Part 16

Ideal quarters for the birds, when the time comes to shift them from the rearing-field to the coverts, is ground bare of brambles, fern, and grass, where oak saplings throw out horizontal branches--not too thick--a few feet from the ground. With his young birds in such a place, the keeper may lie on his bed in peace and thankfulness--to dream of the harvest of his toil, a harvest which needs but a fine November day and straight powder to be garnered in abundance. Where the ground is unfavourable the keeper will try to teach his birds the roosting habit; one plan is to put the hen and her coop on a raised platform. This lessens any risk the hen may have to run from vermin, and encourages her brood to fly to the roost.

* * * * *

The Badger's Stealth

A badger may come to a neighbourhood and stay for a long while unnoticed. He prowls at night, unseen and unsuspected, and people may suppose there is no badger within miles. In the same way otters are at home in many a stream where nobody dreams there is an otter in the neighbourhood. But let the badger's presence be discovered, and he will be persecuted to the end. The wise badger shifts his tent at once if a human nose is poked into it; all badgers would profit if they went to the fox for a few wrinkles. The foxes have a maxim: Never be at home to callers who may come again. A visiting-card, in the shape of a particle of scent, is more than enough acquaintance for a fox with a human being.

Even the gamekeeper often harbours a badger unknowingly. What he does not suspect he does not look for. And if he were to look for a month for signs of a badger he might never find one. Again and again he might pass within sight of a badger's holt, and think it to be the retreat of a fox. But by chance he might come upon a clear imprint of a badger's tracks, and after that it would not take him long to discover the badger's lair. While not a friend of the badger, he has no such bitter resentment against him as he feels for the fox. If it were not that the badger every now and then commits an outrage that brings disgrace on himself and all his kith and kin, the record of his life might be written down as fairly harmless. In these days the badger can make small claim as a provider of sport, which might mitigate the sentence most keepers pass upon him.

We knew of a badger who lived in peace, his presence unsuspected, for many long months. Then a series of mysterious poultry massacres began to disturb the district, and sometimes a dozen chickens and ducklings would be slain in one night. Some said fox, others dog; strange stories of ghosts spread abroad; it was even hinted that a wolf had been imported by mistake with foreign foxes. But one day tracks were seen that were not the tracks of fox, dog, or wolf, and a trail of feathers led to the discovery of a hidden draw-out. The badger was evicted and summarily shot.

* * * * *

To Attract Bullfinches

The bullfinch is not always made welcome when he comes to gardens at the time of fruit-buds. And there are seasons and places in which he would be welcomed--but comes not. We know a way to attract bullfinches, even to gardens in towns. You should take from a hedge-side a few plants of the wild geranium, and set them in your town garden--bullfinches are wonderfully fond of their seeds. We have known the birds to find out the geranium plants in a town garden where bullfinches had never been seen before. To this garden they would come regularly, but always in the early morning. They are cheerful feeders--they live on insects and larvæ, as well as on many kinds of seeds and berries, in the spring feeding their young on seeds which have been carefully softened.

* * * * *

Bird Warnings

Prominent among the birds that mob the barn-owl when he flies forth by day are jays and blackbirds. They are the noisiest, and to the gamekeeper the most useful of all the sentinels of the wood. A sudden hubbub from blackbirds and jays always has a meaning. If the birds are flying high it is a sign that the barn-owl is on the move--if low, the gamekeeper's thoughts fly to a poaching cat. A cat can hardly move a yard in a wood without a blackbird crying the alarm. His excited notes, suggesting the sound of the words "Flint, flint," are taken up by all the blackbirds within call, and soon the cat is besieged by a throng, and so closely that the keeper can follow pussy's direction, though she remains unseen. And the blackbirds give warning of the movements of stoats and weasels. The wren, too, is a lively and vigilant sentinel, and from its movements one may determine within a yard where the stoat is lurking. Jays, by their screams, give prompt warning that a fox is on the prowl, and no human trespasser, in pursuit of game or otherwise, can hope to escape their attentions. A lively reception awaits the fox moving in a wood by day, and his progress may be marked through the length of a big covert by the agitated way in which the cock pheasants mount the trees, with warning "cock-up." In the open the peewits will gather to swoop and swerve in anger and defiance above the fox's head.

* * * * *

A Rabbit's Fates

There was a small rabbit in our woods who might have congratulated himself on two wonderful escapes from death. We first made his acquaintance in a quiet by-lane, and just in time to drive away a stoat that was loping swiftly along on his trail. A little rabbit is pathetic in fear, and instinctively one is angered against the stoat which would take its life--though the stoat's teeth represent the natural weapon of rabbit destruction. The rabbit fled on his way--directly towards a motor-car coming at speed round a corner. He darted to one side, escaping the wheels by the fur of his tail, then foolishly turned across the road, and again escaped the wheels by a miracle. We wondered whether the fate thus avoided would have been easier than the one delayed--no doubt soon after the stoat's teeth bit home in the tender neck.

* * * * *

Game-Birds and Motors

We have seen a motor-car drive right over a covey of young partridges as they dusted themselves on a road, leaving half a dozen victims behind it. But motors are not entirely opposed to game interests. The dust they scatter on roadside hedges greatly helps the hiding nests. Then the frequent passing of cars along country roads is certainly a deterrent to the poacher; the shooting man in his car takes note of doubtful-looking tramps and gipsies, and can spread a swift warning to keepers or police. Even the smells of the car are a disguised blessing, overpowering the scent of the sitting bird, and so, no doubt, often preventing a dog from finding a roadside nest. The motor has sent up the value of many inaccessible shooting properties by eliminating distance. It may be useful to a shooting party when cartridges have come to an end, or at the close of a day for transporting game speedily to the station, or at any time for bringing a doctor when the bag has been enriched by the addition of a gamekeeper.

* * * * *

Mysteries of the Nightjar

On a midsummer night, in an old wood, the crooning of the nightjar, with its whirring, vibrant, monotonous notes, now rising, now falling in key, seems the ideal of lullaby. The beautiful night-flying swallow suffers for an evil reputation. It is a bird of mystery.

The nightjar is the last of our summer visitors, coming about the middle of May to stay until September. It is known almost the world over, but few understand its ways; birds of the night suggest evil doings and inspire superstition. The plumage has the rich, quiet beauty of the woodcock and the hen pheasant, and the feathers have the softness of the owl's. In build the bird comes between a large swift and a small hawk, and is suggestive of swift or swallow when seen close at hand, with its miniature, hawk-like bill and a mouth surprisingly capacious when open. The eggs, like the swift's, are rounded at the ends.

It is commonly called night-hawk, or dor-hawk, because it preys on dor-beetles, and it is fern-owl, because it haunts the bracken fern. It is night-crow, because when on the wing it cries a crowing note, "crow-ic," and it is jar-owl, because of its owl-like love of night and its jarring or churring song. Wheel-bird is a name derived from the wheeling flight. Other names are churn-owl, eve-churr, and night-churr; but the oldest and one of the most familiar names is goat-sucker, derived from the legend that the bird sucks milk from goats, thereby poisoning them and causing blindness. Probably some one saw the bird near a goat, did not know what it was, or anything about it, and invented the goat-sucking myth.

* * * * *

The Razor-grinder

Another bit of folk-lore about the nightjar is that it gave calves a disease called puckeridge; and on this account country folk still call this innocent but unfortunate bird the puckeridge. The disease, in fact, was caused by an insect which laid eggs on the backs of cattle, whence emerged grubs to cause the skin to pucker. The nightjar may often be seen wheeling about cattle, for the reason, no doubt, that the animals attract insects and disturb moths. Possibly for the same reason the nightjar, instead of flying away from human beings, will flit near about, keeping just in front of a walking man. Among other curious names is "razor-grinder." We met a countryman who only knew the nightjar by this name, derived from the noise made by itinerant razor-grinders at work.

* * * * *

A Ventriloquist