Part 35

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LONDON, EDWARD ARNOLD.]

The Fear of Snow

By the very poor snow is regarded as among the most terrible calamities of life. Many types of countrymen, rural publicans, postmen, outdoor labourers, and small traders, speak of snow as the worst of all possible weather, leaving the most serious after-effects. And snow means calamity to many wild things. Lucky are the robins of a garden who have a friend to stir the old hot-bed, and turn up the worms from beneath the frozen top-soil; happy the grain-feeding birds who find a rick that has been threshed. Thousands flock to the corn-ricks, and there is food for all--pheasants, partridges, rooks, jackdaws, starlings, sparrows, greenfinches, chaffinches, yellow-hammers, and the bramble-finches, orange, white, and black in plumage. To the holly-trees come the starving thrushes, and in hard weather even the fieldfares will lose their extreme shyness to besiege a holly-tree beside a door. The more delicate redwings die in thousands, though the dying and dead are seldom seen.

To a few the snow means profit--for the hawks there is a carnival of feasting, and the fox finds weak and hungry hares and rabbits an easy prey, if ill-nourished on a diet of tree-bark and withered herbage. As to the pheasants, they are well cared for--and the keeper, in snowy weather, scatters his maize with a liberal hand.

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Hard-Weather Prophets

By many signs wild creatures inform the gamekeeper of the approach of hard weather. The wood-pigeons give him useful warning. In most parts of the country flocks of pigeons take toll of the greens and root-crops--a thousand pigeons may be seen rising from a single field of roots. In mild weather they may return once or twice during a day. When they are seen constantly streaming to the root-fields, those disturbed returning again and again, it is a certain sign that hard weather is near.

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Weather-wise Beasts and Birds

Animals have a reputation as weather prophets--if their prophecies strike the human observer as somewhat obvious. The cat washes her face, and this is commonly held to be a sign of coming rain; in summer it is thought to be a sign of a thunder-storm when cats are remarkably lively. Dogs sometimes bury their bones when rain is in the air--perhaps an inherited instinct to save food against days of bad hunting. Horses by stretching their necks and sniffing the air seem to be scenting distant rain; and donkeys have a way of braying before the storm. Shepherds hold that if sheep turn their tails windward rain will come; and cowherds read the same prophecy when a herd of cows gathers at one end of a pasture, their tails to the wind. Changes in weather mean much to wild life, and we are prepared to believe they are forewarned. A storm may mean the loss of a meal to a fox, a ruined nest to a bird, an end of all things to an insect. The fox has done well that has eaten heartily before the storm. Yet it appears that a change of weather must be near at hand before wild creatures take notice. The pheasant crows before the thunder-storm because he hears distant thunder. The wheatear, a bird nervous of clouds, flies to shelter as the cloud drives up. It is the first touch of cold weather that sets squirrels hiding nuts.

Weather has a marked effect on the moods of wild creatures. There are days when hares or partridges seem overcome by oppression; they move listlessly if disturbed, and lie or sit about as though all energy had gone from them. Thunder in the air may be the cause, or perhaps snow is coming; when the storm has blown over, liveliness is restored, and new life inspires all things. Before a storm, partridges in the stubble-fields set up their feathers, and in cold weather the feathers of many birds have the appearance of being puffed out, so that they look almost twice their usual size. Many creatures feed at an unusually early hour if storms are coming. It is a bad sign when rabbits are out feeding in the fields early on a bright sunshiny afternoon. The birds of the open fields--rooks, starlings, pigeons, or fieldfares--feed hungrily and hastily while rain-clouds overshadow the sky; but it is a sign of good weather when rooks fly to feed far from their roosting-trees, and fly high. Cock pheasants will go to roost early before the storm, choosing low branches, and trees that afford good protection. In bitter weather, even the warm feathers of birds may become ice-bound.

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Green Winters

Between a green and a white winter in England there is a world of difference to wild creatures. There may come day upon day, week upon week, of mist, rain, fog, and blustering winds, of hail, sleet, and furious snow-blizzards--to birds and beasts these are days of prosperity and fatness. Peewits, snipe, woodcock, blackbirds, and thrushes then find food far more plentiful than in the hot dusty days of late summer. Often, in late summer, their breasts are narrowed by leanness to the shape of a boat's keel. But in moist, warm winter days the flesh rises roundly as if it would burst the skin--the breast-bone, no longer up-standing like a bare ridge, is buried almost out of sight in a valley of fat, on the thighs are little hillocks of fat, and the bones of the back cannot be seen or felt for their thick warm covering. But should there come two or three days of frost, which hold through the day and increase their grip on the land by night, then this loaded store of fat vanishes as mist before the sun.

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What Rainy Days bring

A mild open autumn and a green winter also mean much to the farmers and to the gamekeepers; a blessing on many accounts, a curse on others. The farmer groans because his land is so wet and heavy that he cannot sow his winter seeds; the keeper sees the ruination of many a promising day's sport. The keeper gains when there are no frost and snow by having the pleasure of showing bills for corn reduced to a minimum--in a mild winter he will not need half the amount of corn that must be distributed to his birds in hard weather, when they are actually in need of food. What little he gives them in open weather is to keep them together, as natural food is abundant. But a low bill for corn hardly compensates the keeper for rain-spoiled sport, or for day after day of outdoor work in the wet. The work cannot be done in a way to satisfy the keeper--or possibly others. And the rain means that he falls behind with that everlasting tax on his time entailed by keeping rabbits within bounds. After a mild, open winter, by the time the game-shooting season is ended, and coverts are available for rabbit-killing, young rabbits have already made their appearance. The keeper welcomes a short spell of really hard weather in February, so that he may the more easily catch up all the pheasants he needs for penning. Otherwise the kind of winter that best suits him is a dry one--without hard frost.

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Cubs at Christmas

We met a gamekeeper who had been blessed with a litter of fox cubs born about the middle of December--just before the usual mating-time of the foxes. When most of the season's cubs would be born these Christmas cubs would be three months old, and well grounded in the elements of a fox's education. And when the pheasants and partridges began to sit they could save their mother a deal of laborious work--as our friend the keeper found out. In cub-hunting days, there must have been some rude shocks for the puppies of the pack, and even the old stagers of hounds must have been taken aback when they came to close quarters with one of these forward cubs. The keeper caught one, and by a strange chance. He had been expecting a visit from hounds. He knew an earth where he thought that possibly a vixen later on might have a family; not willing to disturb the place by spade-work when stopping it, he stuffed the entrance with sacks. Hounds came and went--and afterwards the keeper visited the earth to recover his sacks. What was his surprise when he found that inside one of the sacks a cub had curled itself comfortably for sleep. Well knowing that if he were to say there was a litter of cubs on his ground at Christmas none would believe him, he put the cub into a capacious pocket. Then when he told the story of his early litter, and was laughed at for his pains, he confounded sceptics by drawing the little fox, alive and uninjured, from his coat-tails.

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Work for Rainy Days

The keeper always has a supply of odd jobs on hand to occupy his time on a soaking wet day, or when a snow-storm rages. He has always plenty to do--but much of his work cannot be done properly in bad weather, and to work out of doors on a wet day may be as much a waste of time as to work indoors on a fine day on matters of no moment. It would be foolish to go ferreting in heavy rain--nets become soaked, rabbits will not bolt, and digging for ferrets in soft mud is heart-breaking work; at the end of the day, while there may be a few rabbits that look as if they have been bathing in mud, there is all the tackle to be dried for the next day. Then again, it would be sheer waste of time to stop rabbit-burrows when snow has freshly fallen, for half the holes would be hidden, and the work would have to be done over again. It pays to wait until the next day, when rabbits have been out to feed and the holes are seen easily.

When he decides to stay under cover the keeper hardly knows where to begin, as he looks about his store-houses and sheds. Here are traps that should be cleaned and overhauled, broken chains to be mended, bent parts to be carefully straightened--a little judicious filing and a drop of oil are needed here and there to make all parts work together smoothly and swiftly. Snares must be overhauled and sorted, the sound ones to be neatly shaped so that the noose stays open ready for use, and each one must be fitted with its string, tealer, and plug. A supply of new snares may be made. Plugs and pegs may be shaped, for holding snares and traps, from a length of solid ash which the keeper knows to be well seasoned, so that it will not crack when he drives it into stony ground with his heavy, steel-shod heel. For months he has treasured that piece of ash--and terrible was the vengeance that he vowed on his wife when she dared to hint that it would serve nicely for her copper fire.

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The Old Lumber

The wet day brings the chance for doing various little carpentering jobs, long neglected. The keeper may have set himself the task of making a new hand-barrow before the coming of another pheasant-rearing time--a barrow for carrying the coops, two at a time, with the hen and precious chicks within, where a horse and cart cannot pass through the coverts. Perhaps he remembers a day when the crazy handle of the old barrow snapped off and upset two coops of his best birds. Then a wet day is a good day for sorting coops, and putting apart for professional treatment those beyond the keeper's makeshift craft. He can set about painting the whole ones. Now and again he must look to his ferret-hutches, and fit new wire-netting to the fronts if any meshes are rotten with rust--should the ferrets escape there is no telling what may happen. And guns are never the worse for an extra special examination, and a thorough cleaning and oiling. An all-round tidying-up of his varied assortment of tackle certainly makes for a temporary improvement in the look of his work-places--but, as it has been with every clearance, the same old lumber is once more reprieved. "You see," says the keeper, "it might come in useful some time."