Part 5

February is the month when it is fashionable for stoats and weasels to begin courting. The keeper finds the trapping of stoats or weasels less difficult work than usual in consequence. He maintains that all is fair in love, war, and gamekeeping. He relies chiefly on tunnel-traps. The old way was to fix a long, low, narrow box in a likely run--a box open at each end, but with shutters which dropped when a pan in the middle of the floor was touched by a weasel's feet; so the weasel would be caught alive, without injury--only, however, to be executed. Another old-time trap was the figure 4 trap, set with a heavy stone or slate, which fell upon and instantly killed its victim. These cumbersome and not always reliable traps have passed from the woodlands, and now the keeper merely slips a gin into the entrance of a tunnel. This is made sometimes of earth and sticks, or is a drain-pipe, or is made of three lengths of plank, about a yard long and six inches wide. A hole in a hedge-bank is a favourite place for the gin. These tunnel traps are commonly set a few yards from the end of a hedge, because stoats and weasels have a weakness for cutting corners.

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Changes of Coats

We have heard the suggestion many times that there are two varieties of the common weasel, but think this is not the case. The mistake no doubt arises from the marked difference in size between the males and females; the dog weasel is twice or sometimes three times the size of its sister, and is nearly as big as a small female stoat, while the dog weasel's sister may be hardly larger than a big mouse. Then the changes in the weasel's coat are deceptive. In spring a rusty red fur takes the place of the soft winter brown of the upper parts, while the white under-parts turn to a yellow tone. The ordinary brown of rats also changes to a striking rusty red shade in spring. This is most obvious in the case of rats living in burrows in soil, and often going short of food, and the rusty fur is specially marked on rats that have been feeding on carrion sheep and lambs. Shortness of food has the effect of prolonging the business of coat-changing, as is well seen in the case of a ferret kept on short commons. A white ferret is deep yellow in the spring before it has changed its coat. Stoats, too, show yellow on parts which will be white in the new coat.

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The Vermin Bag

We met, by chance, an old keeper who, on first acquaintance, seemed a remarkable specimen--for he informed us that his orders were to set not a single trap anywhere on his ten thousand acres. Thinking that we saw a movement of his eyelid, we put the blunt question to him: How many traps did he usually set? And he replied unblushingly, "Forty dozen." He kept no record of his bag of vermin; but as he trapped on such a wholesale scale (remembering that the estate is supposed to be trapless), no doubt his employer would be startled if he knew the numbers of vermin killed; his vermin bag must be exceptional. The old-fashioned keeper is stubborn; the kestrel, as we have said before, is seen too often on his gibbet, and he has no respect for the useful wood-owl, which he ruthlessly exterminates. A record of a year's bag of vermin on one big estate reads thus: Jays, 350; magpies, 160; crows, 150; squirrels, 140; weasels, 80; cats, 70; stoats, 60; hedgehogs, 40; hawks, 30; total, 1080. This record says nothing of rats, rooks or owls, though no doubt numbers of rats and rooks were sacrificed.

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The Ways of Squirrels

The gamekeeper whose bag of vermin in a year included 140 squirrels is, we may hope, exceptional. Squirrels are not always treated by keepers as vermin. Now and again a squirrel has been proved guilty of meddling with the eggs and young of pheasants--but so rarely that even keepers speak of these misdeeds as "not worth mentioning." The traditional crime of squirrels is that they damage various sorts of coniferous trees by nipping their shoots when young. Even if they gave this work all their time and attention, their numbers in the woods to-day are so small that the whole damage done would not amount to a very great injury to the country.

Squirrels are the most innocent creatures in the woods, so far as any harm to game preserving goes. It is their misfortune that many keepers look upon them as a convenient form of ferret-food. We have found a freshly killed squirrel, apparently the victim of a bird of prey, beneath a spruce fir, from which a barn owl flew as we examined the body; no doubt owls would take a chance to attack a squirrel. As to what squirrels kill there is little evidence. We have known a squirrel to do away with part of a brood of tits in an apple-tree, and one which visited a pheasant's nest, carrying away an egg, and once we saw a young pheasant in a squirrel's mouth; but we have no doubt that the bird was picked up dead. The squirrel's alarm-cry reminds us of the sound produced from the hole in the body of a rubber doll; it is amusing to see how he stamps his fore-feet while uttering this cry, as if doing his best to frighten away his human intruder by a show of force and fury.

Squirrels always seem to be among the happiest of wild animals. They have few foes, and none to equal their agility and speed in the tree branches. The stoat is a good climber, and if he were to attack the squirrel's nest there would be small chance for the young ones; but stoats rarely climb so high. In the bitterest weather the squirrel is secure in his drey; he dreams away the hard days, while around him birds and animals die of cold and hunger. His only trouble seems to be that hazel-nuts are sometimes blighted.

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The Squirrel's Appetite

We know an old keeper who believes that squirrels eat everything eatable in a wood, and that nothing does more damage to his interests. He reviles squirrels bitterly, saying that they steal as many of his precious eggs as rats; the eggs of small birds too, and, on occasion, nestlings. There seems no end to his accusations. He declares squirrels will take strawberries and apricots if they have the chance, and that they eat mushrooms and dig up truffles. A favourite food is supplied by the Scotch pine; though in hot weather larch, silver fir, and spruce are added in liberal quantities to the dietary. While he rejoices in hazel-nuts, beech-mast, acorns, and spruce-seeds, he is sometimes tempted by berries, walnuts, and apples. He eats freely off buds and young shoots, and peels the bark off trees--digging a spiral course with his teeth near the top of the tree, so that the first strong gale blows over the tree-top. It is the sweet stuff between bark and tree, rather than the bark itself, that attracts his fancy. In the spring he plays havoc with the tender shoots of the horse-chestnut, showering them on the ground; while he is so fond of acorns that he is accused even of pulling up young oak plants to devour the remains of the acorns below. But we doubt that one squirrel in ten inflicts serious injury on anybody.

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The Departure of Cats

We suppose that more cats disappear from the domestic hearth in February than in any other month. The gamekeeper may or may not know more about this than he will admit--it is certain that the cats go, and it is true that many of them turn up again. Whatever the February fate of the cat, the nearest keeper to its home bears the blame of having spirited it away. He may deny all--that he knows anything about the cat or its colour or its fate--but the more he denies the more strongly will he be suspected, the more furiously accused. One old keeper met all inquiries about the departure of cats with this sound piece of wisdom: "If ye makes 'em bide at 'ome, there won't be no need for wantin' 'em to come back."

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Skeletons and Cobwebs

New times give the keeper new excuses. Taxed with a cat's disappearance, he blames the motor-car; some day he will blame the flying-ship; where a railway is at hand he always has a ready excuse. We would be the last to suggest that when the mortal remains of a cat are found on a road frequented by motor-cars the presumption is always justified that the cat was slain by a keeper who endeavoured to put the blame on an innocent driver. We are confident that many cats in game-preserved places live to die from old age. Ten years is a ripe age for a cat, but some die from accidents more natural than execution or murder. Like the birds, when they know their hours to be numbered, cats creep away to some quiet hiding-place to await death--perhaps beneath the floor of an old barn, or among the rafters of a familiar roof, where they hunted rats and mice in youthful days.

Now and again, in old buildings, death-chambers are discovered where the skeletons of cats have been hidden among cobwebs and dust, perhaps for hundreds of years.

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The Persecuted Magpie

Magpies will soon be exterminated in many parts of the country unless they receive special protection. Like sparrow-hawks, the tribe suffers collectively for the sins of the individual. The ordinary magpie is no more harmful to the interests of game than the ordinary rook. His beauty, certainly, is far more striking. But he has been given a bad name; and magpies are destroyed on every possible occasion. The keeper finds the magpie only too easy to destroy, in spite of the bird's wonderful keenness of eye and his wary ways.

Magpies go year after year to the same huge, domed nest. The birds may be trapped a hundred times more easily than sparrow-hawks; and they may be shot without any difficulty, so slow, laboured and straight is their flight. An imitation of their call lures them unsuspiciously to their doom. Add that the plumage is showy, and it is clear that the thoughtless keeper finds magpies easy targets.

They are in demand as cage-birds, and even if a keeper should reprieve a few lingering pairs, he is likely to complain of "they bird fanciers," who "won't let the birds bide."

Like all of its tribe, the magpie attacks the eye of its victims, whether alive or dead. His taste is for carrion, and this accounts for the ease with which he may be trapped. Here the magpies differ from the hawks, which are seldom to be caught by a dead bait, unless killed by themselves--as when they have been disturbed after a kill and return to an unfinished feast. In trapping for magpies, the keeper ties a rabbit's eye to the pan of his trap, which he covers carefully with moss so that only the eye is visible; then the magpie swoops down; unerringly, and with great force, he drives his bill into the eye, and the trap holds him fast.