Part 11

My friend at Heatley, who used to have the owls as his tenants, once (in 1897) shot a sparrow hawk near his house that had a screaming blackbird in his talons, and was tearing off from its back strips of feathers and flesh together without apparently having tried to kill it first. He told me that twice he had seen a lark escape from a sparrow hawk. In both instances the lark's idea seemed to be to rise higher than the hawk, and the two kept going up together. The hawk made repeated stoops at his quarry, but each time he missed, the lark striking now to the right and now to the left. The contest ended in both cases by the lark dashing down to cover from a great height; one time it found refuge among the shrubs in a garden, and on the second occasion it came down faster than he could describe with its wings closed against its sides, and just slanting over the tops of some fruit trees opposite, dashed straight into the kitchen. To do this it had to pass through the sliding door of the back-kitchen, which was not more than two feet open, and then through the open door of the kitchen. Strange to say, it was able to check its speed sufficiently to alight uninjured on the floor, though utterly exhausted and helpless. My friend picked it up, and having held it for some minutes in his hand, let it fly away seeming none the worse for its perilous adventure. The hawk, he said, sailed calmly once or twice round the house before he took himself off.

The following is part of a letter I received in November, 1894:--"A sparrow hawk took up his nightly abode on the transome of the top light of a window in Arley Chapel in the autumn of 1890, and remained constant to that roosting place until, at all events, May, 1892, when we left Arley. How long it stayed there after we left I cannot say, but I was told last winter that it had disappeared. The hawk was always solitary; I never saw it with a companion. The roost was always exactly on the same stone."

One has heard stories of other birds living the same kind of lonely existence, but I never saw a very satisfactory explanation as to how it is that they come to do so. The pairing instinct is strong in birds, and it must be a powerful motive that makes them disregard it. We are told that if a bird of prey loses its mate it does not take it long to find another. May we suppose that solitary birds like this at Arley are waiting in readiness for such an emergency? Or is such a bird simply one that, being old and cantankerous, is bored by female society, or feels himself unequal to the cares of a family?

All birds seem to give a sparrow hawk a wide berth, but one often sees a kestrel pursued, most frequently perhaps by a rook, but sometimes by a peewit or a gull. In October, 1908, I saw from the garden a kestrel persecuted by two rooks. He kept dodging their attacks, but didn't seem to mind them much and never turned on them. Again, at the end of October, 1906, I was watching a kestrel as it hovered over a field close by, when I saw it suddenly and violently assaulted by a missel-thrush. It gave way for some space, but when in a minute or two the thrush flew off, it returned to its first position and continued hovering just as if never interrupted.

I have heard from a man here, an old gamekeeper, a story like one that I have read somewhere before. He had seen a kestrel pounce upon what he supposed to be a mouse and fly off with it. Presently, to his surprise, it fell like a stone to the ground and he picked it up quite dead; close by it he found a dead stoat.

Wild duck breed in the Bollin meadows and may sometimes be seen in the garden as they fly over; we see wild geese, too, sometimes, and occasionally a heron. I was much struck one day by the flight of a pair of swans over the garden. They were not flying high, but side by side, with their long necks stretched out, with strong regular wing-beats; without haste and without effort, they held on their straight and even course at a good steady pace. It gave me rather a strange impression of dignity and power.

One or two pairs of wood-pigeons build in the garden every year, but they are not as common in Warburton as in more wooded country, though sometimes large flocks visit us in autumn (e.g., in 1910). My friend at Heatley told me that one year when a great many had come to feed on acorns in a wood near his house, he had hoped from the shelter of a wooden hut to make a good bag, but he found that in spite of their numbers they were extremely wideawake, and though they covered the ground in every other direction, they carefully eschewed a trail of Indian corn, with which he had hoped to tempt them within reach of his gun.

Turtledoves are fairly common in Cheshire, but there are many more in some years than in others. I only remember their nesting in this garden once (in 1899), when they were to be seen on the lawn every day.

Pheasants are constant visitors; we are very seldom without them at any time of the year, and since parts of the old river-bed have been left wild they have taken to breeding here. We have often watched from our window the cock pheasant strutting about the hen, ruffling up his feathers and displaying himself to advantage like a turkey-cock. The tufts of ear-like feathers on each side of the head are a marked feature in the cock at the courting season and give the bird a curious Mephistophelian look.

We noticed once when we came upon them unawares as they were feeding on corn we had put for them, that the hen, instead of scuttling off like the cock, clapped close to the ground almost within arm's length, evidently trusting for concealment to her sober colouring.

One cock who made himself very much at home here in the early part of 1901, and stayed with us for more than three months, unlike most that have been here, was for ever crowing and clapping his wings. He always roosted on the same tree, and every evening just before it got dark took care to let us know that he was going to bed.

In October, 1910, there was a cock that used to amuse himself by sitting for half an hour at a time on the broad top of a clipped yew hedge. Several hens would sometimes sit there with him: once we saw seven on the top of the hedge at once.

I have heard that in Japan at the time of an earthquake, extraordinary commotion is noticed among pheasants. There was a slight shock of earthquake here on December 17th, 1896, at 5-30 in the morning, and a working man who happened then to be near the Fox-cover was especially struck by the noise that pheasants were making in the wood.

Nearly every year we have partridge visitors, a family party; in 1895 there were thirteen young ones with the old pair, and last year, 1911, again there were twelve. They always seem happy and light-hearted; they dance and jump, they play games like "hide-and-seek" or "kiss-in-the-ring," round about and in and out the drooping feathery branches of a deadara, that just touch the ground, and in the intervals they sun themselves on the walks.

I heard very few corncrakes in 1911, but they are common enough most years. In 1908, one took up his abode in the old river-bed just outside our window, and used to serenade us every night (May 8th to 26th). He went on incessantly, exactly like a clock, quite regularly and evenly. He was at it when we went to bed about 12 and never ceased or varied in the least as long as we were awake to hear him.

What was once the bed of the Mersey has now (1912), thanks to the Ship Canal engineers, become land comparatively speaking dry. But, of course, the process of filling up was gradual, and for some years more or less water was left in the river-bed. During one stage, which lasted perhaps ten years, waterhens, which here are known as coots (true coots are called "baldheaded"), became quite common in the garden. We used to see them rather as waders than swimmers, but we did constantly see them running about on the soft mud, washing in the little pools, and, as pairing time came on, fighting desperately together. In the autumn a dozen or more would be feeding on the lawn at once, and in the winter some would often come to pick up food with the fowls, I have even seen one make an attempt to get fat from a net hung out for the tits. We often saw them perching quite high up in a tree. In 1907, I had a photograph given me showing a waterhen's nest in a small wood near Lymm. It was in a tree four feet six inches from the ground, and 200 yards from any water.

Golden plover come to the Bollin meadows every winter, but not so many I think as when the land was more liable to floods, at least I do not hear their clear whistle as often as formerly. It is not unusual to see them flocking with peewits.

Peewits are called simply "plover" here. There are large flocks on every side though not actually in the garden.

In August 1897, there was an extraordinary concourse of peewits on the bank of the river just opposite. The noise they made was loud and continuous, and birds were flying backwards and forwards all the while. The whole of the bank for a hundred yards or more was covered with them, others were at the water's edge, washing like ducks or playing about and chasing one another, others were picking among the stones or drinking. All the time the noise never ceased, and a friend said it reminded her of the gulls on the coast of Ireland that she heard on her way to America. The assembly on that particular day (August 13th) broke up about one p.m., having lasted for more than an hour. Frequently during the rest of the month, peewits gathered at the same place, but not in the same numbers, and one day in December, 1898, I noticed that there was something of the same kind on a small scale going on.

In June, 1901, when the river-bed had been further filled up and the pools transformed into a muddy swamp, we were able from our windows to watch a brood of peewit chicks from the time when they were first hatched until they were old enough to go out into the world. They were most interesting when as quite little things with backs the colour of the eggs they had left, they busily hunted about for food, or all crowded together under the wings of their mother for short spells of rest and warmth.

Snipe breed in the Bollin meadows, and common sandpipers were always by the river and the river-bed as long as there was any water at all in it, always at least in August. They still seem to remember their old haunts, and visit us occasionally. In the latter part of August, 1910, there was one that had some feathers out of place in one of its wings and appeared unable to fly. He seemed content enough and I wondered if he would try to face the winter here, but whether by his own act and deed, or by someone else's, he had gone when I looked for him in September. In August, 1911, a sandpiper used to frequent a pit in fields a good way from the river.

In April and May, 1910, a pair of redshanks were constantly to be seen in the Bollin meadows towards Dunham, but no nest was found. In 1911 they were there again, and the keeper found a nest not far from the Fox-cover, but I think he must have told too many of his friends about it, for within a week of the eggs being hatched it was deserted.

I very well remember a good many years ago, though I can find no note of the exact year, that I saw a black tern flying backwards and forwards like a swallow over a wet spot in the corner of the garden, and the next day I saw what was probably the same bird flying in the same way over a large farmyard pit close by the road, about a mile from here.

Since the Ship Canal has been opened gulls have been among the most frequent and the most noticeable of all birds in these parts. Whenever a field is ploughed up, however far it may be from the canal, there you are sure to find gulls, and when the plough is at work in the fields opposite, which are close to its banks, the gulls come in crowds and form one long white line as the furrows are turned, the birds continually rising before the plough and settling down again when it has passed. I have identified black-headed and lesser black-backed gulls among them, but have never attempted to decide to what species the majority belong. Indeed, I do not feel very competent to do so, having always found it sufficiently difficult to distinguish the variations of gull plumage at different ages and at different times of the year.

In 1908 the keeper (Mr. J. Porter) showed me a Bohemian waxwing, a hooded crow and a hobby, all of which he had shot in Warburton within a year or two previously.

He has told me since of stockdoves ("blue rocks" he calls them) nesting here, and a curious story of a wren's nest on an ash-stump in the Fox-cover in 1910, on the top of which a hedgesparrow built her nest. Both broods, he said, hatched about the same time.

I have received from a friend in Northamptonshire (Mr. G. S. Garrett, of Little Houghton) a photograph showing a similar instance of two nests built one above the other. He says: "A piece of bark about 20 inches by 13, fell off an elm tree into a fence and dried up into a tube-like shape. A spotted flycatcher built its nest in the top and laid 5 eggs and a brown wren in the bottom laying 7 eggs.... The nests are now in the Rochester Museum."

BRITISH MAMMALS.