Part 6

While usually building in high trees, some descend to thick bushes, and from this has arisen a popular idea that there are two sorts of magpies--bush and tree. The idea is hard to shake; and it is argued that the bush magpie is the smaller of the two. The nest is always fortified with strong and ugly thorns; marauding crows or rooks would attack it at their peril. Careful as they are to protect their own nests, magpies have small respect for the sanctity of other bird homes; but though they are inveterate egg-stealers, a good word is sometimes heard for their usefulness in destroying slugs, rats, and field-mice.

* * * * *

The Merciful Trap

No solution has been found to the problem of a substitute for the steel trap for rabbits and vermin. So the steel trap remains a painful necessity, as those know who have tried to keep great numbers of rabbits within bounds. But steel traps are sometimes used where more merciful ways of catching rabbits might serve as well. Rabbit catchers who never think for themselves, but do things only because they have always done them, will use steel traps where they could save themselves much labour, and the rabbits a good deal of suffering, if they were to use snares. Several hundred snares can be set in the time it would take to set a hundred traps, and the snares cost little, and weigh next to nothing--a consideration when traps or snares have to be carried a long way. A few traps make a heavy load.

* * * * *

The Rabbit in a Snare

Snares themselves are far from ideal. If they are properly set a good many rabbits may run into them at speed and kill themselves almost instantly; but the majority of the rabbits caught will not be thus neatly despatched. Half a night's catch may be found dead in the morning, some having been hanged outright, others strangled more or less slowly; but half will be found still living, if nearly dead. This slow strangulation is prevented when a knot is made in the snare, or some sort of ring or washer is attached, so that the wire cannot be drawn tight enough to prevent the rabbit breathing; but no rabbit then is killed swiftly and mercifully by the wire, and on other accounts the plan could not prove a real solution to the problem. There is still another way of setting a snare which prevents a slow death: a bender--a springy stick of hazel or ash about four feet long--is fixed firmly in the ground: the snare is made fast to the thin top of it, the stick is bent down, and the top lightly inserted at the edge of the rabbit's run. When a rabbit then rushes into the snare, the bender flies up, swinging him off his feet, so that he is killed quickly. This is a poacher's dodge to prevent rabbits from squealing when caught: it can be practised only in an open place. There are many situations where the steel trap is the only means of dealing with the rabbit pest, and must be used perforce until a substitute is found--unless man is to give way to rabbits. We do not think that any gamekeeper uses steel traps for rabbits unnecessarily.

* * * * *

The Sleep of Birds

The gamekeeper perhaps sees more of sleeping birds than most people; and makes many interesting mental notes of the resting habits of creatures in his woods. He observes that perch-roosting birds always rest with their heads to the wind. If when a high wind is blowing a rook alights on the home-tree, he swings his head into the wind before settling. So when the wood-pigeons come home with the wind behind them they pass over their roosting trees, then beat up into the wind. This is done to defeat the force of the wind, which might prevent the bird alighting where desired, or might blow him from his perch. At rest, the bird doubles the knees, as it were, which causes the toes to contract, the weight of the body resting chiefly on the breast and on the outspread wings--not on the eggs, if in a nest. The birds' legs and feet have sinews which work an automatic locking action of the claws, so that, roosting with knees doubled up, the feet grip the branch unfailingly. On rough nights, the pheasants take the precaution of roosting in lower branches than usual. If a strong gale springs up after a bird has gone to roost on an exposed tree, it may be driven to seek a berth on the ground--and to the wind that does no good to the pheasant the passing fox owes his supper.

Some birds seem always half-awake. Wild-fowlers will strike a match at night to test the question of the presence or absence of wild duck in the distant creek; if present, an instant quacking will betray them. Pheasants seem ever vigilant, and on the darkest night it is difficult to stalk them unawares, however quietly you move. If you come within a hundred yards of guinea-fowl at night they will raise the alarm. They excel at talking in their sleep. Sparrow catchers know that directly their nets touch one part of an ivy-covered wall birds fly out from another. But some birds, such as the wrens when cuddling in a hole in the thatch, seem to sleep soundly. And while we have found that on striking a match beneath a tree where wild pigeons were roosting they have flown out at once with a clatter of wings, a pigeon-lover in London informs us that his city birds, roosting on his window-ledge, lose their wariness by night, and will hold their own in face of a candle, while a hand is outstretched to touch their necks.

As the day closes in, the partridges seek some sheltered, dry-lying hollow in the fields, and a covey of twenty birds will huddle on a spot a yard in diameter. The colder the weather the closer they roost. The birds on the edge of the ring have their breasts outwards. Sometimes, by the way, it is unfortunate for partridges and pheasants that the positions of their nests prevent them from flying to and fro. Having to force their way through tangled undergrowth, a trail is left for the fox to follow home. The barn-door fowl, in captivity, may walk from her nest; but when in possession of a stolen nest abroad, she resumes the flying habit. Fowls suffer frequently from deformed breast-bones, perhaps from roosting when their bones are young and soft. That they and their cocks are not heavy sleepers most people have cause to know.

* * * * *

Animals at Rest

Wild animals asleep fall into graceful attitudes. The fox curls himself up with all the luxurious air of a cat; he rests his head in the lap of two front pads, then twines his brush neatly round over his long, pointed nose. He is a light sleeper; but hares and rabbits are still more easily roused. We believe hares sleep with their eyes wide open; the uncapped lenses of the eyes remain active through sleep, so that any vision of danger conveys an automatic alarm to the brain. People are sometimes puzzled when, in open fields, they notice a dozen or more hare forms or beds within a few yards of each other. They may conclude that hares swarm in those fields. Probably the reason for the many forms is that a hare likes to face the wind when sleeping, and so scratches out many beds to suit the wind's changing directions. Among animals that sleep very soundly is the hedgehog--he has little to fear when asleep; in case of danger, he has only to erect his spines, to discourage effectively any disturber of his dreams. While hedgehogs, dormice, and badgers sleep deeply through the greater part of the winter, the squirrel is the lightest of sleepers; on dry, bright winter days he enjoys a frolic in the snow.

* * * * *

Vigilant Fulfers

It is commonly held that fieldfares roost on the ground; yet we never remember to have disturbed them when roosting in that way, but have often done so in the woods, in which they had favourite parts. They come to the chosen haunt on the brink of darkness, after the habit of carrion crows, and they roost in companies apparently of twenty and thirty on the older growths of underwood. At all times the fieldfares are wide awake, and they never fail to take wing and utter their throaty chuckle on the slightest provocation.

* * * * *

The Eyes of Wild Creatures

There is a theory that the eyes of wild creatures magnify things seen, so that they appear many times larger than to human eyes. This has been held to explain why creatures smaller and weaker than man, like hares and rabbits, flee desperately at his approach--a reasonable habit if all men to them are as giants. One's sympathies would go out to the rabbit if he sees foxes as horses, and weasels as foxes. If birds' eyes have magnifying power, many miracles of flight and of feeding would seem natural. The swift passage of birds through obstacles that appear to our eyes to be almost impenetrable is something of a miraculous nature. Without a moment's survey of difficulties or direction, a bird flashes through a jungle where there is no possible way for it to be found by human eyes. The blackbird flies shrieking in and out of a dense hedge of thorns; but not a feather is ruffled in the course of his intricate flight. Or watch the jay or the sparrow-hawk passing at speed through an almost solid network of twigs and stems. The human eye cannot properly follow this performance by the sparrow-hawk; a swish and a streak of bluish grey, and it is gone. Many a bold jay, finding itself caught between beaters and guns, has saved its life by this wonderful power of flight at speed, going away without giving the slightest chance for a shot; it will dash out of a wall of undergrowth on one side of a ride sheer into another wall. No doubt the jay knows to an inch which is the shortest cut out of man's sight. Hardly less wonderful than birds' flight through crowded obstacles is the way in which rabbits scurry and twist through masses of fern and brambles. But where the theory of eye magnification would seem most probably true is where tits and goldcrests are searching for food on the underside of fir boughs, and finding food which no man's eye could see unaided.

* * * * *

The Season's End

While February 1 brings security to pheasants and partridges, hares--where any survive in spite of the Ground Game Act--are now also nearly safe from persecution, thanks, however, to the courtesy of sportsmen, and not to the law. Like rabbits, hares may be killed all the year round, but, unlike rabbits, they may not be sold or exposed for sale between the first day of March and the last day of July.

The end of the season has a strong effect on the gamekeeper. February 2 marks his annual truce with his birds, save woodcock, snipe and wild-fowl. Thereafter he loses the vindictive look of the shooting season--he becomes a man of peace. For long months he has been scheming death and destruction--he has devoted himself wholly to the science of killing game. Happy, if anxious, his face has been as he has bustled his birds to guns belching forth some three hundred pellets of lead at each discharge. At the end of the day he has rejoiced over the long rows of the dead, in feather and fur, while his hand jingles gold and silver--his reward for success in the contest of wit and reason against cunning and instinct. The second day of February comes--and his whole nature seems to undergo a change. No longer he boasts to his rival neighbour how a week ago come to-morrow the bag was so many hundred pheasants, and would have been doubled if the guns had shot "anyhow at all." But he will make a boast of the numbers of his hen pheasants. The sight of hen pheasants is the greatest joy of his days--over his hens he watches with maternal love. "And how many hens was there?"--this is the answer he will return should you mention casually that you had seen pheasants feeding in a field.

As to cock pheasants, his sensations are different. The sight of a cock pheasant is a taunt. The veteran cocks that have passed unscathed through the shooting season now grow proud in bearing, and the keeper thinks they seem to eye him with scornful looks. They are approaching the reward of their cunning, of their keen eyes, their sharp ears, their speedy legs--the possibility of several wives is before them. No matter where the keeper goes now, he is taunted by the sight and sound of these victorious veterans that have eluded all his efforts to bring them low. In summer it is the lament of the twenty thousand gamekeepers in this country that there are "too many cocks by half."

LONDON EDWARD ARNOLD.]

An idea is widespread among keepers, if not among employers, that they are privileged, by virtue of their office, to kill off superfluous cock pheasants for ten days after the end of the season. The mistake may have arisen from the fact that licensed dealers in game may expose game for sale for ten days after the end of the shooting season. We knew an old keeper whose antipathy to superfluous cocks was deeply rooted: the sight of too many cocks maddened him. By an ingenious argument he was able to overcome his legal and conscientious scruples as to disposing of the unnecessary game. The legal scruples troubled him more than those of conscience; but this argument always prevailed: "It is not lawful to take cocks killed out of season to my master's larder. But if I should happen to have any dead ones to dispose of it would be a sinful waste to throw them away. Therefore, it will be best if I eat them myself."