank belongs par excellence to the
former class, and in some districts its loud and
oft-repeated took, took, took note may be heard
morning, noon, and frequently all night long.
Although much in evidence, it is a shy, suspicious
bird when anything like an intimate acquaintance
with its domestic arrangements is attempted. It
hides its nest with consummate skill in the coarse
herbage of the marsh, and generally leaves it on
the first intimation of approaching danger. Fre-
quently the eggs are more securely hidden by
the bird's twisting and bending of the grass stems
and blades immediately over them into an all-
hiding tuft. And whether from design or mere
fickleness, several nesting sites are scratched out
in tussocks round the one actually occupied.
i86 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
Our first illustration represents a grass tuft
with a redshank's nest concealed in it just as it
was left by its owner, and the second secured
from exactly the same point after the grass had
been parted and the eggs revealed. When the
bird came back, she showed the most unmistak-
able anxiety to hide her home, and sitting on
the nest, busied herself in dragging blade after
blade of grass back to its original position with
her bill.
I remember once visiting a nest belonging to
this species rather late in the evening, and as I
neither saw the bird quit it nor heard her familiar
cry near the place, became apprehensive lest
the hiding contrivance I had built close at hand
had made her forsake it. Stooping to ascertain
whether her eggs were warm or cold, I was greatly
astonished to discover the bird sitting at home,
and although I touched her somewhat roughly
on her back, she did not appear to mind, but sat
quite still until I withdrew.
The female redshank manifests the greatest
solicitude for the welfare of her young. I watched
the individual figured in the full page illustration
reproduced on p. 189 covering her downy chicks
within a few feet of me during the threatened
downpour of a shower of rain. She made the
happiest, proudest little mother I ever saw, and
her tenderness was a subject for admiration.
1. REDSHANK'S NEST
CONCEALED IN
GRASS TUFT
2. REDSHANK WALKING
ON TO NEST.
188 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
Every time a wee enquiring head was thrust
from beneath her plumage she gently pushed it
back again with her bill, all the while talking to
the uneasy seeker after knowledge in soft, per-
suasive notes.
Her mate kept calling to her from a distance,
and she answered him while she sat in her loud
toodle, toodle, laloodle note, which sounded as if
it had come from a bird many times her size
after the small sweet voice in which she had
talked to her baby chicks.
A strange thing about the species is that
although the chicks will readily swim from small
islands upon which they have been hatched, and
adult birds can easily do so, they do not often
take to the water. When the young ones are
making a voyage in response to maternal wishes,
instead of joining them, as one would naturally
expect such a devoted parent to do, she flutters
overhead, and contents herself with giving advice
and encouragement to the youthful adventurers
below.
Another species which never fails to arrest
the attention of the visitor is the reed bunting,
or the reed sparrow, as it is more generally called.
The black head and conspicuous white collar of
the male give him a "nigger-in-clean-linen" ap-
pearance, which he shows off to the greatest
advantage when he is not undertaking his share
REDSHANK COVERING CHICKS.
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
YOUNG REDSHANK.
of the duties of brooding, by sitting on some
elevated spray and beguiling the tedium of his
mate's task in very simple but oft-repeated
strains.
Whilst staying alone in an old house-boat
belonging to a friend on the Broads last spring,
I had three pairs of these birds breeding within
a stone's throw of me, and determined to secure
sun pictures of some of them if I could. Having
no hiding contrivance of any kind at hand, I
set to work and built myself a stick and reed
house with backloads of materials which were
kindly brought for me by one of the most in-
telligent and enthusiastic ornithological marshmen
in the county of Norfolk.
As soon as the frail wind-shaken structure
BIRDS OF BROADLAND AND STREAM SIDE. IQI
had been completed to my satisfaction, I knelt
down on an armful of marsh hay thoughtfully
provided by my companion inside it, and waited
the home-coming of a pair of birds that had been
very busy all the morning feeding their family
of five hungry chicks cosily huddling together in
a nest situated immediately in front of my
temporary abode.
The female appeared for a long while to be
doubtful about the wisdom of venturing near
the great black eye of my camera, staring stolidly
from a newly-placed heap of reeds, but as her
distrust of it decreased, she grew bolder, and
gradually drew nearer and nearer, flying from
one elevated stem to another, until at last, to
my great delight, she pitched on the dead dock
stem shown in the picture on the next page.
After making a careful examination of everything
by a number of nervously rapid side to side
glances, she became convinced that the object
of her errand was worth the risk in carrying it
out, and making a series of half-hopping, half-
gliding downward movements, she quickly reached
the cover of the luxuriant herbage, where she
evidently felt safer. Running forward along a
kind of tunnel made by many journeyings, she
fed her offspring, and promptly went away in
search of more food. Once the ice was broken,
she came with increasing frequency and confi-
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
dence. The male
bird, however,
proved to be an
arrant coward.
Neither his con-
sort's growing
boldness nor his
sense of parental
duty would lead
him into what he
evidently consid-
ered the jeopard-
ising of his per-
sonal safety, and
he contented him-
self by sitting on
some coign of
vantage at a re-
spectful distance and plaintively reiterating three
notes, which sounded wonderfully like "Don't hit
me! Don't hit me!" a peculiar emphasis being
laid on the note represented by the second word.
This female reed bunting was the most ac-
complished little gymnast I ever saw. She could
place her body parallel to the upright dock
stem whilst grasping it with her feet, so widely
parted that no artist who had dared to commit
her grotesque attitude to canvas could have
hoped to escape the charge of exaggeration.
REED-BUNTING.
BIRDS OF BROADLAND AND STREAMSIDE.
193
When she came with food, she frequently
bore the appearance of having dipped her head
into the water for it, and nearly always gave her
chicks warning of her approach by a wagtail-
like note. The necessity for this note was difficult
to understand, because in spite of the facts that
the nestlings had their eyes open and were
feathering fast, they had no discriminatory sense
of sound, and would respond by eager mouth-
opening just
as readily to
the squeaking
made by my
camera whilst
being racked
in and out, or
a passing red-
shank's cry,
as they would
to their pa-
rent's voice.
Small dra-
gon-flies were
f r e q u e nt 1 y
brought along
as food, and
one day
whilst punt-
ing up a
N
REED-BUNTING,
194 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
secluded dyke, I witnessed the sight of a reed
sparrow hawking one of the large specimens,
which it dexterously caught and decapitated,
flying away with the head, and dropping the
wings and body, for which it did not return.
There is no place, in my experience, to be com-
pared with Broadland in May for cuckoos. They
are there literally in scores, telling their name
night and day to all the countryside. I have
seen as many as five chasing each other, whilst
north, south, east, and west of me others could
be observed flopping awkwardly down into the
long marsh growth, diligently searching for cater-
pillars of the drinker moth.
Noticing that when everything was saturated
with dew in the early hours of the morning
they sought for some dead dock stem or withered
reed rising higher than its fellows to indolently
perch upon, I reasoned that the birds might
possibly be induced to use some resting-place
within range of the camera, so forthwith secured
an old forked piece of blackthorn, which I thrust
butt end downwards into the soft ground some
fifteen feet in front of my place of concealment.
A cuckoo almost immediately showed its
appreciation of my efforts at providing a sub-
stantial outlook in the middle of a great brown
sea of dew-steeped vegetation by coming and
alighting upon it. I could easily have made a
BIRDS OF BROADLAND AND STREAMSIDE. 195
CUCKOO.
time exposure of any reasonable length on the
sedate creature had it not been for the awkward
circumstance that a breeze which had suddenly
sprung up was making the stick vibrate in a
most annoying fashion. This compelled me to
use my rapid shutter, the noise of which startled
the bird into instant departure. I had not long
196 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
to wait, however, before my improvised perch
was again utilised.
Once I heard the sudden flick of folding wings
close to my head, and peering cautiously upwards,
was surprised to behold a cuckoo sitting on the
roof of my hiding-place. The bird's frayed tail
feathers, drooping within a few inches of my
face, told an eloquent tale of oversea wear and
tear, but at the same time made me wonder a
little why such shabby old clothes should be
worn at the height of the season of love-making.
I attempted to thrust a hand carefully through
the sticks and reeds and thus secure my visitor,
but although she had hitherto been entirely un-
conscious of my presence, she instantly detected
the fact that there was something coming, and
took wing. Altogether I exposed five plates
upon cuckoos that morning, and four of them
turned out successful negatives.
The wee, gay, restless imitative sedge warbler,
or, as it used to be called in olden times, sedge
bird, is abundant in East Anglia, and common in
almost every other part of the country where sedge-
clad marshes or sluggish willow fringed streams
exist. I have met with it amongst a cluster of
two or three dozen sallow r bushes growing in a
little sequestered ghyll away up in the heart of
the Westmoreland Fells, where it was, as usual,
bubbling over with song and unalloyed happiness.
SEDGE WARBLERS.
ig8 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
During my last photographic trip to the
Broads I several times stayed up all through the
short hours of summer darkness developing plates,
and when the weather was fine the male repre-
sentatives of two pairs of these birds breeding
close to the house-boat robbed the situation of
its loneliness by keeping up an unending rivalry
of song. If atmospheric conditions had called
a truce in their war of notes, and I turned out
during the wee small hours when even the peewits
were at rest, and broke the deathly stillness of
night by tossing a bucket of chemical-tainted
water into the dyke, the splash immediately
woke the birds and fanned their vocal ardour
into full blast again.
Although the male sedge warbler makes an
excellent husband and father, he does not appear
to possess either architectural ability or ambition
to acquire it, for when his little helpmate is nest-
building with incredible industry, he contents
himself by idly following her about or the taking
of short, fluttering singing excursions in the air
just over their prospective home.
Whilst on the river Avon, close to Stratford,
a summer or two ago, with a couple of ornitho-
logical friends, we found two sedge birds' nests,
containing eggs, on the stems of young pollards
growing in the middle of a small island. Passing
that way about an hour afterwards, we were
BIRDS OF BROADLAND AND STREAMSIDE. 199
surprised to find that both nests had disappeared,
and their owners were flying round the vacant
sites, showing unmistakable signs of anxiety and
distress. A little lower down stream we over-
hauled two boys, who proved to be the robbers.
Some grave references to the Wild Birds' Pro-
tection Acts, and the pointing out of the fact that
both clutches of eggs were too far incubated to
be of any use for a collection resulted in the
speedy restitution of the property. Within ten
minutes of the time the nests were replaced their
owners were back upon them, and harmony was
restored all round, excepting, perhaps, in the
minds of the juvenile marauders, who proved to
have no intelligent interest whatever in oology.
The sedge warblers figured in the illustration
on page 197 were the foster-parents of a young
cuckoo, of which they seemed to be inordinately
proud.
For experimental purposes I borrowed a baby
reed warbler a day or two old, and, placing it in
the nest of these birds, went into hiding only a
couple of feet away. The young cuckoo had,
unfortunately for my purpose, passed the period
of casting everything out of the nest, but seemed
to be very desirous of trampling the irksome
intruder underfoot.
When the female sedge bird came home with
food, she placed it all in the capacious mouth of
200 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
her foster-chick, and then stood and gazed in
blank astonishment at the dusky stranger sprawl-
ing impotently in the rear.
Time after time, when not buried beyond the
power to do so by the lusty body of its com-
panion, the frail reed warbler manfully held up
its wee waggling head, and opened its mouth in
dumb request, but in vain for instead of giving
it a morsel, the old birds made several attempts
to lift it from the nest, as if it had been refuse
to be removed in the ordinary process of scaven-
gering.
The reed warbler, although having its grand
headquarters in Broadland, breeds in many other
parts of the country, affording it suitable con-
ditions of existence. It builds a beautiful deep
cup-shaped nest, which is generally suspended
between three or four reed stems over the water.
The specimen figured in our brace of illustrations
is a very poor example of the architectural skill
of the species, because of the lamentable fact
that it was found in a part of the country where
the birds are so persistently robbed that they
are compelled to make attempt after attempt at
housekeeping.
I had the owners of this particular nest,
which contained a brood of tiny young ones,
under observation for some time. The duties of
the household were very equally divided between
BIRDS OF BROADLAND AND STREAMSIDE. 201
the male and female, and carried out with such
devotion and affectionate tenderness as would
have won the admiration of the most matter-
of-fact student.
They fed their chicks with commendable
assiduity for half an hour, at the end of which
time the hen sat down on the nest and covered
them. In a few minutes her mate arrived with
a splendid collection of small green aphidae, such
as infest rose-bushes, and she got up and stood
admiringly on one side whilst he dropped the
food with great impartiality down the little
yellow lanes presented for its reception. After
gazing fondly at his offspring for a moment or
two, he hied away in search of more viands, and
returned with his bill almost hidden by the legs
and wings of a bundle of flies. This time the
female sat stock still, and opened her mouth,
evidently knowing that the food had been brought
for her.
Time after time they changed places, and
took turn and turn about at brooding and insect-
hunting. I noticed that the cock sat higher
and uneasier in the nest than the hen. He
frequently rose to take an admiring look at his
sons and daughters. Once, when both parent
birds were at work searching, the feeding waxed
so fast and furious that the chicks became sati-
ated to the point of refusal a thing which does
202
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
MALE REED WARBLER ON NEST.
not often happen in the bird world, and like an
economical housewife, the hen sat down and
held the creature she had caught in her bill until
such time as they should grow hungry again.
I have nowhere met with such numbers of
the graceful yellow wagtail as on the Broads
and in the Yorkshire dales, where the bird breeds
abundantly.
BIRDS OF BROADLAND AND STREAMSJDE. 203
FEMALE REED WARBLER
HOLDING FOOD IN HER BILL UNTIL HER
CHICKS GROW HUNGRY AGAIN.
Last May I gave the members of two pairs
of these birds a good deal of attention at arm's
length, and they yielded some well-repaying
information upon the subject of individuality in
the avian world.
The female of one pair was a poor specimen,
from a pictorial point of view, on account of the
fact that she had in some way lost her old tail,
204 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
and her new one was only half grown. This
bird was quite bold, and readily allowed me to
photograph her at her nest. In fact, she was
brazen, for when I placed my cap over her chicks
in order to try to force her mate into alighting
on a piece of stick I had fixed in the ground a
few feet behind, she actually alighted on my
obstructive headgear, and finally crept beneath
it to get to her young with food.
In the case of the other pair of birds, things
were absolutely and surprisingly reversed. The
male a timeworn-looking individual was so
courageous that he could hardly be driven away
from the precincts of his nest, whereas his
mate a beautifully prim little bird was so shy
that she never once gave me an opportunity of
photographing her. Time after time she sat on
some gracefully bent spray towering advantage-
ously above the rest of the marsh growth, and
piped shrill notes of alarm until the small dragon
flies and moths she held in her bill died, when
she swallowed them, and flew away down wind
in search of more.
I do not for a moment suggest that there was
any connection whatever between clothing and
courage. Shabbiness of attire and boldness were
mere coincidences serving to emphasise the more
strikingly how far individuality plays its part
amongst creatures whose lives and doings are
FEMALE YELLOW WAGTAIL
GOING TO NEST.
206 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
popularly supposed to be governed by mono-
tonously rigid laws of instinct.
Not one of the four individuals I had under
observation showed any disposition to give winged
insects the slightest quarter. If the outermost
MALE YELLOW WAGTAIL.
victim in a row held between the mandibles
managed to wriggle itself free, and fell into the
grass below, it was instantly followed and re-
covered. If a fly of any size passed incautiously
overhead it was pursued and invariably caught
by a dexterous vertical flutter.
Although the black-headed gull is a gregarious
BIRDS OF BROADLAND AND STREAMSIDE. 207
sea- fowl, I have on a good many occasions met
with solitary pairs breeding on small tarns high
up amongst the hills of the Penine Range, where
they were forty or fifty miles away from the sea.
Probably the finest colony to be met with in
this country is located at Scoulton Mere, in
Norfolk, where the species has bred season after
season for over three hundred years in unbroken
succession, in spite of the discouraging fact that
from ten to twenty thousand of their eggs are
collected every spring and sold for culinary
purposes. Directly the birds have re-established
themselves in their ancient haunt the fact be-
comes known to the inhabitants of the country
ior miles around, as they quickly resume their
beneficial avocation of industriously following
every working plough in search of grubs.
I have rather good reason to remember the
three illustrations of a black-headed gull appear-
ing on the next page, because their acquisition
cost me over an hour and a half's waiting with
my bare knees on a partially submerged piece of
board, which grew very hard and cold during the
latter part of my vigil.
My favourite of favourites amongst the birds
of Broadland is the sweetly pretty bearded tit, or
reed pheasant. During the last seven or eight
years it has been my pleasant fortune to study
the species at various times and with increasing
LOOKING FOR A NESTING SITE
BRINGING BUILDING MATERIALS.
SLACK-HEADED GULU,
BIRDS OF BROADLAND AND STREAMSIDE. 209
admiration, especially for the attentive hard-
working male. The individual depicted in the
illustration reproduced on page 211 shared the
duties of incubation with his mate, and throughout
the day I spent in their company they changed
places on an average once every half-hour. When
the male was at home he sat as if he enjoyed the
work and appreciated his responsibilities, but not
so his mate. She fidgetted all the time, tidying
the appearance of the nest, turning the eggs
over, preening herself, and anxiously peering
into the reeds and listening for the coming of
her husband. Every time his sweet, ringing, tsing,
tsing call-note sounded above the rustling music
of the tall reeds swaying in the wind, she seemed
glad, and vacated her post of duty with un-
motherly alacrity.
As my brother and 1 have publicly been
charged with something uncommonly like fraud
for publishing native-taken photographs of the
bearded tit alive and well amidst its natural sur-
roundings, and since it has been recently included
in a list of "Lost British Birds/' it is extremely
encouraging to read in a chapter, contributed to
Dutt's just issued work on the Norfolk Broads, by
the Rev. M. C. H. Bird one of the best practical
field naturalists in this country that the species
has steadily increased in numbers during the last
decade,
o
210 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
Concerning this ornithological gem, I would in
all respect say to those whom I may call the
black sheep of the collecting flock. Do have
mercy. If your zeal demands a clutch of eggs,
take one, but do not add three or four more to
your cabinet. Remember that to help in the
least degree to accomplish the extinction of
anything beautiful and interesting is a crime
against future generations, and the man who
deliberately robs posterity of a pleasure is guilty
of the most pitiful kind of selfishness.
The grasshopper warbler belongs to the second
class of birds mentioned in the opening page of
the present chapter. It is much and unmis-
takably heard especially during calm summer
evenings, but not often seen, excepting in the
early hours of the morning, when I think, out of
dislike for the dew-laden vegetation, it mounts
the topmost branch of some sallow bush or
advantageously high reed stem to exercise its
vocal organs. I have watched it turning its
head from side to side in the first rosy blush of
sunrise, whilst the grasshopper-like notes trickled
from its quivering throat in one long, unbroken
stream.
Although common on the Norfolk Broads,
where its notes may be heard to the greatest
advantage on account of the almost unbroken
peace and stillness, water is not such an essential
MALE BEARDED TIT ON NEST,
212 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
to its existence as good cover in the shape of
rank grass furze bushes and old tangled hedgerows.
When a grasshopper warbler leaves her nest,
she travels through the grass by such peculiarly
quick little mammalian-like movements that, taken
with her size and colour, she is absolutely certain
to make the novice exclaim : " Ah, there goes a
mouse ! " and often she deceives the experienced
field naturalist. In returning to her nest the
bird also progresses in short rushes, stopping
ever and anon to listen in a way very suggestive
of the tactics of a mouse.
I had a nest belonging to this species under
the closest observation for several days last May,
and exposed three or four dozen plates upon the
female owner, who became so convinced of the
harmlessness of my intentions that she would sit
quite still in spite of being uncovered, as shown
in our illustration, whilst I knelt in full view of
her, and less than a couple of feet away. Over
and over again, when I left my hiding shelter of
sticks and reeds to arrest the undesirable move-
ments of some recalcitrant blade of grass within
my field of focus, she would run and hide in the
structure a yard away, and remain there until
I had finished my outside work, when we simply
exchanged places for the taking of the next
photograph.
I hold the opinion, and I think that my
GRASSHOPPER WARBLER ON NEST.
2T4 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
experience entitles me to it, that almost anything
may be done with even the shyest and wariest of
wild animals by patience and kindness. Hearing
of a water rail's nest, I induced a friendly marsh-
man to help me to remove a reed screen, that had
been built elsewhere by an intensely practical
old gunner for hiding purposes, to its precincts.
We fixed the structure up some six or seven
feet away from the bird's nest, and after trampling
a narrow lane in the sedge grass and rushes, so
that she could see it, retired.
Big with excitement, I punted over to the
place the following morning, and creeping
stealthily into the tiny fold made by the four
walls of reed, prepared for action, and knelt
down.
In about half an hour the weird cry of a rail
close at hand broke the silence, and at the same
time rather startled me. It was repeated whilst
the bird walked slowly round my place of con-
cealment, and a torturing fear flashed across my
mind that she could see me. After a few more
minutes of almost breathless waiting I was
intensely gratified to observe a large red and
black bill darted with the rapidity of a bee's
sting between the blades of sedge grass at the
back of the nest, and instantly withdrawn again.
This strange performance was repeated scores of
times during the next half hour, and then sud-
BIRDS OF BROADLAND AND STREAMSIDE. 215
denly ceased. I was now overtaken by a mood
of despair, and charged myself with having
selfishly attempted too near an approach to such
a timid, suspicious creature. A measure of relief
came, however, to my feelings, when I espied the
bird's beautiful dark eye glued to a hole just beyond
the far edge of her nest as mine was to one in the
reed screen. Thus we stared eye to eye, with
nothing else of either of us to be seen for minutes
together. Gaining confidence, I suppose, through
lack of either movement or sound of any sort on
my part, she soon afterwards thrust her head into
view, as shown in the accompanying picture, and
then shyly withdrew it again as she had done her
WATER-RAIL COMING
ON TO NEST.
2l6 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
bill. After a wearisome repetition of these nervous
tactics, the bird's courage and my hope culminated
in her coming through on to the nest. The
absence of cover appeared to worry her consider-
ably, and she began to drag the rushes and sedge
grass that I had parted, over her. Loth to have
my chances of a plain, unobscured illustration
spoilt, I fired off my focal plane shutter. For
a moment the water rail seemed paralysed by
the noise, but, quickly recovering herself, vanished
like a flash, and did not reappear for an hour
and twenty minutes, during which time I was
enduring the discomforts of an almost tropical
sun overhead.
Further waiting and stonestill quietness on
this and the following day resulted in the acquisi-
tion of half a dozen good negatives.
The great crested grebe is one of the hand-
somest and most characteristic birds of Broadland,
and, although shy and wary in the extreme, may,
by the exercise of great care and the employment
of proper means, be studied at close quarters
throughout almost every phase of its aquatic life.
Upon being shown a specimen of this bird's
large raft-like nest a year or two ago, I observed
that its position afforded opportunities for the
making of photographic studies of the grebe at
home, if such an accomplishment was possible,
and evolved a plan. This was to induce my
WATER-RAIL ON NEST.
2i8 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
ever-willing and enthusiastic marshman friend to
fill an old boat to overflowing with reeds and
coarse marsh hay, and moor it at some distance
from the nest, but in full view of it. After the
craft and its unobtrusive cargo had been left a
day and a night for the loon's inspection, it
was moved somewhat closer. This method of
quiet ingratiation went on steadily for the next
three or four days, when I put in an appearance
with the camera.
Inducing my companion to go forward in his
fowling punt and place a ginger-beer bottle up-
right in the centre of the grebe's nest, I lowered
my camera overboard into the broad, where all the
full length of the legs of the tripod was submerged,
saving an inch or two at the top, and focussed
the bottle as representative of the bird's neck
and breast. The camera was carefully swathed
in litter, and I was buried deep in the boat
beneath it with just a tiny peep-hole commanding
a view of the nest and its immediate surroundings
and left to my fate and sufferings with a char-
acteristically cheerful " Good luck " from my
companion.
For five and a quarter hours I was lying with
my knees in bilge water, and every bone in my
body aching excruciatingly, whilst the loon chased
away coots and water-hens that incautiously
strayed too near for her liking, or leisurely watched
BIRDS OF BROADLAND AND STREAMSIDE.
the eye of my apparatus from the safety of her
reedy retreat behind the nest. She knew quite
well that the heat spontaneously generated by
the decaying mass of vegetation on and beneath
which her eggs were lying was doing everything
necessary for their well-being, and was therefore
in no hurry to return.
At last, when the limit of human endurance
had almost been reached, she cautiously thrust
her head through the reeds behind her nest and
set all my dying hopes aflame. With a wildly
beating heart I watched her come forward, jerk
herself out of the water on to the nest, uncover
her eggs, and sit down. Then I made a terrible
discovery. I had accidentally burst the teat,
releasing the mechanism of my focal plane shutter,
and was therefore compelled to lie with my arms
over the side of the boat, so as to be able to make
REED-COVERED BOAT
WITH AUTHOR PEEPING FROM
HIS PLACE OF CONCEALMENT.
220
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
good the deficiency with my fingers, and directly
I attempted to do so, became heartbreakingly
aware that my hands were useless. The pressure
of the gunwale of the craft on the muscles of my
arms had played such havoc with their physiology
that they were temporarily paralysed.
YOUNG CRESTED GREBES.
With breathless care I wriggled backwards,
and dragging my useless limbs into the boat,
waited until the power of movement came back
to them, when I cautiously moved in a forward
direction again, and fired off. The grebe instantly
took alarm, and by two or three incredibly swift
movements of her bill covered the eggs, and
GREAT CRESTED GREBE ON NEST
222 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
vanished like a flash over the side of her nest
without leaving a ripple on the water.
Although the result was good, considering the
length of time my plate remained in the camera
before it was exposed, my brother has by similar
methods to those I employed eclipsed it in
GARGANEY TEAL'S NEST AND EGGS.
obtaining the photograph reproduced on the
previous page.
I know of no prettier sight than to watch young
grebes through a pair of good field-glasses riding
like miniature zebras on the backs of their parents
as they swim majestically across the placid
waters of an open broad in the peaceful even-
tide. They take their first lessons in diving by
holding on to the plumage at the back of the
BIRDS OF BROADLAND AND STREAMSIDE. 223
necks of their parents with their bills, and being
carried below.
Whilst on the Norfolk Broads last spring I
had the good fortune on more than one occasion
to secure a good view of two or three specimens
of the rare and interesting garganey, or summer
teal, and was shown a nest full of eggs that would
have delighted the eye of many an ardent oologist
known to me in this country. A few years ago
the species was said to be encouragingly on the
increase as a native breeding bird, but I am sorry
to say that some of the best authorities in East
Anglia appear to be agreed that it is now mysteri-
ously disappearing.
ON THE BROADS
CHAPTER VII.
FRAGMENTS FROM THE SEASHORE,
N
A WELSH ROCK STACK.
O feathered friends strike
the imagination of the
beholder with so much force
as sea-fowl. Whether they
be seen wheeling in noisy
clamour round the summit of
some rocky headland upon
which they breed, or reposing
on the sunlit waves of the
ever-restless ocean, they are
things of grace and beauty,
and impress the mind with
a vividness that neither time nor circumstance
can stale.
Near the end of June, 1900, I travelled North
with the intention of revisiting the Bass Rock
in quest of photographs of gannets and their
young at home. When I neared North Berwick,
however, I met two ornithological friends who
had already been there, and they informed me
that my project was useless, as a number of
masons and labourers engaged in the construction
FRAGMENTS FROM THE SEASHORE. 225
of a lighthouse on the Bass
had ruthlessly robbed every
nest they could reach.
These disappointing
tidings were of
very material
consequence. I
knew perfectly
well that such
ON THE
CLIFFS,
AILSA
CRAIG.
nests as were not within
measure of the daring
of men whose heads
were inured to giddy heights would be useless
to me, hampered with photographic parapher-
nalia, so I straightway decided to cross over to the
west side of Scotland and try my luck on Ailsa
Craig, which is in every way a rougher and more
perilous rock stack upon which to study sea birds,
226 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
Arriving early the following morning at Girvan,
on the Ayrshire coast, I was fortunate enough to
secure passage in a sailing boat just bound for
the awesome rock to pick up a cargo of undressed
curling stones.
Upon landing, I induced my old friend Mr.
Thompson, head of the lighthouse staff and a
capital cragsman, to accompany me to the cliffs,
and photographed him on the way, in order to
give the reader some little idea of the difficulties
and dangers of the ground over which we had to
travel. Close by where the picture on the pre-
vious page ends, in the bottom right-hand corner,
the edge of the precipice begins, and if either of
us had made a slip we should have rolled over
this, and fallen a sheer five or six hundred feet
into the sea below.
By taking advantage of a goat track we
worked our way round and down to where the
solan geese breed on ledges inaccessible to all
but the sure-footed and daring. It is by no
means an easy task to convey an adequate idea
of the perils and difficulties of camera work on
such stupendous crags without laying oneself
open to the charge of exaggeration by people
who have never tried it.
Several times I stalked a gannet seated on
her nest literally foot by foot and inch by inch,
stopping ever and anon when she showed the
FRAGMENTS FROM THE SEASHORE. 227
CAN NET ABOUT TO FLY.
slightest sign of uneasiness at my approach, and
just when I had succeeded in fixing the per-
versely awkward legs of the tripod amongst rocks
steeper than the roof of a house, some unknown
cause would suddenly disestablish me in the
bird's confidence, and stretching forth her great
wings she would fly away out to sea. These
tactics were very tantalising after the great
strain of dividing one's most acute attention
between a timid bird and the fear of making a
footslip which would have ended in instant death.
However, they were the means of teaching me
something interesting to the student of flight.
I observed that when the birds raised their wings
228 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
preparatory to departure they frequently elevated
them in unison, and was fortunate enough to
secure a photographic study showing this initial
aerostatic action with some degree of clearness.
A peep over the edge of the mighty cliff
revealed vast numbers of gannets sitting on
their untidy nests of seaweed and dead grass far
below some in corners all by themselves, where
scarcity of room made them huddle in uncomfort-
able attitudes ; others so close together on ledges
that their tails touched, and all wearing a look
of dignified gravity. Thousands were in the air
flying to and fro along the face of the crag as
if on some serious business intent, whilst others
were indulging in the pleasures of a lazy winged
waltz, very bewildering to behold from such a
great height.
Towards evening the soft play of fading light
on the snowy white plumage of brooding birds
would have gladdened the heart of any artist
gifted with nerves strong enough to enable him to
ignore the haunting fearsomeness of the situation.
Razorbills appeared to be very numerous on
this particular part of the Craig, and, together
with the puffins, were constantly scuttling from
amongst the loose stones beneath our feet.
Groups of them sat on lichen-clad rocks on the
very brink of the precipice gazing stolidly at us,
and flapping their wings from time to time as if
230
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
RAZORBILLS.
to mark their pleasure in the declining heat of
the sun, which had distressed them to the point
of gaping during the afternoon. Our illustration,
which was secured by a rapid exposure, proves
that they do not move their wings in unison.
On the following day I visited a famous
kittiwake haunt called the Slunk, reached by a
climb over the top of the Craig, and the descent
of a long grass -clad slope of terrifying steepness.
Once down on the edge of the cliff, however,
you can walk with ease out along a narrow
promontory of rock, and, turning your back to
the sea, get an excellent view of a fine colony of
these charming little gulls at home, with an
occasional common guillemot, and razorbill, nest-
ling in peaceful harmony in their midst on a
rock face less than a dozen yards away.
KITTIWAKES, RAZORBILLS, AND COMMON
GUILLEMOT BREEDING TOGETHER.
232 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
In spite of the fact that two unfortunate
visitors had lost their lives at this particular spot
by a fall over the cliff, I yielded to an impulse
to visit it again the next day, partly influenced
by a doubt whether I had secured good negatives
and partly as a surrender to the alluring pleasures
of watching the birds at such close quarters. I
regret to say, however, that I suffered a great
disappointment, and was the unwilling witness
of a sickening exhibition of heartless cruelty.
A number of pleasure-seekers arrived on the
Craig that morning, but its rough, inhospitable
sides and dizzying steepness soon proved too
much for all excepting two young members of
the party. These two accompanied the chief
assistant of the lighthouse staff and myself to
the Slunk to see the birds, When we drew near
I was mortified to witness an old white billygoat,
belonging to the herd of " gone-wilds" living on
the place, suddenly dash from a shady corner
formed by the rocky promontory mentioned
above, and startle nearly all the kittiwakes off
their nests. Had I not already seen members
of the species to which this patriarchal animal
belonged walk across a stage on the corks of a
row of empty champagne bottles, and give other
proofs of their sure-footed nimbleness, I never
would have believed that any quadruped could
rush at top speed along such an awful path as
FRAGMENTS FROM THE SEASHORE. 233
this old goat traversed and live to tell the tale.
His wonderful display of skill and courage made
me half forgive him for the destruction of my
photographic hopes.
Fixing up my apparatus, I commenced to
make studies of such few kittiwakes as had had
the temerity to remain on their nests, when my
attention was suddenly arrested by the clatter
of a stone against the face of the rock upon
which the birds were breeding. My indignation
may be better imagined than described when I
discovered that the two visitors were engaged in
hurling stones at the innocent and defenceless
creatures which at their end of the jutting piece
of rock on which we stood were not more than
seven or eight yards away. Before I could stop
them, the inhuman young rascals struck a devoted
guillemot sitting on her egg with a stone as large
as a man's fist, and she rolled off the ledge and
went twirling a disordered bundle of feathers
down, down, hundreds of feet into the sea below.
This made my blood boil with indignation, and
I lashed out in language which was very much
more forcible than polite.
One poor guillemot had a baby chick, which
she was cuddling and guarding in the most
affectionate manner between her legs, and when
the shower of stones compelled her to leave it,
her look was pitiful in the extreme.
234 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
Mr. Thompson told me that if a common
guillemot has the unwisdom to lay her egg on a
ledge with such an acute outward slope that
even the advantages of its well-adapted shape
will not prevent it from rolling away to destruc-
tion, she pushes it as far back as possible upon
the intrusion of a human visitor, and, by a look
of pathetic appeal, plainly asks him to go away
and leave her in peace. Should the bird be com-
pelled to leave, and the egg in consequence, roll
over the cliff, she will often dive headlong through
the air after her treasure in its mad career towards
the sea far below.
I found puffins rather shy I think on account
of the fact that they were being caught by the
tenant of the Craig in nets spread over their
breeding holes amongst the rocks. They drive
the rabbits from their underground habitations
with merciless determination. Several times
whilst seated on a boulder making observations
after the light of day had grown too weak for
photographic purposes I was suddenly startled
by the piercing scream of a distressed rabbit
ringing out on the still evening air, and found
unmistakable evidence of young ones having been
killed by the powerful beaks of their feathered
persecutors.
The Fame Islands, off the coast of Northumber-
land, are visited every spring by vast numbers
FRAGMENTS FROM THE SEASHORE. 235
PUFFINS.
of sea-fowl on breeding intent, and some of the
happiest hours of my ornithological life have
been spent, whilst living free from the restraints
of convention, in the ruins of St. Cuthbert's
Tower, on the innermost of the group, and
watching the birds. Unfortunately, the time
limit of fifteen minutes with the birds, which
it has been found necessary to impose upon
visitors, has rendered it almost useless for the
serious student to waste his money in journeying
to the place.
It is the only station round the English coast
where eider ducks still breed, and protection
has apparently filled the birds with so much
confidence in the good intentions of mankind at
this particular season that you may stroke them
236
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
STROKING AN EIDER DUCK
ON HER NEST.
on their backs whilst brooding without in the
least disturbing many of them.
In the spring of 1902 a high tide washed a
number of nests away. One duck showed so
much reluctance to leave her charge that she sat
tight even when the waves were breaking right
over her, and leaving long tangles of seaweed
athwart her back. The devoted creature stuck to
her post until the shingle was washed away and
her nest and eggs sank beneath her into the sea.
Sandwich, Arctic, and common terns breed in
vast numbers at the Fames, and the prodigious
din they make when a lesser black-backed gull
drops down in their midst and seizes a chick
belonging to one of them is past all belief. The
FRAGMENTS FROM THE SEASHORE. 23?
arch robber heeds not their clamour, however,
but calmly swallows his victim whole, and flies
away. Robert Darling, one of the watchers
engaged to protect the birds, told me that he
had seen a lesser black-back swallow a young
tern that could actually fly.
Incredible as this statement may appear, I
can readily believe it, because I have watched his
relative, the herring gull (a bird of about equal
size and infamous character), gulp down a young
peewit so well grown that it nearly choked its
captor.
Although not birds of overflowing devotion,
individual lesser black-backed gulls sometimes
show extraordinary courage and pugnacity in
the defence of their eggs and chicks. One of
the keepers told me that during his long experi-
ence on the Fames he had been twice attacked
by members of the species, having his cap taken
off on one occasion, and his head so forcibly struck
by the formidable bill of the aggressor on another
as to render it sore for days afterwards.
The bravery of individuals in the feathered
world is sometimes quite astonishing. Even the
gentle, defenceless terns will occasionally summon
sufficient courage to attack vigorously human
beings intruding either by accident or design upon
the privacy of their breeding quarters. One day,
whilst wandering along the beach of a small
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
LESSER BLACK-BACKED GULL.
island tenanted by a colony of sea swallows, as
the terns are popularly called on account of their
long, forked tails and swordlike wings, I was
suddenly struck on the crown of my head by
what I at first supposed to be a pebble jokingly
hurled at me by some friend in hiding. It
turned out, however, to be an Arctic tern trying
to drive me away from the neighbourhood of
her nest, if such the mere depression on the top
240 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
of a quantity of flotsam and jetsam thrown up
by an exceptionally high tide could be called.
I said admiringly to myself, " Here's a bold bird/'
and, promptly fixing up my apparatus, focussed
her newly hatched chick and egg, attached the
longest piece of pneumatic tubing I possessed to my
shutter, and waited in hiding under an old sand-
coloured mackintosh. The courageous mother-bird
was back again directly, and the full-page illustra-
tion on the previous page was quickly obtained.
On the Megstone Rock, close by the Fame
Islands, a fine colony of cormorants breeds year
by year, in spite of the discouraging fact that a
high spring tide sometimes washes every nest
and egg away, and leaves the birds under the
painful necessity of starting their housekeeping
all over again. During my last stay in the
ruins of St. Cuthbert's Tower I had a cormorant,
which appeared to be a kind of social outcast
from the above-mentioned colony, under almost
daily observation.
Whether this solitary bird was a bachelor
unable to find a wife, or a spinster unable to
meet with a husband, I cannot say, but it appar-
ently had no aspirations in life beyond those of
catching fish and standing quite still in one place
for lengthy periods, giving its organs of digestion
an unimpeded opportunity of dealing with their
remains. Its meal hour appeared to have some
FRAGMENTS FROM THE SEASHORE. 241
CORMORANTS AND COMMON
GUILLEMOTS AT HOME.
not very remote connection with the state of the
tide, and an excess of industry in diving sug-
gested the timing of its efforts upon my watch.
I found that on an average it remained sub-
merged thirty seconds, and was five seconds on
the surface breath-taking between each plunge.
Directly hunger had been satisfied, or the chances
of catching any more fish had passed, it retired
to a favourite rock, and spreading out both wings,
basked in the warm sunshine according to the
beloved custom of its species.
There is always something strangely sug-
242 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
gestive to me of the skin of an animal stretched
out and nailed up to dry on a barn door about
the basking attitude of a cormorant.
On the Makestone Rock at the Saltee Islands
off the South Coast of Ireland, cormorants and
guillemots breed together in great numbers. Our
illustration represents a small corner of the rock.
The shag, or green cormorant, shown on the
opposite page guarding its downy chicks which
are after a certain age the most nervous creatures
known to me is a smaller bird than its congener,
the cormorant, and rather partial to dark holes
and corners in which to nestle. I have found it
breeding in caves so dark that you could not
distinguish it sitting on its eggs until your eyes
grew accustomed to the poverty of the light.
Naturalists of an older school disputed whether
this bird used its wings to aid propulsion under
water or not. My experiences in the Shetlands,
St. Kilda, and the Outer Hebrides go to prove
that it certainly does make use of its wings when
either badly scared or otherwise placed under the
necessity of travelling at great speed in deep
water. Some idea may be gathered of the depth
to which this bird can dive after its prey when
it is stated that it has been caught in a crab pot
lying forty yards below the surface of the ocean.
On the west side of Scotland the green cor-
morant or scart, as it is there almost universally
FRAGMENTS FROM THE SEASHORE. 243
SHAG, OR GREEN CORMORANT
GUARDING YOUNG.
called, is highly esteemed as an article of food,
and I have been told on good authority that it
is difficult to distinguish scart soup from that
made from the more orthodox hare.
The oyster-catcher is one of the liveliest and
most characteristic birds of the seashore. Its
2 4 4 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
conspicuous black and white plumage, orange-
coloured bill, and purple legs at once attract
the attention of the observer, even if it does not
advertise its whereabouts by loud and oft-repeated
vocal effort. Whilst campaigning in the Outer
Hebrides last summer, I determined to try to
photograph this shy and wary fowl at home in
its native wilds, and succeeded beyond my most
sanguine expectations, although circumstances
compelled me to set about my task with the
camera only nine feet away from the " sitter."
The extremely rocky nature of the shore, upon
which I found several scattered pairs of birds
breeding, made it quite plain that it would be
impossible to fix my little hiding-tent up any-
where near a single one of their pebble-paved
nests. Some kind of hiding contrivance of the
most effectual character for both camera and
operator was, however, an imperative necessity,
and as I had not my artificial rock with me, the
next best thing that suggested itself to my mind
was a rough stone house. I accordingly selected
a site which would give me the greatest distance
from the nest and yet preserve a good view of its
contents, and, doffing my jacket, promptly com-
menced building operations.
Although it was a case of stones, stones
everywhere, nothing but stones, few of those
near at hand were suitable for my purpose. I
FRAGMENTS FROM THE SEASHORE. 245
was therefore compelled to carry a goodly number,
that were almost heavy enough to have been
composed of iron ore, a great distance on my back
before the horseshoe-shaped walls of my photo-
graphic studio were raised high enough to receive
the roof. The problem of securing timber to
support the heavy stone slabs and block up the
doorway was solved by descending a deep hole,
broken, according to Highland tradition, through
the roof of a sea cave by one of King Odin's heels
when he alighted on the solid shores of North
Uist after his record leap of at least eight miles
to escape the fury of his irate queen. Here I
found plenty of driftwood deposited by the ever-
beneficent Gulf Stream, but getting it to the mouth
of the pit without assistance was another story.
For half the distance I could shoulder it and
ascend with some degree of ease and safety, but
during the rest of the journey the timber had
to be held in my arms whilst I slowly worked my
way upwards with shoulders pressed against an
overhanging bank, and feet on a thin layer of
crumbling rubble lying over a smooth-faced bed
of rock sloping with dangerous steepness towards
the bottom of the pit. Nothing would save the
wayfarer who made a slip at this particular point
from rolling down a rough slope for fifty feet
and alighting on a bed of tide-tossed boulders,
calculated to do some damage.
246 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
I managed to haul enough driftwood out of
the cave to enable me to complete the roof of
my hiding-place, and partly bar up the doorway,
before I left it to the mature consideration of
the oyster-catcher and her mate, who was in
constant attendance, ready, as I afterwards proved,
to do his share of the brooding.
Next morning, when I arrived upon the
scene the warmth of the eggs told an encouraging
tale. They had only just been quitted, and
feeling greatly pleased to know that the harm-
lessness of my overnight's work, although so
close to the nest, had fully established itself in
the suspicious mind of the wily oyster-catcher, I
commenced my day's work with a light and
hopeful heart. Putting the camera into position,
with the lens peeping through a hole left in the
stone wall of the improvised studio, I focussed
my cap, placed over the eggs to represent the
body of a sitting bird, and waited the coming of
a cowherd boy who was to tuck me up in my
hiding-place, and, by walking away somewhat
ostentatiously, deceive the wary fowl I wished
to portray into thinking that all human danger
had disappeared from the scene. In due season
Angus arrived, half hidden beneath the ample
folds of the largest and heaviest cloth overcoat I
ever beheld. This had been sent for the preserva-
tion of my comfort by a thoughtful Highland soul,
FRAGMENTS FROM THE SEASHORE. 247
STONE HOUSE FOR PHOTOGRAPHING
OYSTER-CATCHER.
whose kindness I shall ever remember with grati-
tude, for in spite of the fact that both calendar
and length of day declared we were close upon
midsummer, a bitter nor'-easter made the shade
air feel a good deal more like Christmas.
After a hurried visit to the hinterland of the
cave in search of more driftwood wherewith to
bar up the entrance to the stone house effectually,
I entered, enveloped in my friend's great home-
spun overcoat, put a plate into position, and
knelt down behind the camera. Angus securely
barred me in with the fragments of plank, and
then walked away, whistling some tune which
appeared to be urging all the world to cheerfulness,
24$ WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
In about twenty minutes the oyster-catchers
ceased their loud duetting on a favourite vantage
rock some sixty yards away, and the female flew
towards home. Through narrow chinks to right
and left of me I watched her walking round and
round my hiding-place trying to solve the mysteries
of the black eye staring in the direction of her
nest, and lessening the diameter of each circle
as she gained confidence. The blood of genera-
tions of true sportsmen within me throbbed with
excitement as I watched her creep closer and
closer to her eggs, for in pitting one's intelligence
and patience against the shyness and cunning of
a wild animal, whether bird or beast, there is an
unmatchable exhilaration about the moment of
overcoming.
At last, when my excitement was at fever
heat, she walked up, and hustling her eggs with
her breast until I could hear them chink on the
pebbles, she sat down, and I instantly made an
exposure, knowing by experience that a brooding
bird seldom sits long the first time she returns
to her nest with a suspicion that all is not quite
right. Her acuteness of hearing was so great
that, in spite of the constant booming of the tide
upon the craggy shore close behind us, she heard
me directly I commenced to change my plate,
and shot off her nest like an arrow.
There is something wonderful about the ability
OYSTER-CATCHER
APPROACHING HER EGGS.
250 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
of wild animals to differentiate sounds. I have
watched a blackbird sitting on her nest in absolute
composure whilst a violent thunderstorm was
shaking the very air around, and yet when I
made the slightest noise in my hiding-tent, erected
near by, she took instant alarm.
In about half an hour the oyster-catcher
came back, and repeating her circular peregrina-
tions of inspection for ten minutes, regained con-
fidence, and covered her eggs for the second time.
A peculiarity of birds that make shallow nests
is that when they sit down upon them they do
so very much breast first, like a ship sinking by
the bows, and work their eggs into position
amongst their nether plumage by a series of side
to side wriggling movements.
After I had exposed two or three plates at
intervals upon the female oyster-catcher, and
noted with pleasure that she was growing en-
couragingly bolder, the male came to take his
turn at the work of brooding. Whether the
presence of his mate gave him confidence, or he
regarded the mysterious black eye of the camera
peeping through the wall of the stone house with
greater indifference I cannot say, but he set
about the duties of incubation with a much
smaller waste of time than his mate. Here I
did what proved to be an indiscreet thing. The
light had grown very poor, and having aforetime
FRAGMENTS FROM THE SEASHORE. 251
OYSTER-CATCHER ON NEST.
induced many birds that were constantly moving
their heads from side to side to sit still and listen
intently while I made a time exposure upon them
by mewing like a cat, I held forth in lowest and
sweetest feline tones. The result was as little
expected as it was desired. Instead of staying
to listen, the brooding bird shot off the nest
instantly, and for a solid hour and a half walked
round and round angrily, picking up pebbles and
turning over small stones with his wedge-shaped
bill. From time to time he stood on an elevated
rock, and, facing the wind, puffed out his plumage,
and shook himself or stretched his wings as if
aweary of the whole business.
I had now endured over three hours of cramped
misery, kneeling behind the camera, with a bitter
wind whistling through every chink in the dry
252 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
walls of my hiding-place, and when neither
courage nor power of will could stifle a groan
called forth by the excruciating pain in my nether
limbs, I crawled forth and went my way, leaving
the birds in peace.
The behaviour of a ringed plover living close
by was such that I concluded she had a clutch
of eggs lying somewhere in the immediate neigh-
bourhood, but do what I would by carefully
quartering the ground and searching every square
yard of it within certain limits, I could not find
her nest.
Next day I returned to the oyster-catchers,
and by going through very similar experiences to
those detailed above, managed to secure a few
more exposures upon both male and female
covering eggs and near-by nest. Whilst in waiting
I had matured a plan by which to locate more
precisely the nesting-place of the ringed plover,
and thus enhance my chances of finding her eggs.
The stone runner, as this species is very appro-
priately nicknamed in Norfolk, is ever on the
watch for signs of an enemy, and instantly leaves
her eggs to the care of harmonisation with sur-
rounding natural objects when danger threatens.
A knowledge of this very sensible habit led me
to the conclusion that if I carefully parted the
planks barring up the doorway of my house at
the bottom, quietly wriggled through the aperture
FRAGMENTS FROM THE SEASHORE. 253
and then suddenly jumped up, I should see where
the sitting bird commenced to run from, and
have* my task considerably simplified. This was
done, and in less than two minutes I solved the
cunning plover's secret.
The little pebble-lined declivity was within
twenty yards of that occupied by the oyster-
catchers, and a marvellous thing about the matter
was not how the eggs had escaped my eyes, but
my feet, for in carrying stones during my building
operations I had walked at least a score of times
over and hard past the nest.
A difficulty here presented itself. The dipping
of one of the clutch of eggs into the water of a
rock pool showed that incubation was far ad-
vanced, and if I wished to figure the brooding
bird, immediate action was necessary.
I had not nearly finished with the oyster-
catchers, and although building materials were
scarce, I could not think of housebreaking there
in the interests of a new studio. As all useful
reflection soon exhausted itself on the matter, and
looking on makes nothing grow, I promptly com-
menced to roll such crags as I could stir into the
position of foundation-stones. These boulders
gave me an encouraging start, and I required it,
for I was tired, and the rest of the stones were
very heavy and far to carry. Although it was
late in the afternoon when I started my task,
254 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
the unquenchable fires of enthusiasm carried me
through, and I completed the new structure roof
and all before sundown.
The following day being Sunday, we all enjoyed
a much-needed rest at any rate, I did, after
taking one anxious peep and finding things going
well with my " sitters/*
Monday was hailed with excitement, and
provided an amply satisfying measure of hard
work. I knelt five hours with the oyster-catchers,
and secured a number of what turned out to be
successful pictures, our full-page illustration on
page 249 being one of them.
Angus arrived with my lunch about two
o'clock, and half an hour afterwards he had
shifted the doorway timber from Oyster-Catcher
House to Ringed Plover Villa, and I was tucked
up and waiting for the latter bird to come home.
Five minutes after my assistant had taken his
departure she was covering her eggs, and I
straightway added her portrait to our gallery.
The slight noise of the fast shutter frightened
her so much, however, that she did not venture
to return to her nest for an hour and ten minutes.
All this while she kept running round and round
the stone house, trying in vain to solve the
mystery of the strange sound-maker inside. She
frequently picked up pebbles in the same way
that the oyster-catchers had done, but, unlike
RINGED PLOVER ON NEST
256
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
RINGED PLOVER ABOUT TO WALK
ON TO HER EGGS.
them, did not stand in one posture for minutes
together listening and thinking. Her habit was
to make little hurried rushes with her head down,
and, stopping for a second or two, dash off again,
as if she had forgotten something. I stayed at
my post for four hours on end, and after exposing
a goodly series of plates by the aid of my more
silent studio shutter upon the bird on and near
by her nest, crawled forth, scarcely able to walk
home to my friend's house.
In a day or two both species hatched out
their young, and I noticed two habits apparently
common to them both. All egg shells were
FRAGMENTS FROM THE SEASHORE. 257
removed thirty or forty yards, and nest de-
pressions practically filled up by lining pebbles
having rolled down. Doubtless the struggles of
the chicks were answerable for the latter cir-
cumstance.
Not far away a small colony of common gulls
were breeding on a rough rocky promontory, and
I determined to try my skill upon the species.
Somebody ill-acquainted with the qualities of
sea-gull mind once invented a slang phrase in-
tended to be indicative of its extreme credulity.
As a matter of fact most of the members of the
gull family are far too intelligent to be imposed
upon, and they
make you painfully
aware of that fact
when you try to
photograph them
at close quarters.
258 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
In order to secure the study of the specimen
reproduced on the opposite page, I had to build
a third house, and such was the file-like sharpness
of the rocks over which I had to carry my building
materials that the ruin of a pair of strong boots
was quite completed.
One very breezy day I made a number of
exposures upon her from my place of conceal-
ment, but the poor light and sea spray deposited
on the lens, in addition to wind-ruffled plumage,
rendered the negatives useless. This was no
great disappointment to me, because the un-
favourable weather had not allowed me to hope
for much that day, and the bird's encouraging
behaviour had led me to do so for the next.
She came back to her nest fairly well, and
every whit of my experience with other species
went to prove that she would grow bolder
as time went on. My surprise was therefore
great when I afterwards discovered that she grew
shyer day by day, and was gifted with such
wonderfully acute hearing powers that she could
even detect the rustle made by a small diary leaf
when I turned it over during my note-taking whilst
hidden in the stone house. I ought, however, to
mention that, owing to the peculiar formation
of the rock bed on which she had built her nest,
my lens was only seven feet away from it.
In spite of the utmost care being taken, I
COMMON GULL ON NEST.
260 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
only made two or three exposures upon the bird
during two days, at the end of which time a
raven severed our further acquaintance by sucking
the eggs.
Whilst waiting and watching one day for the
common gull, I saw something of the unneigh-
bourly behaviour of my old friend the ringed
plover. She would not suffer any other bird to
rest within a certain area which she had marked
out for herself and her four downy tots of chicks.
It did not matter whether it was an oyster-catcher
or a rock pipit that happened to stray too near
her claim, she rushed upon the intruder like a
little fury, and speedily expelled him.
Numbers of rock and stock doves were breed-
ing along the coast where I was at work, the former
in caves and the latter in rabbit burrows on the
edges of the cliffs. I noticed several specimens
amongst the cave-dwellers bearing signs of arti-
ficial selection. They were either escaped
domestic varieties or the descendants of such
probably the latter.
A fine old peregrine falcon flew past me on
several occasions, and the fleshless remains of
pigeons lying about amongst the rugged crags
told their own tale of taxation and tragedy.
This bold marauder occasionally falls an indirect
victim to his own appetite, however, for a few
years ago one floated ashore dead., near to this
FRAGMENTS FROM THE SEASHORE. 261
place, with his talons inextricably fixed in the
back of an unfortunate wild duck.
Whilst hunting for birds' nests one day on
a tiny island at the mouth of a bay, I found a
rat's hole with a little hillock of limpet shells
outside, and mentioning the fact to my friend
Dr. Mackenzie, with whom I was staying at the
time, he informed me that he had once discovered
a rat in a strange trap on the same island. It had
been caught by the nose by a limpet, and held
down to the rock until the rising tide had drowned
it. He also told me that he had dissected several
limpet-fed rats living on this isle of fresh air
straight from the Atlantic, and found signs of
past tubercular trouble of a severe character in
nearly all of them.
The unsophisticated Sassenach is very liable
to attribute certain characteristics and idiosyn-
crasies to Highland and Lowland Scotsmen alike,
and occasionally receives surprising proof of his
ignorance. If I had been asked whether I con-
sidered caution and reticence common features
of Scottish character up till last June, I should
have unhesitatingly answered, " Yes, certainly."
During that month, however, I learnt something
of the unwisdom of sweeping generalities. One
day, whilst in the Outer Hebrides, an aged
shepherd and a boy of some sixteen summers
voluntarily helped me to search for a bird's nest
262
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
which I wanted to find rather badly. During
our wanderings up and down a rough, stone-
strewn piece of ground, I made the sporting
offer of half a crown to the finder. As the elder
searcher proved to be the lucky one and the boy
only found a seagull's nest, which I did not want,
I gave him a shilling as a sort of consolation
prize. By the evening the news had spread
far and wide that I was giving half a crown per
clutch for ringed plover's eggs, and a shilling for
those of seagulls, and a lad arrived almost as
soon as I did at my friend's house with a basketful,
which he was anxious to sell me. Poor boy ! he
had walked miles, big with hope, and had to
return heavy with disappointment.
THE BASS ROCK.
CHAPTER VIII.
WINTER SHIFTS.
HOW FEATHERED FOLK FARE DURING SEVERE
WEATHER.
WHEN the rowan and
blackberries have all
been consumed and bitter
November blasts come roaring
like hungry wild beasts out
of the frozen North, driving
worms and other forms of
lowly life to their sleeping
quarters deep down in the
bosom of Mother Earth, the
hardships of bird life com-
mence in earnest.
Vast multitudes of fieldfares
and redwings travel south to share with thrushes
and blackbirds such store of hips and haws as
a barren or bounteous summer may have left
upon the leafless twigs of hedgerows and bush-
clad common for them.
In spite of repeated failures, many people
profess their ability to forecast the character of
ROBIN FEEDING UPON
COCOANUT PLACED ON
HORN OF STUFFED OX
FOR TITS.
264 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
a coming winter by the abundance or scarcity
of wild fruits. A little observation will, I think,
suffice to show that there is not much in this
beyond the part played by mere accident. Nature
has little care to bestow upon the weak individual
of to-day ; her great concern is for the welfare
of the species to-morrow. The effect of this is
that we have now with us a stronger and healthier
stock of feathered winter residents than we
should have had if the severe weather at the
beginning of 1895 had not killed off all the weak-
lings and undesirables from a propagation point
of view.
Very few people know how hard wild birds
are compelled to work for a living during the
winter months, even when there is little or no
snow upon the ground, and the means by which
many species manage to survive during prolonged
periods of severe weather is, I must confess, a
mystery to me.
Whilst walking through the gaunt woods in
winter we often hear some hungry searcher after
a morsel of food hopping over the dead leaves
or diligently turning them over in the hope of
discovering a lurking trifle beneath. But how
much of this kind of work must be done before
a single meal is found it is difficult for a human
being to conceive. In order thoroughly to ap-
preciate the difficulties of birds trying to find
WINTER SHIFTS. 265
sustenance during December, January, and Febru-
ary, I have placed myself as far as possible, body
and mind, in the position of a famished bird, and
gone forth on a bleak winter's day into the woods
to search for food. On my hands and knees in
a copse composed of oak, wild cherry, beech, and
hazel, I have carefully turned over the leaves
one by one right down to the bare dank mould
below. Two square yards of clearing and eager
scrutiny yielded one small worm, one acorn, one
sound hazel nut, and a tiny snail. A second
search in a different part of the same wood only
furnished a single, half-torpid worm to the two
square yards. A fortnight later I cleared six
square yards in the same carefully methodical
fashion for the finding of a single beggarly hazel
nut of the smallest dimensions.
Of course, some allowance must be made for
the difference between the eye sharpness of a
hungry bird and that of the most carefully trained
human observer ; but even then the result of
the last-named search, side by side with a know-
ledge of the enormous appetite of, say, a robin
redbreast, makes one wonder at the large measure
of a wild bird's hope and admire its marvellous
perseverance.
Of course, when the majority of streams and
sheets of fresh water are frozen over, and the
earth lies wrapped in a thick blanket of undrifted
266 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
snow, the difficulties and sufferings of all wild
creatures are multiplied a thousandfold. Common
snipe and jack snipe descend from the hills in
order to probe the mudbanks of such small low-
land streams as still remain unsealed by hard
frosts. The jack snipe figured on the opposite page
was photographed in a ditch close to Redhill, in
Surrey, just as it was about to commence feeding.
During the prevalence of intense frosts the
majority of these birds leave our islands alto-
gether, but a few still remain, even when reduced
to such a pitiable condition that there is no
ground left soft enough for their long bills to
penetrate in search of worms and mollusca, ex-
cepting round springs, and they are so weak that
they will allow themselves to be taken by hand.
Wild ducks living inland experience great
difficulty in procuring an adequate supply of
food when ice and snow abound. Stubble fields,
water meadows, and shallow weed-grown pools
are all held in a grip of iron. Any food still left
in them is as securely locked up as the wealth of
the Bank of England at midnight, and they are
therefore compelled to haunt springs and small
running streams in search of their nocturnal
meal.
Such individuals as live within daily flights to
and from the sea love to visit small streams just
where they trickle into the salt water, and the
A
i yF
268 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
shore shooter, taking full advantage of this piece
of knowledge, baits such streams with bruised
corn during severe weather, and works sad havoc
in the ranks of the hungry fowl from some place
of concealment near by.
Wild ducks seek their food from dusk until
within two hours or so of dawn, when they
begin to wash and preen themselves. At the
first intimation of daybreak they commence to
fly back to the sheets of water upon which they
are accustomed to spend the day.
There is no prettier sight for the naturalist
than to peep through the narrow vertical slit in
a decoy screen and see two or three hundred
wild ducks scattered over the ice beyond the
open water at the mouth of the pipe on a sunny
winter's day. Some of the birds are sleeping
peacefully with their broad bills sheathed in
their back plumage, others stand about in little
expressionless groups, whilst here and there a
belated fowl may be seen busy preening itself.
I have noticed that inland wild ducks appear
to have the strange faculty of knowing during
the first onslaught of hard weather which of their
feeding places will be frozen over and which will
not, without even taking the trouble to visit them.
They are also somewhat fastidious in regard
to the direction of the wind. I have waited
long and patiently at a favourite feeding place,
WILD DUCKS ON ICE.
270 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
and then discovered that they did not arrive
because the wind was blowing strongly from their
daily resting tarn towards the weed-clad feeding
pool near which I was hiding. Wild ducks dis-
like flying with a breeze because it disarranges
their plumage and renders their flight somewhat
unsteady.
In the absence of acorns, pheasants that are
not hand-fed are very glad to make a meal off
hazel nuts if they can secure them, and when
hard pressed by hunger will even fill their crops
with such non-nutritive food as the acrid leaves
of the common wood spurge and the fronds of
the polypody and shield ferns.
Strong winds either accompanying or following
hard upon the heels of a heavy fall of snow are
a blessing in disguise to both red grouse and
partridges, because they bare ridges and expose
food which would otherwise be very difficult to
come at. A quiet fall of snow, followed by a
partial thaw and supervening frost, on the other
hand, brings black disaster. It hermetically seals
the food of these birds, and drives them famished
into all sorts of strangely unnatural places and
actions.
In 1895 grouse were shot in mistake for
wood-pigeons whilst alighting in oak-trees during
the dusk of evening miles and miles away from
the nearest moor, and were to be seen even walking
WINTER SHIFTS. 271
about the streets of market towns in the North
of England. Thousands perished of hunger, and
thousands more managed to keep life and feathers
together by availing themselves of the fruit and
buds of hawthorn bushes. A strange thing is
that they acquired such a taste for this kind of
food that they are, like the sea gulls and the
Dutch cheese on the Thames Embankment, loth
to give it up, for whilst in Yorkshire as recently
as last winter I saw several members of the
species, during quite open weather, tugging away
shamefully at the buds on hawthorn trees. Of
course, I saw red grouse, long before the memor-
ably severe weather in question, sitting in or on
trees, but never before actually feeding from
what they produced.
During my farming days I could never make
out the connection between an open winter
followed by a black cold spring and the rich crop
of yellow rattle which was sure to appear in the
summer. The explanation may perhaps be sought
in the following interesting fact. Yellow rattle
is a parasitic plant which preys upon the roots
of grasses and other herbs. It has a strong
upright stem, which will stand erect through
several inches of snow, and during severe weather
partridges feed upon its seeds.
The very severest of weather seems to have
no terrors for the hardy wood-pigeon. If there
272 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
is neither an acorn nor a beech mast left in an
English wood, turnip-tops and other field crops
that remain green in the winter months will do
equally well. Even if these were all to be buried
far beneath a phenomenally heavy fall of snow,
the bird would stuff its crop with ivy leaves and
berries, and retain its plumpness even on such
humble fare, supplemented now and then with
maize stolen from some wood in which pheasants
were fed.
Woodcock, like snipe, feel the hardships oi
long severe frosts more, perhaps, than any other
birds, because of their peculiar method of feeding,
and a perfectly wild member of the species has
been known to visit a Brighton garden to jostle
with thrushes and blackbirds for food doled out
by the hand of a kind benefactor. My friend
Dr. Mackenzie, of North Uist, says that during
frosty weather he has frequently seen members
of this species crouching on the high road in the
hoofprint of a horse, and has actually driven
over them whilst resting in such declivities.
The tempestuous weather experienced during
the last few days of 1894 prevented sea-birds from
getting a sufficient supply of food in the open
ocean, and they were thus driven in great mmibers
into harbours and estuaries in search of all sorts
of garbage. As the great frost which followed
tightened its grip, black-headed gulls, kittiwakes,
WINTER SHIFTS. 273
common gulls, herring gulls, and an occasional
lesser black back in immature mottled grey and
brown plumage, were driven higher and higher
up the River Thames by the insatiable pangs of
hunger. At last they arrived above bridge, and
met with hospitality as surprising as it was wel-
come. In spite of the intense cold, crowds of
people of all ages and classes stood on the Em-
bankment and threw crusts of bread, biscuits,
bits of cheese, and scraps of fish to the birds as
they wheeled and screamed, rose and fell, restless
as the ever-changeful sea from which they had
come.
I had studied every one of them at home by
lonely tarn-side, on frowning ocean crag, or the
pebbly shore of some far northern isle, and must
confess that they looked sorrowfully out of
place in the very heart of grimy London town.
To see these beautiful grey and white birds of
wind and wave floating down the river on dirty
rafts of ice, or seated in sullen rows along the
gunwales of deserted coal barges, was to me the
most distressing sign of marine beggary. Whilst
watching the birds one day I was greatly de-
lighted to catch sight of a diminutive ink-stained
printer's boy feeding the boldest of them on
crusts of bread which he was scarce tall enough
to see alight on the bosom of the river after he
had cast them over the parapet. Taking the
274 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
hint, I straightway walked over to a neighbouring
shop and bought a bag of fresh fish, which an
assistant, at my request, cut up into small pieces
for me. This food vanished like magic when I
reached the Embankment. It was, of course,
only a tiny drop in the great ocean of want, but
ere long I had the satisfaction of seeing my fish-
monger with laudable enterprise meeting the
dinner-hour demand for " gull food " by getting
parcels of fresh herrings and sprats ready for
humane sympathisers to buy and distribute from
bridge and bank amongst the starving birds.
Although we have experienced a series of
mild winters since those dearthful days, the
black-headed gulls at any rate have not for-
gotten their benefactors, and return season by
season, with unfailing regularity, to gladden the
hearts of many Londoners. They have grown
wonderfully bold, and it is an amusing sight to
stand on the footbridge spanning the sheet of
ornamental water in St. James's Park, and
watch them fearlessly taking all sorts of scraps
from the outstretched hands of an admiring
crowd. They appear to be inordinately fond of
cheese, and will catch the tiniest crumb thrown
to them in mid air almost as dexterously as a
swallow would hawk a gnat.
There is something strange in being able to
photograph these birds in their winter garments
GULLS ON THE THAMES EMBANKMENT.
276 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
clamouring for food on the parapet of the Thames
Embankment, and a month or two later be
studying them in their dark brown hoods looking
for a breeding site, or actually engaged in
building operations on the reed-fringed shores of
some Norfolk mere, as shown in the series of
pictures on page 208.
Seagulls sometimes show a wonderful amount
of cunning in obtaining food. A medical friend
of mine living near to Morecambe Bay told me,
a winter or two ago, that he could not make out
why a number of these birds visited his garden
regularly at the same time every morning. At
length he discovered that they came to dig up
bones and bits of fat hidden by a small pet dog
in different parts of the grounds. They waited
and watched the four-footed creature bury the
food, which was served out to him at a fixed
hour, and as soon as he had retired they ex-
humed it, and took their departure.
It occasionally happens that the very severity
of the weather provides starving sea-fowl with a
meal. Intense cold sometimes kills such fishes
as conger-eels and wrasse or red sea-perch, and
when their bodies are washed ashore they are
devoured by ravenously hungry birds hovering
about the tideway in the hope of finding some
edible trifle.
Frosts soon drive hooded crows away from
WINTER SHIFTS. 277
the fields, where they have been searching for
beetles and worms, to the seashore. Here they
seize shell-fish, and flying into the air to some
height, drop them on rocks in order that they
may be fractured and thus rendered vulnerable
to attack. Whilst on the west side of Scotland
in the winter I have watched members of the
species engaged in this interesting pursuit, which
was mentioned by a writer as long ago as the
twelfth century.
When pools beloved by water-hens are arm-
oured in ice and the adjoining meadows are
hidden deep beneath wreaths of snow, the birds
are sometimes emboldened by want to the point
of entering farmyards and scrimmaging with the
fowls, like boys in a football match, for a share
of their food. During such times of scarcity a
potato or an apple is greatly relished, and will
entice even the shyest of " sitters/' as our illus-
tration on the next page testifies, to pose in front
of a well-hidden camera.
I know a small spring-fed stream amongst
the Westmoreland Fells which is a favourite
rendezvous for wild ducks, snipe, and water-hens
during cold snaps, and one day, whilst wandering
along its banks, witnessed a strange accident. A
sheep-dog that had followed me from the farm-
house at which I was staying scented a water-
hen hiding beneath an overhanging bush, and
278 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
MOOR-HENS ON ICE.
promptly disturbed it. The frightened bird in-
stantly dived, and commenced to swim up stream.
I watched its leaden grey form disappear beneath
a long tangle of beet-coloured roots trailing gently
to and fro about a foot beneath the surface of
the crystal current. Quick as thought my hand
went to my watch-pocket, and I commenced to
time the subaquatic stay of the fugitive. Admira-
tion of the poor bird's enduring powers mounted
higher and higher until one hundred and twenty
seconds had been registered, when an element of
doubt crept into my mind. A further sixty
seconds convinced me there was something wrong,
so I rushed off for a stick, with which I poked
the hiding bird out of its place of concealment.
WINTER SHIFTS.
279
To my great regret it rose to the surface and
floated pathetically down the beck quite dead.
I have on one or two occasions released mem-
bers of this species apparently entangled beyond
the power of escape in thick bushes, but I never
once saw the trailing roots under which the bird
dived stir in a way to suggest anything struggling
beneath them.
It is difficult to conceive how our vast flocks
of rooks exist when the earth is as hard as rock
and no friendly ploughshare turns a clod from
Land's End to John o' Groat's. At such times
they feel the pangs of hunger most acutely, and
fly uneasily to and fro, racked by a continual
war between want and wariness. It is quite
ROOK.
2 8o WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
laughable to watch them greedily waiting on
some tree, telegraph wire, or stick heap at a
safe distance for a sparrow, with privileged im-
pudence, to visit the precincts of some dwelling-
house and fly off with a piece of food. Directly
the little brown forager has passed some imaginary
line of danger, the sable thieves give chase, and,
dodge and double as he will, they ruthlessly
harry him until he drops the tit-bit. If the
falling scrap happens to alight in a thick hedge-
row or evergreen, they hunt the ground with
an amount of care and persistency which is
astonishing even in a hungry rook, but never
appear to dream of examining any more elevated
situation for the missing food.
In spite of the conquering march of science,
squalid mounds of refuse from large towns lie all
over the countryside to offend the organs of sight
and smell. I have seen the crowns of such heaps
as had by spontaneous heat melted their way
through a heavy fall of snow literally black with
rooks, diligently searching for unsavoury trifles.
Farmers with conscientious scruples about the
use of firearms on the Sabbath have assured me
that these birds know when it is Sunday, because
they are much bolder in approaching sheep
troughs to steal corn on the first than any other
day of the week.
The jackdaw is a much more venturesome
WINTER SHIFTS. 281
fowl than the rook. He will, when hard pressed,
rummage even dust-bins and pig-styes in search
of any unconsidered trifle, which he will carry to
the top of some coign of vantage and hammer
into pieces small enough to be swallowed.
During ordinary winter weather, house spar-
rows, hedge accentors, and robins pay kitchen
sinks daily visits, and throughout rigorous times
are compelled to share with blackbirds, starlings
and song thrushes such culinary trifles as fortune
may wash down to them. A representative of
the last-named species used to visit my garden
every morning and afternoon for her rations.
One day a curious accident befell her. She was
wrestling strenuously with some grains of rice
adhering to the sides of a pudding dish which had
been placed on a sloping bank for the benefit of
all and sundry winged visitors. Whilst standing
on the lower edge of the utensil the thing sud-
denly turned clean over in response to her weight
and exertions, and entrapped her beneath it.
This little accident appeared to scare her very
much indeed, but in spite of it she was back at
her wonted time next morning in search of
breakfast.
A very pleasant feature of the growing in-
terest taken in the study of natural history has
manifested itself during recent years in the in-
creasing numbers of people who now feed
282
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
hard-pressed wild birds throughout the winter
months.
When the weather is extremely inclement,
almost any sort of fare such as crusts of bread,
crumbs, scrapings of pudding-dishes, cooked po-
tatoes, bits of suet, bacon rind, and meat bones
with something left to peck at still adhering to
them proves acceptable. I have known starving
birds eat even brown Windsor soap.
The flotsam and jetsam of the kitchen is soon
exhausted, however, and then arises the problem
of what it is best and cheapest to provide as a
substitute. For song thrushes, blackbirds, star-
lings, robins, and hedge accentors I buy quantities
of dog biscuits, which are soaked, crumbed, and
SONG-THRUSH COMING TO FEED.
WINTER SHIFTS.
283
HUNGRY SPARROWS
AT BREAKFAST.
placed in a hole chiselled in the trunk of a decayed
tree, or in a hole in the head of an old stump,
such as that from which the pair of hungry
sparrows are shown snatching a hasty meal in
the illustration above. This arrangement keeps
the feathered table tidy, and at the same time
affords a good opportunity, as will be gathered
from a glance at the picture, of making camera
studies of the recipients of one's hospitality.
An apple, pegged down when the ground is
not frozen impenetrably hard, exercises an irre-
sistible charm over many birds, and affords the
photographer ample opportunities of exercising
284
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
BLACKBIRD AND APPLE.
his skill.
The .male
blackbird
figured in
our illus-
tration in a
somewhat
doleful, al-
though cha-
racteristic
winter at-
titude, was a most courteous fellow, for when-
ever a female member of his species came along
to partake of the fruit, he promptly retired, in
order to give the lady an unimpeded opportunity.
Wild birds, like domesticated individuals,
appear occasionally to strike up friendships with
members of other species than their own. The
house sparrow and hedge sparrow figured in
the accom-
panying vig-
nette were
inseparable
friends, and
constantly
fed together
all last win-
ter in my
garden. HEDGE AND HOUSE SPARROWS.
WINTER SHIFTS. 285
In looking after the welfare of garden species
during severe weather, it should never be for-
gotten* that they are at such times almost as
much in need of water as food.
Some birds enjoy a bath even in the coldest of
weather, and to watch a robin or an old cock
starling delightedly splashing about in a dish of
water with lumps of ice floating on the surface,
immediately before retiring to roost, when both
a steely-blue sky and the thermometer foretell
another night of black frost, is enough to make
the hardiest observer shiver.
One would think that the mercury must
occasionally, however, fall too low for such
winter ablutions, for in the memorable first two
months of 1895 the thermometer fell to 20
below zero in Scotland. Kingfishers were found
frozen to iron rails, wild geese to the ground,
and robins were seen to enter cowsheds in order
to sit on the backs of animals for the sake of
imparted warmth.
For the tits I buy small cocoanuts, saw a piece
off either end, and making a groove round the
centre, suspend them in the garden. Great, blue,
cole, and marsh tits all love this kind of fare, once
they taste it, and the series of photographs of the
first-named species reproduced on the two following
pages testifies to their antics and the amount of
fun they provide whilst attacking the food.
286
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
INSPECTING.
TASTING.
to see whether
he or she may
not partake.
In the
depth of win-
ter this is sure
to lead to the
stronger of the two birds
bullying and chasing the
weaker away with a great
display of anger. Strangely
enough, however, after about
the middle of February the
males become much more
docile and companionable
towards the females, which
Surprisingly soon after a
cocoanut has been placed in
position, a blue tit will find
it, and be chased away by a
great tit, which, after a hur-
ried sort of examination com-
mon to the whole family, will
drop down to one of the
holes made by the saw and
chisel a piece
of the fruit
off with his
powerful bill
and taste it.
By-and-by
another mem-
ber of the
species is sure
to come along
ENJOYING.
WINTER SHIFTS.
287
ANOTHER ARRIVAL, AND SUSPICION.
would lead one
to believe that
there was, after
all, some observed
germ of fact in
the legend anent
St. Valentine's
being the birds'
wedding-day. At
any rate, I never
remember seeing
two great tits partaking amicably of the same
piece of food . before about the middle of
February.
A source of great trouble and often downright
annoyance to a wedded pair of oxeyes feeding
from respective ends of the same cocoanut is
that whenever one bird puts its head inside to
peck, it darkens the interior, and makes its com-
panion withdraw in a state of alarmed suspicion.
The fourth picture
in our series was
secured at such a
moment, and in-
cidentally proves
the wonderful
fidelity of the
camera in record-
ing the ruffling of CONFIDENCE.
288
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
HAZEL NUTS SPLIT BY GREAT TITS.
the plumage at the back of the bird's head by
a gust of east wind. The last illustration of the
series tells its own story of confident enjoyment.
On boisterous wet days in March and the
commencement of April great tits come to my
garden regularly for food, but on fine days they
appear to occupy themselves in searching for and
splitting hazel-nuts in a neighbouring wood. The
latter part of this task is accomplished by holding
the nut down upon some branch with their
powerful feet, and raining a quick succession of
powerful blows along the line of least resistance,
which the birds are quick to discover is where
the forces of germination would rend asunder the
two halves of the shell in a few weeks.
BLUE TIT
T
290 WILD NATURE'S WAYS,
Occasionally a nut under treatment will slip
from the grasp of an industrious oxeye, strike a
twig in its descent, and shooting off at a tangent,
escape the sharp eye of the bird by rolling beneath
a curled dead leaf. Under such circumstances I
have watched a great tit search long and dili-
gently in vain for the lost nut.
In times of great scarcity I have seen a member
of this species tugging away like a miniature
carrion crow at the remains of a dead rabbit,
whilst not ten yards off a marsh tit was hurriedly
chipping and chiselling old oak apples to pieces,
in the hope of finding some edible trifle, such as
a spider, lurking within.
Blue tits seem to be endowed with good
memories, for as soon as their natural food grows
scarce in the woodlands they resort to gardens
where they have aforetime fed liberally upon suet
provided by some sympathetic human friend.
Greenfinches, like their relatives the chaffinches,
are, during hard weather, birds of the farmyard,
and no grain of corn showing sufficient of itself
to establish its identity escapes their sharp eyes.
They are inordinately fond of sunflower seeds,
and, remembering this, I always carefully harvest
all my sunflower heads in the autumn, and preserve
them for winter fare. It is quite laughable to see a
slow heavy old cock greenfinch sitting (or, rather,
lying) down upon one of these, steadily and
WINTER SHIFTS. 291
deliberately extracting seed after seed, and separ-
ating the dark husk from the snowy fruit inside.
He Is a most selfish bird, and if a companion
comes along to partake of a share the fellow in
possession angrily opens his mouth, spreads his
wings, and threatens the most dreadful things,
but this is generally mere bluster, and it is seldom
followed by a square and earnest battle. Some-
times an impudent old oxeye will rush in and
extract a seed from beneath the very bill of the
astonished greenfinch.
Starlings are often reduced to terrible straits
of privation by prolonged periods of severe
weather. At such times the flayed carcase of a
sheep or cow lying on the snow is a veritable
godsend. It is visited all day long by a busy,
tugging, chattering crowd, full of bickerings and
false alarms. When hard pressed by hunger,
these birds will even descend dark rabbit burrows
in search of food.
The frail brown wren hunts diligently through-
out the winter months for torpid flies, spiders,
and other small deer lurking amongst the moss-
clad stones of old dry walls, under banks, and
stumps of trees.
Robin redbreasts seem to spend the whole of
the winter months in fighting and feeding, with
a little snatch of song now and again in praise of
their accomplishments in both directions. It is
292
WILD NATURE'S WAYS.
an exceedingly lucky thing for the human race
that its members are not troubled with appetites
similar in capacity to those of robins. One 'day
I dug worms for a redbreast that kindly allows
me to share the tenancy of my garden with him,
and by a process of careful calculation I worked
out a sum which showed that if an ordinary
healthy man possessed an appetite similar to that
of a redbreast, he would be able to consume a
barrowload of sausages every day.
A FAVOURITE DITCH
FOR SNIPE IN WINTER.
INDEX.
Accidents to Birds, Strange, 76, 77, 277
Actions of Birds that make Shallow
Nests, 250
Affection, Maternal, of Starling, 49
of a Common Guillemot, 233
Ailsa Craig, 225
, Dangers of, 226
Architecture of Reed Warbler, 200
Bass Rock, 224
Bees, Humble, 138
, , How they Repair Damage
to their Nests, 140
, , Stealing Wrens' Nests, 79
Beetles Nature's Scavengers, 143
, Sexton, Burying a Rat, 144
Bird-food, Searching for, in Winter, 264
Bird-life in Woods, 151
Bird Robbery, 67
Birds, Actions of, that make Shallow
Nests, 250
, Acuteness of Hearing of, 248
and Favourite Breeding Haunts 64
Feline Sounds, 251
Insects, 68
New Mates, 66
Severe Frosts, 285
their Food in Winter 281
Wooden Eggs, 50
Attacking Human Beings 237
Bathing in Winter, 285
Credulity of, 165
Cruelty to, 233
Exchanging Young of, 74
Hardships of, 264
How to Feed, in Winter 282
Individuality of, 203
Intelligence and Affection of 74
of Broadland, 185
Different Species Making Use
of Same Nest, 67
, Strange Accidents that Happen to,
76
that Appear to Court Disaster, 62
do not Sing from Pleasure,
169
Steal, 178
' Wedding Day, 287
, Vision of, 181, 183
Blackbird Admiring her Chicks 44
, Courtesy of a, 284
Nesting in a Target Pit, 62
, Securing a Series of Photographs
Blackbird's Nest in Tin Can, 63
Blackcap, 167
Bluebottle Fly and Honey, 128
Broadland as a Holiday Resort, 184
, Birds of. 185
Bullets, Ricochet, 81
Bullfinch a Close Sitter, 176
Late Breeder, 176
and Wild Birds' Protection Acts,
176
Bullfinches and Bathing, 46
Bullhead Catching a Loach 85
Bunting, Reed, 188
, , Habits of, 191
Butterflies and Dewdrops, 123
and Honey, 127
Blue, 124
Courtship of, 125
Difficulties of Photographing, 122
Peacock, 124
Red Admiral, 127
Study of, 122
Tortoiseshell, 125
, at Fame Islands, 125
Butterfly, Brimstone, 128
, , and Primroses, 130
Caterpillars, 137
and Ragwort, 137
, Appetites of, 137
of Eyed Hawk Moth, 138
Cattle Pond, Stuffed Ox at, 8
Clothes, Reversible, for Natural History
Studies, 44, 160
Cormorant, Diving Habits of, 242
, Green, Nervousness of Young, 242
Soup, 242
Cormorants at Home, 240
, Feeding Habits of, 240
Corncrakes, Habits of, 109
Corncrake's Nest, 107
Cowardice of Reed Sparrow, 192
Credulity of Birds, 165
Crows, Hooded, and their Food in
Winter, 277
Cruelty to Birds, 233
Cuckoos, Ease with which they impose
upon Small Birds, 51
, Photographing Adult, 194
, Plumage of, 196
Curiosities of Wild Life, 53
Curlew and Sheep, 31
, Deceiving a, 28
Eggs, 31
, Photographing a, 27
Daisies Asleep and Awake, 90
Deceiving Wild Creatures, 1
Devastation Wrought by Insects, 137
Dipper, Curiosity of a, 24
, Song of, 23
Dippers, 22
294
INDEX.
Dippers, Difficulty of Photographing,
, Strange Behaviour of, 24, 26
Dove, Ring, 11
, Stock, Curious Nesting Places
Chosen by the, 64
, Turtle, 11
Doves, Rock, 260
, Stock, 260
Dragonflies, 193
Drink, How Doves, 11
Duck, Wild, Feeding Habits of, 266
Ducks and Moulting, 78
, Wild, and Wind, 268
, , in Winter, 268
Eggs, Artificial, and Peewits, 50
, Birds', 48
, Changing of Birds', 47
Eider Duck and Lesser Black-backed
Gull, 68
, Devotion of, 236
, Tameness of, 235
Entomology and Insanity, 121
Experiments on Birds with Artificial
Eggs, 48
Face, Human, and Birds, 45
Falcon, Peregrine, 260
Fame Islands and Sea Fowl, 234
Fieldfares and Hedge Fruit, 263
Fish Killed by Hard Frost, 276
Food, Bird, Searching for, In Winter,
264
for Tits, 285
of Birds in Winter, 281
Hooded Crows in Winter, 277
Pheasants in Winter, 270
Red Grouse in Winter, 270
Wood Pigeon in Severe
Weather, 271
to Give Birds in Winter, 282
Friendships, Strange, 284
Frog, Strange Behaviour of a, 87
Gamekeepers and Friendship, 101
Gannets at Home, 228
, Flight of, 227
, Stalking, 226
Goats, Nimbleness of, 232
Grebe, Great Crested, Photographing a,
216
, , Teaching Young to Dive,
222
, , Wariness of, 218
Greenfinches and Sunflower Seeds, 290
in Winter, 290
, Selfishness of, 10
Grouse, Red, a Close Sitter, 96
and Advice to Runaway Hus-
band
93
Education. 94
Hard Winters 270
Sport, 92
How Chicks Scatter. 97
. Notes of, 92
, , and Human Voice,
Grouse, Red, Shot In Mistake for Wood
Pigeons, 270
Guillemot, Common, 230
, , Affection of, 233
, , and her Egg, 234
Gull, Black-headed, Breeding Haunts
of. 207
, Common, and Nesting Site, 66
, Lesser Black Backed, 68
, , Attacking a Man,
237
, , Swallowing Capa-
city of, 237
, Photographing a Common, 258
, Wariness of a Common 260
Gulls, Common, Intelligence of, 257
Gymnastic Feats of Reed Sparrow, 192
Hares Going to Feed, 155
Hawk, Sparrow, Building her Nest, 158
, , Food of, 158
, , Photographing a, 153
Hearing, Acuteness of, in Birds, 248
Heat of a Bird's Body, 48
Hibernation of Wasps, 141
Hiding-place, How to Make a, 100
Honey an Enticing Food for Butterflies,
127
and Bluebottle, 128
House, Building a Stone, to Hide in, ^44
, Sod, Building a, 33
Incubation of Twite, 106
Individuality of Birds, 203
Insect Life, Seasonal Fluctuations of,
132
Insects and Birds, 68
, Utility of, 143
Intelligence of Jackdaws, 163
Jackdaws and their Breeding Haunts,
162
, Intelligence of, 163
in Winter, 280
Jay, 8
Caught by Stoat, 80
Kittiwakes at Home, 230
Lapwing, 111
-, Habi
, its of, 112
, Strange Accident to, 77
Loach Caught by Bullhead, 85
Loopers, 137
Magpie, Calling a, 156
Martin, House, 178
, , Hemispherical Nest of a, 63
Maternal Passion, 50
Merganser, Red-breasted, 109
Merlin, Boldness of, 35
, Fate of Eggs of a, 37
, Finding Nest of a, 32
, Photographing a, 34
Mimicry, 134
INDEX:
295
Mind, Development of Chicks. 78
, Experiments on Bird, 47
Morality of Nature, 177
Moth, Angle Shade, 135
Brimstone, 133
Empejjor, 132
Lappet, 134
Plume, 136
Six-spot Burnet, 132
Swallow-tailed, 134
Tiger, 131
Moths, 130
, " Sugaring " for, 131
that Resemble a Bird's Droppings,
135
Grass Seeds, 136
Natural History, Delights of, 53
Nature and her Secrets, 68
, Morality of, 177
Nature's Children, Behaviour of, 1
Nesting Sites, Hereditary Rights in, 66
Nestlings and Notes, 193
Nests, Curious, of Song Thrush, 54
of Birds in Odd Situations, 56
Nightingale, 151, 179
Singing in a Fog, 179
Ouzel, Ring, 56
, , Strange Behaviour of a, 57
Owl, Long-eared, Haunts of, 151
, Short-eared, Nest of, 104
, , Peculiar Flight of, 103
, Tawny, and Bright Sunlight, 181
Oyster-catcher, Acuteness of Hearing
of, 248
and Feline Sounds, 251
, Habits of, 256
, Photographing an, 243
Partridge, 53
and Red Grouse Laying in Same
Nest, 60
Nesting in a Target Pit, 62
under Plant Pot, 60
, Red-legged or French, 60
Partridges and Yellow Rattle, 271
, French and English, using same
Nest, 60
Phalarope, Red-necked, Habits of, 119
, How I Photographed, 120
, , Killed by Moorhen's Egg, 76
, , Studying, 118
Pheasants and their Chicks, 8
Food, 270
Photographing a Blackbird, 42
Common Gull, 258
Merlin, 34
Sparrow Hawk, 153
Wood Wren, 160
Oyster-catchers, 248
Ringed Plover, 253
under Difficulties, 162
Photography and Circumstances, 42
Plover, Golden, Behaviour of a, 38
, , Cry of, 37
, , Photographing a, 37
f t Wariness of a, 41
, Ringed, and Wooden Eggs, 52
Plover, Ringed, Difficulty of Finding
Nest of, 252
, , Habits of, 256
, , Photographing, 253
, , Unneighbourly Conduct of a,
260
Plumage of Cuckoos, 196
Primroses Photographed during First
Moment of 20th Century, 88
Puffins and Rabbits, 234
Rabbits and Puffins, 234
Stoats, 80
, Calling, 81
Rail Water, Photographing a, 214
, Shyness of, 214
Rat Buried by Sexton Beetles 144
Caught by Limpet, 261
Rats and Tuberculosis, 261
that Live on Limpets, 261
Razorbills, Wing Movements of 228
Redshank, Habits of, 185
, Nest of, 187
Redstarts, 164
Redwings and Hedge Fruit, 263
Robbery, Avian, 67
Robin and Bath, 46
Young Thrushes in her Nest,
74
, Appetite of a, 292
Feeding Young of Song Thrush, 72
Nesting in a Target Pit, 62
, Suspicion of a, 47
Rock, Artificial, for Hiding in, 22
Rooks and Sunday, 280
Winter Scarcity, 279
, Shyness of, 280
Sandpiper and Stuffed Sheep, 14
Scotsmen, Idiosyncrasies of, 261
Seabirds and Cheese, 274
Hard Weather, 272
, Cunning of, 276
on the Thames, 273
Sea Fowl and Fame Islands, 234
, Beauty and Grace of 224
Shag, Diving Habits of, 242
, Nervousness of Young, 242
Soup, 242
Sheep, Stuffed, 13
, , and Sandpiper, 14
, , Shepherd, 14
Shrike, Red Backed, Feeding Habits of
170
, , Male Feeding Female,
, , Photographing, 170
Skua, Arctic, Behaviour of an, 102
, , How it Secures its Food, 97
, , Photographing, 98
Skylark, 6
Skylarks, Education of Young, 7
Snipe and Severe Frost, 272
, Common, 266
i Jack, 266
Sparrow, Hedge, Sitting on Empty
Nest, 168
. , Reed, 188
, , and Dragon Fly, 194
, , Habits of, 191
INDEX.
Sparrows as Thieves, 178
, House, and Heat, 11
Spiders, Accomplishments of, 145
Artifices of. 150
Devotion of, 148
Heroism of, 150
How they Guard their Eggs, 148
Preserving Food for Young, 148
Service Rendered by, 145
Young, How they Scatter to
Safety when Threatened by Danger,
150
Snipe, Common, and Chicks. 114
. j 1 Male Feeding Chicks and
Brooding, 116
Starling, Deceiving a, 48
Starlings as Thieves, 178
in Hard Weather, 291
Stoat and Rabbit Encounters, 80
Catching Jay, 80
in Squirrel's Nest, 79
, Photographing a, 83
Stuffed Ox, 2
at Cattle Pond, 8
, Drawbacks of, 4
, Success of, 12
Swallows and Building Materials, 12
, Barn, Nesting in an Occupied
Bedroom, 63
Swallow's, Barn, Nest on Bell, 63
, , in Old Shoe, 63
, , on Bell, 63
, , Lath, 63
Taming Wild Creatures by Kindness,
212
Teal, Garganey Disappearance of, as a
British Breeding Bird. 223
Temperature at which Wasps Wake
from Winter Sleep, 141
Tern, Arctic, Attacking a Man, 237
Terns at Fame Islands, 236
Thrushes, Young Song, Fed by Robin,
71
Thrush, Missel, and Moulting, 78
, Song, 10
, , and Chicks, 70
, , Wooden Eggs, 48
, , Curious Accident to a, 281
, , Nests of, 54
, , Finding her way back to her
Nest in the Dark, 183
, , Sitting Down on Nest with
Food in her Bill, 74
Tit, Bearded : Appeal to Egg Collectors,
210
, , Habits of, 209
1 1 Not an Extinct British Bird,
209
Tits and Hazel Nuts, 288
at Cocoanut, 28C
Tits, Blue, Endowed with Good Mem-
ories, 290
, Food for, 285
Trout, Food of, 86
Twite, Boldness of, 106
, Length of Time it Sits, 106
Visual Powers of Birds, 181, 183
Wagtail, Pied, Nesting in Target Pit, 62
, Yellow, 202
Wagtails, Yellow, Accident to, 77
, and Food, 206
, Behaviour of, 204
Wa bier, Garden, 169
Grasshopper, and Wooden Eggs, 51
, Habits of, 210
, Photographing a, 212
, Architecture of, 200
Sedge, 196
, and Young Cuckoo, 199
, Experiments upon a, 200
, Nest-building Habits of 198
, Song of, 198
Warblers, Reed, and their Young 201
, Sedge, and Stolen Nests, 199
Warnings Unheeded by a Bird, 166
Wasps, 140
Water for Birds in Winter, 285
Waterhen, Curious Accident to a, 277
Waterhens and their Food in Winter,
277
Weather Forecasting by Hedge Fruit,
263
', Droughty, Effect on Song Thrushes'
Nests, 54
Webs, Spiders', 145
Wheatears and Stuffed Sheep, 17
, Feeding Habits of, 20
Whitethroat, Lesser, 167
Wild Life, Curiosities of, 53
Winter, Birds in, 262
Woodcock and Severe Frosts, 272
Wooden Mask and Birds, 46
, Making a, 45
Woodpecker, Feeding Habits of Green,
179
Woodpeckers, Green, 178
Wood Pigeon, Food of, in Severe
Weather, 271
Woods and Birdlife, 151
Worms and Frosty Weather, 263
Wren and Food in Winter, 291
, Wood, Appreciation of Colour, 161
, Habits of, 161
, , Photographing a, 160
Yellow Hammer and Song, 176
. Nesting Sites of, 176
PRINTED BY CASSKLL & COMPANY, LIMITED LA BELLE SAUVAOE, LONDON, E C.
15.1108
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE
STAMPED BELOW
AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS
WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN
THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY
WILL INCREASE TO SO CENTS ON THE FOURTH
DAY AND TO $1.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY
OVERDUE.
BIOLOGY LIBRARY
LD 21-10m-7,
F
M85571
LIBRA fry
THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
