XVlw y^c BY R. KEARTON, RZ.S. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN DIRECT l--ROMNArURE BY • - • . CliBRRY & RICHARD KEARTON ^. H FOR THE PEOPLE FOR EDVCATION FOR SCIENCE LIBRARY OF THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY WILD NATURE'S WAYS WOOD WREN Large White Butterflies Covered with Dewdrops. WILD NATURE'S WAYS BY R. KEARTON, F.Z.S. 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 LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK AND MELBOURNE. MCMIII ALL RIGHTS RESERVED JOY IN NATURE. To sit on rocks ; to muse o'er flood and fell , To slowly trace the forest's shady scene, Where things that own not man's dominion dwell, And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been ; To climb the trackless mountain all unseen, With the wild flock, that never needs a fold ; Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean — This is not solitude ; 'tis but to hold Converse ivith Nature's charms, and vieiv her stores unrolled. Byron. C ^? 19321 OCT 2 8 1958 CONTENTS Introduction . ... . . ix Dkckimng Wild Ckkatukes i SoMK Cukiositiks ok WlI.Il LiKK 53 Birds of Moorland, Loch, and Tarnside . . . Qi Insects and Other Small Deer at Work and Play 121 Birds ok Woodland and Hedgerow . . . -151 Birds ok Broadland and Streamside . . . .184 Fragments krom the Seashore . . • • • 224 Winter Shikts — How Fp:athered Folk Fare During Severe Weather . . •' ■.-... 263 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Heading ix Robin (Drawn iSth Century) . xii Robin (Drawn 19th Century) . xii Robin (I'hotofjraphed 20th Cen- tury) xii Missel Thrush — Contented. Expectant, and Bored xi\ , xv Sunset on the Sea . xvi Young Long-tailed Tit . . i Shouldering the Imitation ()\ . 2 Mounted on the Imitation Ox . 3 The Stuffed Ox in Operation . 5 Skylark bringing Food to her Young .... 7 Song Thrush — Substance, Shadow, and Reflection 9 Wood Pigeon . . .11 Turtle-dove . .12 Stuffed Sheep . '5 Sandpiper on Nest . . iG Wheatears (Male passing over Food to Female to take to Young) . . . • ly Young Wheatears ... 20 Artificial Rock . .21 Dippers (Male passing Food to Female) .... 23 Curlew Sitting with half- closed Eyes ... 28 Curlew Walking on to her Nest 29 Curlew about to sit down on Eggs 30 Hiding Tent Covered with Heather .... 32 Merlin on Nest ■ ■ ■ 3i Sod House for Photographing Golden Plover . . . 3S Male (iolden Plover Covering Chicks . . 39 Female Golden Plover and Chicks .... 40 Young Golden Plover 41 Photographing in a Cart-shed . 42 I'emale Rlackbird watching her Chicks settle down into Cavity of Nest after being Fed .... 43 .\uthor Hidden under Wooden Mask ..... 44 .Vutiior with Wooden Mask Off 45 Grasshopf)er Warbler about to sit down on Dummy Eggs 51 \'iew on the .\von ... 52 I'hotographing a 1-lying Bird with a Gun Camera . . 53 Song Thrush's Nest without Mud Lining • • • 54 Ring Ouzel and Young Ones in a Nest on the Ground. . 55 Eggs of English and French Partridges in the Same Nest 58 French Partridge's Nest Under a Plant-pot . • , • 59 French Partridge Sitting on Nest Under Plant-pot . 61 Some Nests in Curious Places . 65 (iuU's Nest on Stone in Loch . 66 Lesser Black-backed Gulls . 6g Song Thrush on Nest 70 Male Song Thrush I^ringing Food . 71 Robin Bringing Food to Young Thrushes . . . ■ 7\ LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. VII Robin Looking at Young Thrushes after ha\-ing Fed Them ..... 73 Thrush Holding Food till her Chicks Grow Hungrj^ Again 73 Stoat and Rabbit ... S3 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 20th Century .... 88 Daisies Asleep, Photographed Before Sunrise ... 89 Daisies Awake, Photographed After Sunrise ... 89 Wild Canadian Geese . . 90 Descending a Cliff witli Camera 91 Cock Grouse on a Stone . . 93 Hen Grouse Sitting on her Nest 95 Young Grouse in Heather . 97 Arctic Skua about to Co\er 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 . .110 Young Red-breasted Mergansers 1 1 1 Peewit on Nest . . . .113 Peewit with Raindrops on Back Plumage . . . -113 Snipe Covering Chicks . .115 The Red-necked Phalarope Swimming . . . .117 Boys Driving Phalarope . . iiS Phalarope. . . . .119 A Moorland Beck . . .120 Fritillary Butterfly . .121 White Butterfly on Thyme . 122 Peacock Butterflv . . .123 Small Tortoiseshell Butterflv . 125 Brimstone Butterfly on Oxlip . 126 Red Admiral . . . -127 Blue Butterfly at Roost . .128 Tiger Moth . . . .129 Six-spot Burnet Moth, Cater- pillar, and Pupas 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 IMoth 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 Web between top Stones of a Wall . Same Scattering to Safety. Photographer on Author's Shoulders . Young Long-eared Owl . Female Sparrow-hawk Buildin: her own Nest Sparrow-hawk Sitting on Nest Wood- wren on Hazel Twig Jackdaw on Post Young Jackdaws ?klale 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 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 149 149 152 157 159 163 164 165 167 167 168 168 169 171 172 173 174 175 177 178 iSo 182 183 184 Vlll LIST OF ILLV ST RATIONS. Redshank's Nest Concealed in Grass Tuft Redshank Walking on to Nest Nest Revealed . Redshank Covering Chicks Young Redshank Reed-bunting . Reed-bunting . Cuckoo .... Sedge- Warblers Male Reed-warbler on Nest Female Reed-warbler holding Food in her bill until her Chicks grow Hungry again Female Yellow Wagtail going to Nest .... Male Yellow Wagtail Blackheaded Gull : Looking for a Nesting Site. Ex- amining the Situation. Bringing Building Mate- rials . . . . . Male Bearded Tit on Nest (irasshopper Warbler on Nest . Water Rail coming on to Nest . Water Rail on Nest . Reed-covered l^oat, with .Author Peeping from his place of Concealment Young Crested Grebes Great Crested Grebe on Nest Garganey Teal's Nest and Eggs On the Broads . A Welsh Rock Stack On the Cliffs, Ailsa Cra'g Gannet about to Fly . Gannet on Nest. Razorbills Kittiwakes, Razorbills, and Common Guillemots Breed- ing together 187 187. 187 189 190 192 193 195 197 202 203 203 206 20S 211 213 215 217 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 227 229 230 231 Puffins ..... 235 Stroking an Eider Duck on her Nest ..... 236 Lesser Black-backed Gull . 238 Arctic Tern on Nest . . 239 Cormorants and Common Guil- lemots at home . . .241 Shag, or Green Cormorant, Guarding Young . . 243 Stone House for Photographing C3yster-catcher . . . 247 Oyster - catcher Approaching her Eggs . . .249 Oyster-catcher on Nest . -251 Ringed Plover on Nest 255 Ringed Ploxer about to Walk on to her Eggs . . 256 Common Gull coming to Nest . 257 Common Gull on Nest . 259 The Bass Rock .... 262 Robin Feeding upon Cocoanut placed on Horn of Stuffed Ox for Tits . 263 Jack Snipe Commencing to Feed ..... 267 Wild Ducks on Ice . 269 Gulls on the Tliames Embank- ment ..... 275 Moorhens on Ice . 278 Rook ..... 279 Song Thrush coming to Feed . 282 Hungry Sparrows at Breakfast 283 Blackbird and .Apple. 284 Hedge and House Sparrows . 284 Inspecting, Tasting, Enjoying . 286 .\nother Arrival, and Suspicion 287 Confidence .... 287 Hazel Nuts split by Great Tits . 288 Blue Tit 289 A l-"a\t)urite Ditch for Snipe in Winter .... 292 INTRODUCTION Job said, " Speak to the earth, and it shah 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 unspeakablv 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 vawe-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 ; tlie 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 ROBIN Drawn 18th Century. INTRODUCTION. xiii 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- ^ ^ ' . ! 1 \"''.^'^-^j^^r>'-- «€Si?*i \ A ' ""' ^-'-^5- >r^ ' 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. lOr anOtner photographed 20th century 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-ilhistration wliere faitli- lulness 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. MISSEL THRUSH EXPECTANT. varying phases of the avian mind as express- ed upon the counten ance 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. 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 beneat.h her plumage to gasp for a breath of fresh air. In the second she is MISSEL THRUSH BORED AND ANNOYED. 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 Dunfermhne ; 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 ; General Sir Richard Thomas Farren, Wood- bridge ; ]\Iajor Petre, of W'estwick 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 in the eyes of the moralist by a knowledge of the fact 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 intmiate ways to the busthng, 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. 2 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 it had been blown over and otherwise ■HI SHOULDERING THE IMITATION OX. DECEIVING WILD CREATURES. MOUNTED ON THE IMITATION OX. injured, it was several times mis- taken, when out in the fields, for a hve 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. i\Iy 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 undignilied 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 bo\'in(; 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 sk\'lark's nest containing two young ones. The bird was so completely deceived b\' 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 centipcdal appearance given to him by the accession of a pair of human legs beneath his body. The pleasant satisfaction of having a long- chcrishcd 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 \Tntured 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 decei\dng 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 tlu'ir 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. 10 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 thrusli 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 arri\'ing, and fully upholding the character of their species for unadulterated selfishness. An old male would, after enjoving 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. II 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. WILD NATURE'S WAYS. - V «; '•*^ • ■" * "i^©^^'^- > A. ■ ' isJ^.^ - '^^"^ <-• . ^^K-' , ,.>.... '.if 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, chafhnches, 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. 14 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 tlie 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 caue:ht the aroma of the stuffer's workshop. DECEIVING WILD CREATURES. 15 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 fl}ing 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 i6 ILD 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. \Miilst 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 lea\dng a hole amongst some earth- bound rocks on a steep brae side, wherein they had a famil}' 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 wdth 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 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 whcat(^ar 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 chackcd 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 sliame, 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 appetites. At midday their parents were bringirig 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 M Mi --' r. Ky-'t^^i^j^S^p f^ ^^Sm^__^ Bk^ ^ HI^BB^flH^S^^H^^R^^ :ll^ -..^^ ^^&<(;;^^^:^.-,-^ =-■■' /«-;]>**^^^ 1 ARTIFICIAL ROCK. I Arrow marks position of Dipper's nest on boulder in the Ijeck.) 22 WILD NATURE'S WAYS. photographs of ring ouzels, dippers, and other birds of hke habits at home amidst their craggy surroundings, I again enhsted 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 witli the camera, and upon reaching my uncle's home amongst the Westmoreland Fells, I speedily had it fixed uj) 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 becksidc, 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 ])uried 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 uj^on 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 httle 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 ^< r 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 o\'er he flew away up-stream in search of more food. The behaviour of this bird was sometimes un- accountably strange. Between his journeymgs 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 liole 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 overflo\ving 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 ga^'e it a \'igorous 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 remainck'r 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 liavc 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 irive in and admit defeat. Durinsr the last o o 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 ^yILD 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, whicli CURLEW WALKING ON TO HER NEST. 30 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 I work in exposing plates and changing dark slides, that she never suspected any- thing wrong, and in her fancied security k(^pt closing her eyes and taking brief naps. After a while, ])hotographing the curlew on her nest became a thin*^ of such monotonous ease that I wanted an opportunity of securing more pictures of her in the act of coming home, but was at luy 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 fehne 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 hstening 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 witli eye and ear 32 WILD NATURE'S WAYS. HIDING TENT LUVtRED WiTH HEATHER. alert for every sight and sound, there is for me a splendid charm about what many people would call 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, kcking note over- head, and, looking up, I beheld a bold little merlin flying across the ghyll 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 T 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 hght 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 ahghted 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 merhn, 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 follo^^^[ng 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 ni}' tent, and hid everything away in an abrupt decli\'ity 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 sandvnches m my pockets, took uj) my station amongst the deep bracken already men- tioned, and waited and watched all day. On the ]\Ionday I tried to secure some more pictures of the merlin at home, as nearly all those I had already taken showed movement in the ^^•ind-wa^•ed heather around her. ]\Iy 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 38 WILD NATURE'S WAYS. '^'9es^'"3mnk SOD HOU__ _ jGRAPHING GOLDEN PLOVER. me at the time, asked tlie man to secure a spade. Armed with this and the camera, we hied away up tlie 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 w^hich 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-arrestin*:: presence. At any rate, he MALE GOLDEN PLOVER COVERING CHICK. 40 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 jinuped un 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 3'ounger 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 promptl} 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. 41 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 ah 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 ah 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 strone: 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. 42 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 j^ar 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 uair 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 ma\ds. 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 wliich 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. \\'hen 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 m}'' 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 commenced 50 WILD NATURE'S WAYS. to brood her chicks in the most matter-of-fact way. A severe method ot testing how far bUnd maternal passion had subverted her intelUgence 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 lingers. 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 v/ooden 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 w^arbler 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 shghtest sign of suspicion in regard to the deception. I tried my counterfeits upon a ringed plover one day, but her intehigence 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. \Mien 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 THE AVON CHAPTER II. SOME CURIOSITIES OF WILD LIFE. 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. x\mong 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 PHOTOGRAPHING A FLYING BIRD WITH A GUN CAMERA. 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 j)lastered 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 fmd the usual materials wherewith to line the interior of RING OUZEL AND YOUNG 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 wrigghng 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. 58 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 PARTRIDGES NEST UNDER A PLANT-POT. 6o 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 ne\Tr 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 cither 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 liis 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 batched off all the young. The red-legged partridge's eggs figured on the previous page were photographed in the spring of 1 90 1, and although the inverted flower-pot was situated in a kitchen garden surrounded by a flint wall, tlie parent bird speedily conducted her downy family under a small wicket-gate and FRENCH PARTRIDGE SITTING ON NEST UNDER PLANT-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 iMay, 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 deUberately 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 certahily 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. IMy 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. SWALLOWS NEST ON LATH. _L0.\ S NEiT ON BELL FASTENING?. HOUSE MARTIN S H EfV: ISFHERIC/ L NEST. i !-*«>< J I Vrf'Mfrl [ -r ♦ "^^^ml t y P"^^ ~ mmn /«*> «I- '' , /?: '^.^-v^^-^el ;,'^^ rep's, ■»■■'' ■ -d /•■"'i' '- .'^;,- \:<--^^^ , ■' 4 ' ' '^ - r ■ ,-. _ l:-.^ v- ^ — i».^'" ■ STOC^-DOVE■S NEST ON ROOF OF SUMMER-HOUSE SOME NESTS IN CURIOUS PLACES. F SWALLOWS NEST IN OLD SHOE. 66 WILD NATURE'S WAYS. 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 sur\'ivor 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 operati\'e side of natural history is somewhat limited, I fear, that all the interesting facts comiected 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. 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 70 WILD XATURE'S WAYS. SONG THRUSH ON NEST. parent birds at work, brooding and attending to the multifarious wants of their chicks. I accord- ingly erected m\' little hiding tent close by, and covered it carefully with twigs, dead grass, and whatever other llotsam 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 mates' 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. ^2 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 mischance:, unfortunately not uncommon in the experience of the naturahst i:»hotographer, I missed a wonderful picture of avian expression. From whatever impulse the generous action of the robin sprang, the owner of 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 be3'ond, and waited until the back of thr mavis had been turned in search of more victuals, when he promptl}' 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 o\'cr 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 cavit}^ 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 \-olunteered to drive the confiding little biids 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 com])lete reversion of montal 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, imable 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 natural^ 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 rolhng over and over upon the ground, a confused bundle of feathers) flew^ away_. apparently httle 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 hunch-ed yards away for a gun, and got back, to find the bloodthirsty murderer in a steel trap, and bunny gone. The other struggle of whicli I was an eye- witness, ended less happily for the rabbit. Immediately behind Caterham Valley, wherein I reside, is another waterless little gh3'll, 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. 8i 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 ox^rgrown 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 tliis 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. 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, wh}' 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 pahngs, 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 XATURE'S WAYS. BULLHEAD SWALLOWING LOACH. a boy who was reflecting light for hk^ witli a mirror, suddenly exclaimed : "I can see a bully with a tail at either end of his body, mister." This somewhat startling assertion prov^ed 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 theor}' could be traced wlien the p»-*soner 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 hchen-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 KAYS. sulkinesSj 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 tliroughout the south of England. .;. 'j^i ^ '^ 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 my 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 centur}'' 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, birheck, 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, generallv 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 far 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, ' Birbcck, 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. W'hen 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 ot a veritable death-trap. This man told me rather admiringly that ho 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 hei nest in an exc^^ptionally open place. The bird was so tame that she allowed me to stroke her back phiniage, and only clucked in a soft, motherly note when I })ut my fmgers 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 w^as 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 AXD 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 feastmg 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 j\Irs. 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 o\'cr 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. 100 WILD NATURE'S WAYS. For over two hours the female skua did nothing but fly overhead, and aUght 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 gnnsliot 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 houi . 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, wlio liad 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 o\'er it, covered them with great strips of turf, and left". BIRDS OF MOORLAND AND LOCH. loi Immediately we had turned our backs^ the skua rose from the knoll where she had been sitting with her mate intently watching us^ and^ Ayirig 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 \\'ay, 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 HEP? 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- beheve sort of way that she had eggs under her. This hohow pretence at brooding was evidently very unsatisfying, for in two minutes she gave it up, and, flying forward against the wind, pitched hghtly 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 104 WILD NATURE'S WAYS. likened to nothing so much as a piece of brown paper being carried up and down hither and thither b}^ a fickle wind. She had a nest close by containing two chicks and two unfertile SHORT-EARED OWLS 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 io6 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 daily observation for more than a fortnight. On the 14th of June it contained the first of six eggs, and on the 19th the last. When I paid my morning call on the 28th of the month, the bird liad 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 w^as 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 s^ CORNCRAKE ON NEST. BIRDS OF MOORLAND AND LOCH. 109 righteousness of punishing the innocent to the point of annihilation^ and ahowing 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 hghter in ground colour than the rest. The red-breasted merganser is quite a common bird on many Highland lochs w^here 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 viUa 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 figure a pair of them. It is a melancholv 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. Ill 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 IVIERGANSERS. 112 WILD NATURE'S WAYS. was consequently in no hurry to face the ordeal of resuming her work of incubation wnth an enemy in such close proximity. She passed her time in fl^'ing overhead suspiciously, crying peeweep, peeweep in a \'oice 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 bv while I entered the place of concealment, and then to walk slowly away in purs'uit of his duties. \\'ithin hve 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. 114 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 tlic 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 IQ02, 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 croucliing in their soft coats of down amongst the coarse herbage of a moss bog. Fixing up my tent which a bo}' 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. ii6 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 thom beneath her sheltering i)lumage she sat witli the ])ro\-erbial 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 niake 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 tlie male snipe ii8 UIIJ) NATURE'S WAYS. proved conclu- sively that the birds had suf- fered some loss, and that they only had two instead of four chic ks — 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. 1 19 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 bus}^, 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 until 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 \N-ould swim much nearer the camera when there was absolutely no inducement to do so than they would when it was hxed up in front of a nest with a clutch of half-incubatcd eggs in it. A MOORLAND BECK. CHAPTER IV. INSECTS AND OTHER SMALL DEER AT WORK AND PLAY. TT 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 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. FRITILLARY BUTTERFLY. ago been changed. 122 WILD NATURE'S WAYS. from aesthetic reasons, and partly because their diurnal habits render the acquire- ment of knf)w- ledge in re- gard to them and pleasanter in the case of of the other classes of subjects enumerated. They are not by any means so easy to photograph, liowever, during fine, sunny days, when they are full of pla} ful llittings 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 beha\'iour 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 vvhereb}' 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 antenuce 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, apparentlv not one whit the worse for their night's outing in unorthodox quarters. The blue butterfly {Lyccena 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 alwaN's 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 lepidopterous 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 Anghan 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 days 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 \ibrate BRIMSTONE BUTTERFLY ON OXLIP. INSECTS AT WORK AND PLAY. 127 in the same tremulous 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 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 ha\'e this very day so tamed a bluebottle fly that found his wa}' into my study, by fee dins: him j u d i c i o u s 1 y upon it, that le would allow me tocarr\- 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 ha^'e suggested the idea of " the butter-coloured fly," is an exceed- ingly difticult creature to photograph. It is, hke 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 present year comparatively scarce. J 130 ILD NATURE'S WAYS. SIX SPOT BURNET CATER- PILLAR AND PUP/E CASE. I have oil 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 mc in my study by several uf 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 pluvial summer which is now fast drawing to a close I have only seen a single example. The female emperor moth figured on the previous page was found and photographed, just after it had left its pupae 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. This year things are entirely reversed, and both this diurnal moth and the common meadow brown butterfly are 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 ver}^ seldom met with it either by day or by night. The specimen figured herewith SWALLOW-TAILED MOTH. 134 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. Mimicr}', or " the close external likeness which causes things really quite imlike to be mistaken for each other," is one of the most fascinating b3'paths 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 MOTH ON DEAD BEECH LEAVES INSECTS AT WORK AND PLAY. 135 but also in shape. Those of the angle-shade 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 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 a 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 sharpeyesof 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 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 Many caterpillars are protected by mimicry. The loopers, as they are called, fix themselves by their hind legs 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 s o m e- times ap- MIMICKING GRASS MOTH. / 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 common ragwort killed by caterpillars of the Cinnabar moth, and the second (p. 141) a colony of processionals destroying 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. PLUME MOTH. accomplishments of caterpillars of the drinker moth, and found that in from live 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 PLA\ rare. As far north as York- shire the two species are very nearly balanced as to n u m - 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 evenlv distributed, 140 WILD NATURE'S WAYS. from a latitudinal point of \' i e w, 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 reached, a t w h i c h PROCESSIONAL CATERPILLARS 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 \'ain. 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 althougli 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 hapi^ening to pass that way a day or two after- wards, was surprised to discover that it had more tlian 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 iwornings, when everything is powdered, so to speak, with minute beads of dew, that we really become aware of the immense service spiders render us SPIDER MAKING WEB. K 146 WILD NATURES 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 siik 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 p o c k e t , 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 tho 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 ha\'oc amongst tlieir newh' liatched young. Such a wonderful wealth of affection have these spiders for their offspring that I have known them, even when badlv maimed b}- an accident which has o\^er- 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 ON WEB SAME SCATTERING TO SAFETY. body and legs, and, when disturbed, ran to the back of the reed stem on which it Hved, and stretching some of its legs straight in front of it 150 WILD XATURE'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 wliich 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 nothmg 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. WmODS are frequently ^ solitary and silent, or restless with life and ringing wdth song, accord- ing to the character of the trees growing in them. In Southern England, where hazel - bushes, ash stoles, and slender birches grow in c 1 u m ps 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 moonhght ^^ith 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 152 WILD NATURE'S WAYS. except for the occasional twitter of an adventurous tit hunting the needle- YOUNG LONG EARED OWL. clothed boughs high overhead. I know many bird and win d- 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 ]:)ncumatic 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 finders, 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. vShe had espied the lens, and for over an hour she darted back and forth through the trees, saying distinctly un- ]:»lcasant tilings 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 travelhng in the same direction to their common feeding-ground. The last, like the first, sat up and listened intently foi 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, unscrcwmg 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 oi 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 lier 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 admiringl}' 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 liner, 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 0!i the front edge of the nest, and 1 photographed her with one in her bill, which, 1 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 WOODLAND 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 y s V, ^ \ ■ x/i />::; 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. i6o 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. "Slorc 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 ohscura, 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 care full}' loading a heavy army re\'olver, 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, and, covering the whole apparatus with a grass- BIRDS OF WOODLAND AND HEDGEROW. i6i 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 almiost 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 miore 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 chittering song in the tops of the larch trees across the brook, she had no difficulty in securing an ample i62 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 feehng 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 lefused to go to her favourite hazel bush in search of insects, and cither 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 wdth 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 lie was in the small pasture ; but presently his terrible voice began to make the httle ghyll ring, and, fearing he w^ould 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 ho 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- i64 WILD NATURE'S WAYS.