Chapter Fifteen.

ROOKS RETURNING TO ROOST--VAST FLOCKS--ROOK PARLIAMENT--THE TWO ROOK ARMIES AND THEIR ROUTES--ROOK LAWS, TRADITIONS, AND ANCIENT HISTORY--"THROWS" OF TIMBER--THIEVING JACKDAWS.

As evening approaches, and the rooks begin to wing their way homewards, sometimes a great number of them will alight upon the steep ascent close under the entrenchment on the downs which has been described, and from whence the wood and beech trees where they sleep can be seen. They do not seem so much in search of food, of which probably there is not a great deal to be found in the short, dried-up herbage and hard soil, as to rest here, half-way home from the arable fields. Sometimes they wheel and circle in fantastic flight over the very brow of the down, just above the rampart; occasionally, in the raw cold days of winter, they perch moping in disconsolate mood upon the bare branches of the clumps of trees on the ridge.

After the nesting time is over and they have got back to their old habits--which during that period are quite reversed--it is a sight to see from hence the long black stream in the air steadily flowing onwards to the wood below. They stretch from here to the roosting-trees, fully a mile and a half--literally as the crow flies; and backwards in the opposite direction the line reaches as far as the eye can see. It is safe to estimate that the aerial army's line of march extends over quite five miles in one unbroken corps. The breadth they occupy in the atmosphere varies--now twenty yards, now fifty, now a hundred, on an average say fifty yards; but rooks do not fly very close together like starlings, and the mass, it may be observed, fly on the same plane. Instead of three or four layers one above the other, the greater number pass by at the same height from the ground, side by side on a level, as soldiers would march upon a road: not meaning, of course, an absolute, but a relative level. This formation is more apparent from an elevation--as it were, up among them--than from below; and looking along their line towards the distant wood it is like glancing under a black canopy.

Small outlying parties straggle from the line--now on one side, now on the other; sometimes a few descend to alight on trees in the meadows, where doubtless their nests were situated in the spring. For it is a habit of theirs, months after the nesting is over and also before it begins, to pay a flying visit to the trees in the evening, calling en route to see that all is well and to assert possession.

The rustling sound of these thousands upon thousands of wings beating the air with slow steady stroke can hardly be compared to anything else in its weird oppressiveness, so to say: it is a little like falling water, but may be best likened, perhaps, to a vast invisible broom sweeping the sky. Every now and then a rook passes with ragged wing-- several feathers gone, so that you can see daylight through it; sometimes the feathers are missing from the centre, leaving a great gap, so that it looks as if the bird had a large wing on this side and on the other two narrow ones. There is a rough resemblance between these and the torn sails of some of the old windmills which have become dark in colour from long exposure to the weather, and have been rent by the storms of years. Rooks can fly with gaps of astonishing size in their wings, and do not seem much incommoded by the loss--caused, doubtless, by a charge of shot in the rook-shooting, or by the small sharp splinters of flint with which the bird-keepers sometimes load their guns, not being allowed to use shot.

Near their nesting-trees their black feathers may be picked up by dozens in the grass; they beat them out occasionally against the small boughs, and sometimes in fighting. If seen from behind, the wings of the rook, as he spreads them and glides, slowly descending, preparatory to alighting, slightly turn up at the edges like the rim of a hat, but much less curved. From a distance as he flies he appears to preserve a level course, neither rising nor falling; but if observed nearer it will be seen that with every stroke of the wings the body is lifted some inches, and sinks as much immediately afterwards.

As the black multitude floats past overhead with deliberate, easy flight, their trumpeters and buglemen, the jackdaws--two or three to every company--utter their curious chuckle; for the jackdaw is a bird which could not keep silence to save his life, but must talk after his fashion, while his grave, solemn companions move slowly onwards, rarely deigning to `caw' him a reply. But away yonder at the wood, above the great beech trees, where so vast a congregation is gathered together, there is a mighty uproar and commotion: a seething and bubbling of the crowds, now settling on the branches, now rising in sable clouds, each calling to the other with all his might, the whole population delivering its opinions at once.

It is an assemblage of a hundred republics. We know how free States indulge in speech with their parliaments and congresses and senates, their public meetings, and so forth: here are a hundred such nations, all with perfect liberty of tongue holding forth unsparingly, and in a language which consists of two or three syllables indefinitely repeated. The din is wonderful--each republic as its forces arrive adding to the noise, and for a long time unable to settle upon their trees, but feeling compelled to wheel around and discourse. In spring each tribe has its special district, its own canton and city, in its own trees away in the meadows. Later on they all meet here in the evening. It is a full hour or more before the orations have all been delivered, and even then small bands rush up into the air still dissatisfied.

This great stream of rooks passing over the hills meets another great stream as it approaches the wood, crossing up from the meadows. From the rampart there may be seen, perhaps a mile and a half away, a dim black line crossing at right angles--converging on the wood, which itself stands on the edge of the table-land from which the steeper downs arise. This second army is every whit as numerous, as lengthy, and as regular in its route as the first.

Every morning, from the beech trees where they have slept, safe at that elevation from all the dangers of the night, there set out these two vast expeditionary corps. Regularly the one flies steadily eastward over the downs; as regularly the other flies steadily northwards over the vale and meadows. Doubtless in different country districts their habits in this respect vary; but here it is always east and always north. If any leave the wood for the south or the west, as probably they do, they go in small bodies and are quickly lost sight of. The two main divisions sail towards the sunrise and towards the north star.

They preserve their ranks for at least two miles from the wood; and then gradually first one and then another company falls out, and wheeling round, descends upon some favourite field, till by degrees, spreading out like a fan, the army melts away. In the evening the various companies, which may by that time have worked far to the right or to the left, gradually move into line. By-and-by the vanguard comes sweeping up, and each regiment rises from the meadow or the hill, and takes its accustomed place in the return journey.

So that although if you casually observe a flock of rooks in the daytime they seem to wander hither and thither just as fancy leads, or as they are driven by passers-by, in reality they have all their special haunts; they adhere to certain rules, and even act in concert, thousands upon thousands of them at once, as if in obedience to the word of command, and as if aware of the precise moment at which to move. They have their laws, from which there is no deviation: they are handed down unaltered from generation to generation. Tradition, indeed, seems to be their main guide, as it is with savage human tribes. They have their particular feeding grounds; and so you may notice that, comparing ten or a dozen fields, one or two will almost always be found to be frequented by rooks while the rest are vacant.

Here, for instance, is a meadow close to a farmstead--what is usually called the home-field, from its proximity to a house--here day after day rooks alight and spend hours in it, as much at their ease as the nag or the lambs brought up by hand. Another field, at a distance, which to the human eye appears so much more suitable, being retired, quiet, and apparently quite as full of food, is deserted; they scarcely come near it. The home-field itself is not the attraction, because other home-fields are not so favoured.

The tenacity with which rooks cling to localities is often illustrated near great cities where buildings have gradually closed in around their favourite haunts. Yet on the small waste spots covered with cinders and dustheaps, barren and unlovely, the rooks still alight; and you may see them, when driven up from such places, perching on the telegraph wires over the very steam of the locomotives as they puff into the station.

I think that neither considerations of food, water, shelter, or convenience, are always the determining factors in the choice made by birds of the spots they frequent; for I have seen many cases in which all of these were evidently quite put on one side. Birds to ordinary observation seem so unfettered, to live so entirely without rhyme or reason, that it is difficult to convey the idea that the precise contrary is really the case.

Returning to these two great streams of rooks, which pour every evening in converging currents from the north and east upon the wood; why do they do this? Why not go forth to the west, or to the south, where there are hills and meadows and streams in equal number? Why not scatter abroad, and return according to individual caprice? Why, to go still further, do rooks manoeuvre in such immense numbers, and crows fly only in pairs? The simple truth is that birds, like men, have a history. They are unconscious of it, but its accomplished facts affect them still and shape the course of their existence. Without doubt, if we could trace that history back there are good and sufficient reasons why rooks prefer to fly in this particular locality, to the east and to the north. Something may perhaps be learnt by examining the routes along which they fly.

The second division--that which goes northwards, after flying little more than a mile in a straight line--passes over Wick Farm, and disperses gradually in the meadows surrounding and extending far below it. The rooks whose nests are placed in the elms of the Warren belong to this division, and, as their trees are the nearest to the great central roosting-place, they are the first to quit the line of march in the morning, descending to feed in the fields around their property. On the other hand, in the evening, as the army streams homewards, they are the last to rise and join the returning host.

So that there are often rooks in and about the Warren later in the evening after those whose habitations are farther away have gone by, for, having so short a distance to fly, they put off the movement till the last moment. Before watches became so common a possession, the labouring people used, they say, to note the passage overhead of the rooks in the morning in winter as one of their signs of time, so regular was their appearance; and if the fog hid them, the noise from a thousand black wings and throats could not be missed.

If, from the rising ground beyond the Warren or from the downs beyond that, the glance is allowed to travel slowly over the vale northwards, instead of the innumerable meadows which are really there, it will appear to consist of one vast forest. Of the hamlet not far distant there is nothing visible but the white wall of a cottage, perhaps, shining in the sun, or the pale blue smoke curling upwards. This wooded appearance is caused by timber trees standing in the hedgerows, in the copses at the corners of the meadows, and by groups and detached trees in the middle of the fields.

Many hedges are full of elms, some have rows of oaks; some meadows have trees growing so thickly in all four hedges as to seem surrounded by a timber wall; one or two have a number of ancient spreading oaks dotted about in the field itself, or standing in rows. But there are not nearly so many trees as there used to be. Numerous hedges have been grubbed to make the fields larger.

Within the last thirty years two large falls of timber have taken place, when the elms especially were thrown wholesale. The old men, however, recall a much greater `throw,' as they term it, of timber, which occurred twice as long ago. Then before that they have a tradition that a still earlier `throw' took place, when the timber chiefly went to the dockyards for the building of those wooden walls which held the world at bay. These traditions go back, therefore, some eighty or a hundred years. One field in particular is pointed out where stood a double row or avenue of great oaks leading to nothing but a farmstead of the ordinary sort, of which there is not the slightest record that it ever was anything but a farmhouse. Now avenues of great oaks are not planted to lead to farmsteads. Besides these, it is said, there were oaks in most of the fields--oaks that have long since disappeared, the prevalent tree being elm.

While all these `throws' of timber have successively taken place, no attempt has been made to fill up the gaps; no planting of acorns, no shielding with rails the young saplings from the ravages of cattle. If a young tree could struggle up it could; if not, it perished. At the last two `throws,' especially, young trees which ought to have been saved were ruthlessly cut down. Yet even now the place is well timbered; so that it is easy to form some idea of the forest-like appearance it must have presented a hundred years ago, when rows of giant oaks led up to that farmhouse door.

Then there are archaeological reasons, which it would be out of place to mention, why in very ancient days a forest, in all probability, stood hereabouts. It seems reasonable to suppose that in one way or another the regular flight of the second army of rooks passing down into this district was originally attracted by the trees. Three suggestions arise out of the circumstances.

The wood in which both streams of rooks roost at night stands on the last slope of the downs; behind it to the south extend the hills, and the open tilled upland plains; below it northwards are the meadows. It has, therefore, much the appearance of the last surviving remnant of the ancient forest. There has been a wood there time out of mind: there are references to the woods of the locality dating from the sixteenth century. Now if we suppose (and such seems to have been really the case) the unenclosed woodlands below gradually cleared of trees--thereby doubtless destroying many rookeries--the rooks driven away would naturally take refuge in the wood remaining. There the enclosure protected them, and there the trees, being seldom or never cut down, or if cut down felled with judgment and with a view to future timber, grew to great size and in such large groups as they prefer. But as birds are creatures of habit, their descendants in the fiftieth generation would still revisit the old places in the meadows.

Secondly, although so many successive `throws' of timber thinned out the trees, yet there may still be found more groups and rows of elms and oak in this direction than in any other; that is, a line drawn northwards from the remaining wood passes through a belt of well-timbered country. On other side of this belt there is much less timber; so that the rooks that desired to build nests beyond the limits of the enclosed wood still found in the old places the best trees for their purpose. Here may be seen far more rookeries than in any other direction. Hardly a farmhouse lying near this belt but has got its rookery, large or small. Once these rookeries were established, an inducement to follow this route would arise in the invariable habit of the birds of visiting their nesting-trees even when the actual nesting time is past.

Thirdly, if the inquiry be carried still farther back, it is possible that the line taken by the rooks indicates the line of the first clearings in very early days. The clearing away of trees and underwood, by opening the ground and rendering it accessible, must be very attractive to birds, and rooks are particularly fond of following the plough. Now although the district is at present chiefly meadow land, numbers of these meadows were originally ploughed fields, of which there is evidence in the surface of the fields themselves, where the regular `lands' and furrows are distinctly visible.

One or all of these suggestions may perhaps account for the course followed by the rooks. In any case it seems natural to look for the reason in the trees. The same idea applies to the other stream of rooks which leaves the wood for the eastward every morning, flying along the downs. In describing the hill district, evidence was given of the existence of woods or forest land upon the downs in the olden time. Detached copses and small woods are still to be found; and it happens that a part of this district, in the line of the eastward flighty belonged to a `chase' of which several written notices are extant.

The habits of rooks seem more regular in winter than in summer. In winter the flocks going out in the morning or returning in the evening appear to pass nearly at the same hour day after day. But in summer they often stay about late. This last summer I noticed a whole flock, some hundreds in number, remaining out till late--till quite dusk--night after night, and always in the same place. It was an arable field, and there they stood close together on the ground, so close that in spots it was difficult to distinguish individuals. They were silent and still, making no apparent attempt at feeding. The only motion I observed was when a few birds arrived and alighted among them. Where they thus crowded together the earth was literally black.

It was about three-quarters of a mile from their nesting-trees, but nesting had been over for more than two months. This particular field had recently been ploughed by steam tackle, and was the only one for a considerable distance that had been ploughed for some time. There they stood motionless, side by side, as if roosting on the ground; possibly certain beetles were numerous just there (for it was noticeable that they chose the same part of the field evening after evening), and came crawling up out of the earth at night.

The jackdaws which--so soon as the rooks pack after nesting and fly in large flocks--are always with them, may be distinguished by their smaller size and the quicker beats of their wings, even when not uttering their well-known cry. Jackdaws will visit the hencoops if not close to the house, and help themselves to the food meant for the fowls. Poultry are often kept in rickyards, a field or two distant from the homestead, and it is then amusing to watch the impudent attempts of the jackdaws at robbery. Four or five will perch on the post and rails, intent on the tempting morsels: sitting with their heads a little on one side and peering over. Suddenly one thinks he sees an opportunity. Down he hops, and takes a peck, but before he has hardly seized it, a hen darts across, running at him with beak extended like lance in rest. Instantly he is up on the rail again, and the impetus of the hen's charge carries her right under him.

Then, while her back is turned, down hops a second and helps himself freely. Out rushes another hen, and up goes the jackdaw. A pause ensues for a few minutes: presently a third black rascal dashes right into the midst of the fowls, picks up a morsel, and rises again before they can attack him. The way in which the jackdaw dodges the hens though alighting among them, and as it were for the moment surrounded, is very clever; and it is laughable to see the cool impudence with which he perches again on the rail, and looks down demurely, not a whit abashed, on the feathered housewife he has just been doing his best to rob.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

NOTES ON BIRDS--NIGHTINGALES--CHAFFINCHES--MIGRATION--PACKING-- INTERMARRIAGE--PEEWITS--CROWS--CUCKOOS--GOLDEN-CRESTED WREN.

The nightingale is one of the birds whose habit of returning every year to the same spot can hardly be overlooked by anyone. Hawthorn and hazel are supposed to attract them: I doubt it strongly. If there is a hawthorn bush near their favourite nesting-place they will frequent it by choice, but of itself it will not bring nightingales. They seem to fix upon localities in the most capricious manner. In this particular district they are moderately plentiful; yet in the whole of a large parish (some five miles across) they are only found in one place. The wood which is the roosting-place of all the rooks, large as it is, has but one haunt of the nightingale. Just in one special spot they may be heard, and nowhere else. But having selected a locality, they come back to it as regularly as the swallows.

In another county in the same latitude there is a small copse of birch which borders a much-frequented road. Here the stream of vehicles and passengers is nearly continuous; and the birch copse abounds with nightingales in the spring. On one fine morning I counted eight birds singing at once. The young birds seemed afterwards as numerous as the sparrows. Never, in the wildest district I have ever visited, have I seen so many. They had become so accustomed to passers-by that they took no notice unless purposely disturbed. Several times I stood under an oak bough that projected across the sward by the roadside, with a nightingale perched on it overhead straining his throat. The bough was some twelve feet high, and in full view of everyone. This road was constructed about a hundred years ago; and it would be interesting to learn if a country lane preceded it, well sheltered on both sides by thick hedges. Birds are fond of such places, and, having once formed the habit of coming there, would continue to do so after the highway was laid down.

It has been stated that the flocks of chaffinches which may be seen in winter consist entirely of females. Male chaffinches are rarely seen: they have migrated, or in some other manner disappeared. Yet so soon as the spring comes on the males make their presence known by calling their defiant notes from every elm along the road. Last spring I fell into conversation with a fowler. He had a cock chaffinch in a cage covered with a black cloth, except on one side. The cage was placed on the sward beside the--road, and near it a stuffed cock bird stood on the grass. Two pieces of whalebone smeared with bird-lime formed a pointed arch over the stuffed chaffinch. The live decoy bird in the cage from time to time uttered a few notes, which were immediately answered by a wild bird in the elms overhead. These notes are a challenge; and the bird in the tree supposes them to proceed from the stuffed bird in the grass, and descends to fight him, when, as the deceived bird alights, his wings or feet come in contact with the whalebone--sometimes he perches on it--and the lime holds him fast.

At that season (March) the cock birds have an irresistible inclination to do battle; they are ceaselessly challenging each other, and the fowler takes advantage of it to snare them. Now this man said that these chaffinches sold for 6 shillings the dozen, and that when the birds were `on,' as he called it, he could catch five dozen a day. In a walk of four or five miles I passed half-a-dozen such fellows, with cages and stuffed chaffinches. This alone proves that cock chaffinches are very numerous in spring. Where, then, are they in winter, if the flocks of chaffinches at that period consist almost exclusively of female birds? Probably they fly in small bodies of three or four, or singly, and so escape observation. But this division of the sexes presents a curious resemblance to the social customs discovered amongst certain savages. During the winter the birds separate, and the females `pack.' In the spring the males appear, and, after a period of fighting for the mastery, pair, and the nests are built. After the young are reared, song ceases, and the old haunts are deserted. This summer I was much struck with this partial migration, perhaps the more so because observed in a fresh locality.

During the spring and summer I daily followed a road for some three miles which I had found to pass through a district much-frequented by birds. The birch coppice so favoured by nightingales was that way; and, by the bye, the wrynecks were almost equally numerous; and the question has occurred to me whether these birds are companions, in a sense, of the nightingale, having noticed them in other places to be much together. All spring and summer the hedges, coppices, brakes, thickets, furze lands, and cornfields abounded with bird life. About the middle of August there was a notable decrease. Early in September the places previously so populous seemed almost deserted; by the middle of the month quite deserted.

There were no chaffinches in the elms or in the road, and scarcely a sparrow; not a yellowhammer on the hedge by the cornfield; only a very few greenfinches; not a single bullfinch or goldfinch. Blackbirds, thrushes, and robins alone remained. The way to find what birds are about is to watch one of their favourite drinking and bathing-places; then it is easy to see which are absent. Where had all these birds gone to? In the middle of the fields of stubble there were flocks of sparrows--almost innumerable sparrows--and some finches, but not, apparently, enough to account for all that had left the hedges and trees. That may be explained by their being scattered over so many broad acres--miles of arable land being open to them.

But the migration from the hedgerows was very marked. They became quite empty and silent about the middle of September. This state of things continued for little more than a week--meaning the absolute silence-- then a bird or two appeared in places at long intervals. They now came back rapidly, till, on the 28th, the `fink, chink' of the finches sounded almost as merrily as before. The greenfinches flew from tree to tree in parties of four, six, or more, calling to each other in their happy confidential way. On that day the trees and hedges seemed to become quite populous again with finches. The sparrows, too, were busy in the roads once more. For a week previously every now and then a single lark might be heard singing for a few minutes: they had been silent before. On the 28th half-a-dozen could be heard singing at once, and now and then a couple might be seen chasing each other as if full of gaiety. It was indeed almost like a second spring: at the same time a few buttercups bloomed, to add to the illusion.

This migration of the finches from the hedgerows out into the fields, and their coming back, is very striking. It may possibly be connected with the phenomenon of `packing;' for they seem to go away by twos and threes, to disappear gradually, but to return almost all at once, and in parties or flocks. The number in the flocks varies a great deal: it is a common opinion that it depends on the weather, and that in hard winters, when the cold is severe and prolonged, the flocks are much larger. Wood-pigeons are seldom, it is said, seen in great flocks till the winter is advanced.

Has the date of the harvest any influence upon the migration of birds? The harvest in some counties is, of course, much earlier than in others--a fact of which the itinerant labourer takes advantage, following the wave of ripening grass and corn. By the time they have mown the grass or reaped the wheat, as the case may be, in one county, the crops are ripe in another, to which they then wend their way.

One of the very earliest counties, perhaps, is Surrey. The white bloom of the blackthorn seems to show there a full fortnight earlier than it does on the same line of latitude not many miles farther west. The almond trees exhibit their lovely pink blossom; the pears bloom, and presently the hawthorn comes out into full leaf, when a degree of longitude to the west the hedges are bare and only just showing a bud. Various causes probably contribute to this--difference of elevation, difference of soil, and so forth. Now the spring visitors--as the cuckoo, the swallow, and wryneck--appear in Surrey considerably sooner than they do farther west. The cuckoo is sometimes a full week earlier. It would seem natural to suppose that the more forward state of vegetation in that county has something to do with the earlier appearance of the bird. But I should hesitate to attribute it entirely to that cause, for it sometimes happens that birds act in direct opposition to what we should consider the most eligible course.

For instance, the redwing is one of our most prominent winter visitors. Flocks of redwings and fieldfares are commonly seen during the end of the season. They come as winter approaches, they leave as it begins to grow warm. In every sense they are birds of passage: any ploughboy will tell you so. (By-the-by, the ploughboys call the fieldfares `velts.' Is not `velt' a Northern word for field?) But one spring--it was rapidly verging on summer--I was struck day after day by hearing a loud, sweet but unfamiliar note in a certain field. Fancying that most bird notes were known to me, this new song naturally arrested my attention. In a little while I succeeded in tracing it to an oak tree. I got under the oak tree, and there on a bough was a redwing singing with all his might. It should be remarked that neither redwing nor fieldfare sings during the winter; they of course have their `call' and cry of alarm, but by no stretch of courtesy could it be called a song. But this redwing was singing--sweet and very loud, far louder than the old familiar notes of the thrush. The note rang out clear and high, and somehow sounded strangely unfamiliar among English meadows and English oaks.

Then, looking farther and watching about the hedges there, I soon found that the bird was not alone--there were three or four pairs of redwings in close neighbourhood, all evidently bent upon remaining to breed. To make quite sure, I shot one. Afterwards I found a nest, and had the pleasure of seeing the young birds come to maturity and fly.

Nothing could be more thoroughly opposed to the usual habits of the bird. There may be other instances recorded, but what one sees oneself leaves so much deeper an impression. The summer that followed was a very fine one. It is instances like this that make one hesitate to dogmatise too much as to the why and wherefore of bird-ways. Yet it is just the speculation as to that why and wherefore which increases the pleasure of observing them.

Then there is the corncrake, of whose curious tricks in the mowing grass I have already written. The crake's rules of migration are not easily reconciled with any theory I have ever heard of. In the particular locality which has been described the crakes come early, they enter the mowing grass and remain there till after it is cut; immediately afterwards they are heard in the corn. Presently they are silent and supposed to be gone; but I have heard of their being shot in the opening of the shooting season on the uplands. The cry of the crake in that locality is so common and so continuous as to form one of the most striking features of the spring: the farmers listen for them, and note their first arrival just as for the cuckoo--which it may be observed, in passing, even in England keeps time with the young figs.

But when I had occasion to pass a spring in Surrey the first thing I noticed was the rarity of the crakes; I heard one or two at most, and that only for a short time. Long before the grass was mown they were gone--doubtless northwards, having only called in passing. I am told they call again in coming back, and are occasionally shot in September. But the next spring, chancing again to be in Surrey at that season, though constantly about out of doors, I never heard a crake but once-- one single call--and even then was not quite sure of it. I am told, again, that there are parts of the county where they are more numerous: they were certainly scarce those two seasons in that locality. Now here we have an instance in direct contradiction to the suggestion that the early state of vegetation is attractive to our spring visitors. The crakes appeared to come earlier, in larger numbers, and to be more contented and make a longer stay in the colder county than in the warm one.

The packing of birds is very interesting, and no thoroughly satisfactory explanation of it, that I am aware of, has ever been discovered. It is one of the most prominent facts in their history. It is not for warmth, because they pack long before it is cold. This summer I saw large flocks of starlings flying to their favourite firs to roost on the evening of the 19th of June. The cuckoo was singing on the 17th, two days before.

It would be interesting to know, too, whether birds are really as free in the choice of their mates in spring as at first sight appears. They return to the same places, the same favourite hedge, and even the same tree. Now, when the flocks split up into sections as the spring draws near, each section or party seems to revisit the hedge from which they departed last autumn. Do they, then, intermarry year after year? and is that the reason why they return to the same locality? The fact of a pair building by chance in a certain hedge is hardly enough to account for the yearly return of birds to the spot. It seems more like the return of a tribe or gens to its own special locality. The members of such a gens must in that case be closely related. As it is not possible to identify individual birds, the difficulty of arriving at a clear understanding is great.

Why, again, do not robins pack? Why do not blackbirds, and thrushes, go in flocks? They never merge their individuality all the year round. Even herons, though they fish separately, are gregarious in building, and also often in a sense pack during the day, standing together on a spit or sandbank. Rooks, starlings, wood-pigeons, fieldfares, and redwings, may be seen in winter all feeding in the same field, and all in large flocks.

Some evidence of a supposed tendency to intermarry among birds may perhaps be deduced from the practice of the long-tailed titmouse. This species builds a nest exactly like a hut, roof included, and in it several birds lay their eggs: as many as twenty eggs are sometimes found; fourteen is a common number. Here there is not only the closest relationship, but a system of community. This tit has a way sometimes of puffing up its feathers--they are fluffy, and in that state look like fur--and uttering a curious sound much resembling the squeak of a mouse; hence, perhaps, the affix `mouse' to its name.

The tomtit also packs, and flies in small parties almost all the year round. They remain in such parties until the very time of nesting. On March 24th last, while watching the approach of a snowstorm, I noticed that a tall birch tree--whose long, slender, weeping branches showed distinctly against the dark cloud--seemed to have fruit hanging at the end of several of the boughs. On going near I counted six tomtits, as busy as they could be, pendent from as many tiny drooping boughs, as if at the end of a string, and swinging to and fro as the rude blast struck the tree. The six in a few minutes increased to eight, then to nine, then to twelve, and at last there were fourteen together, all dependent from the very tiniest drooping boughs, all swinging to and fro as the snow-flakes came silently floating by, and all chuckling and calling to each other. The ruder the blast and the more they swung--heads downwards--the merrier they seemed, busily picking away at the young buds. Some of them remained in the tree more than an hour.

Peewits or lapwings not only pack in the winter, but may almost be said to pass the nesting time together. There are two favourite localities in the district, which has been more particularly described, much-frequented by these birds. One is among some water-meadows, where the grass is long earlier in the spring than elsewhere: there the first bennet pushes up its green staff--country people always note the appearance of the first bennet--and the first cuckoo-flower opens. Several nests are made here on the ground, in comparatively close contiguity.

Upon approaching, the old bird flies up, circles round, and comes so near as almost to be within reach, whistling `pee-wit, pee-wit,' over your head. He seems to tumble in the air as if wounded and scarcely able to fly; and those who are not aware of his intention may be tempted to pursue, thinking to catch him. But so soon as you are leaving the nest behind he mounts higher, and wheels off to a distant corner of the field, uttering an ironical `pee-wit' as he goes. If you neglect his invitation to catch him if you can, and search for the nest or stand still, he gets greatly excited and comes much closer, and in a few minutes is joined by his mate, who also circles round; while several of their friends fly at a safer distance, whistling in sympathy.

Then you have a good opportunity of observing the peculiar motion of their wings, which seem to strike simply downwards and not also backwards, as with other birds; it is a quick jerking movement, the wing giving the impression of pausing the tenth of a second at the finish of the stroke before it is lifted again. If you pass on a short distance and make no effort to find the nest, they recover confidence and descend. When the peewit alights he runs along a few yards rapidly, as if carried by the impetus. He is a handsome bird, with a well-marked crest.

The other locality to which I have referred was a wide open field full of ant-hills. There must have been eight or ten acres of these hills. They rose about eighteen inches or two feet, of a conical shape, and overgrown by turf, like thousands of miniature extinct volcanoes. They were so near together that it was easy to pass twenty or thirty yards without once touching the proper surface of the ground, by springing from one ant-hill to the other. Thick bunches of rushes grew between, and innumerable thistles flourished, and here and there scattered hawthorn bushes stood. It was a favourite place with the finches; the hawthorn bushes always had nests in them. Thyme grew luxuriantly on the ground between the nests and on the ant-hills. Wild thyme and ants are often found together, as on the Downs. How many millions of ants must have been needed to raise these hillocks! and what still more incalculable numbers must have lived in them! A wilder spot could scarcely have been imagined, though situate between rich meadow and ploughed lands.

There was always a covey of partridges about the field, but they could not have had such a feast of eggs as would naturally be supposed, because in the course of time a crust of turf had grown over the ant-hills. The temporary hills of loose earth thrown up every summer by the sides of the fields, where they can lay bare a whole nest with two or three scratches, must afford much more food. Had it been otherwise all the partridges in the neighbourhood would have gathered together here; but there never seemed more than one or two coveys about.

The peewits had nests year after year in this place, and even when the nesting time was over a few might often be seen. The land for agricultural purposes was almost valueless, there being so little herbage upon which cattle could graze, and no possibility of mowing any; so in the end gangs of labourers were set to work and the ant-hills levelled, and, indeed, bodily-removed. Thus this last piece of waste land was brought into use.

Upon the Downs there is a place haunted by some few peewits. In the colder months they assemble in flocks, and visit the arable land where it is of a poor character, or where there are signs of peat in the soil. By the shores of the lake they may, too, be often seen. I have counted sixty in one flock, and have seen flocks so numerous as to be unable to count them accurately; that of course was exceptional, but they are by no means uncommon birds in this district. In others it seems quite a rare thing to see a lapwing.

They often appear to fly for a length of time together for the mere pleasure of flying. They rise without the slightest cause of alarm, and sail about to and fro over the same field for half an hour, then settle and feed again, and presently take wing and repeat the whirling about overhead. Solitary peewits will do the same thing; you would imagine they were going off at a great pace, instead of which back they come in a minute or two. Other birds fly for a purpose: the peewit seems to find enjoyment beating to and fro in the air.

Crows frequently build in oaks, and unless they are driven away by shot will return to the same neighbourhood the following year. They appear to prefer places near water, and long after the nesting time is past will visit the spot. Small birds will sometimes angrily pursue them through the air as they will hawks. As autumn approaches the swallows congregate on warm afternoons on church steeples; they may be seen whirling round and round in large flocks, and presently settling. I saw a crow go past a steeple a short time since where there was a crowd of swallows, when immediately the whole flock took wing, and circled about the crow, following him for some distance. He made an awkward attempt once to get at some of them, but their swiftness of wing took them far out of his reach. Crows make no friends; rooks, on the contrary, make many, and are often accompanied by several other species of birds. A certain friendliness, too, seems to exist between sparrows, chaffinches, and greenfinches, which are often found together.

Some fields are divided into two by a long line of posts and rails, which in time become grey from the lichen growing on the wood. The cuckoos in spring seem to like resting on such rails better than the hedges; and when they are courting, two, or even three, may be sometimes seen on them together. Presently they fly, and are lost sight of behind the trees: but one or other is nearly sure to come back to the rails again after awhile. Cuckoos perch frequently, too, on those solitary upright stones which here and there stand in the midst of the fields. This habit of theirs is quoted by some of the old folks as an additional proof that the cuckoo is only a hawk changed for the time, and unable to forget his old habits, hawks (and owls) perching often on poles or anything upright and detached.

The cuckoo flies so much like the hawk, and so resembles it, as at the first glance to be barely distinguishable; but on watching more closely it will be seen that the cuckoo flies straight and level, with a gentle fluttering of the wings, which never seem to come forward, so that in outline he resembles a crescent, the convex side in front. His tail appears longer in proportion, and more pointed; his flight is like that of a very large swallow flying straight. The cuckoo's cry can perhaps be heard farther than the call of any other bird. The heron's power of voice comes nearest: he sails at a great height, and his `quaaack,' drawn out into a harsh screech, may be heard at a long distance. But then he has the advantage of elevation; the cuckoo never rises above the tops of the elms.

Yellowhammers have a habit of sitting on a rail or bough with their shoulders humped, so that they seem to have no neck. In that attitude they will remain a long time, uttering their monotonous chant; most other birds stretch themselves and stand upright to sing. The great docks that grow beside the ditches are visited by the tomtits, who perch on them,--the stalk of the dock is strong and supports so light a weight easily. Sparrows may sometimes be seen in July hawking in the air just above the sward by the roadside--hovering like the kestrel, a foot or so high, and then suddenly dropping like stones: they are then so absorbed that they will scarcely fly away on your approach. At the same time a rather long red fly is abundant in the grass, and may be the attraction. The swift's long narrow wings shut behind him as if with a sharp snip, cutting the air like shears; and then, holding them extended, he glides like a quoit.

In old days men used to be on the watch about the time of the great race-meetings, in order to shoot at every pigeon that went past, in hope of finding a message attached to the bird, and so getting the advantage of early intelligence. In one such case I heard of, the pigeon had the name of the winner, and was shot on a tree where it had alighted, weary from want of food or uncertain as to its course.

The golden-crested wren--smallest of the birds--scarcely ever leaves the shelter of the hedges and trees. The crest or top-knot is not exactly golden, but rather orange; and as the body of the tiny creature is dusky in hue, the bright colour on its head shines like flame in contrast. By this ruddy lamp upon its head the wren may be discovered hidden deep in the intricate mazes of the thorn bushes, where otherwise it would be difficult to find it. These wrens are usually in pairs; I have seldom seen one by itself. They are not rare, and yet are comparatively little seen, and must I think travel a good deal. All the same, they have their favourite places; there was one hedge where, if the bird was anywhere in the neighbourhood, I could feel sure of finding him. It was very thick and entirely of hawthorn and blackthorn, and divided two water-meadows.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

NOTES ON THE YEAR--THE TWO NATURAL ERAS--SPIDERS--THE SEASONS REPRESENTED TOGETHER--A MURDEROUS WASP--FENG-SHUI--THE BIRDS' WHITE ELEPHANT--HEDGE MEMORANDA.

There are few hedges so thick but that in January it is possible to see through them, frost and wind having brought down the leaves. The nettles, however, and coarse grasses, dry brown stems of dead plants, rushes, and moss still in some sense cover the earth of the mound, and among them the rabbits sit out in their forms. Looking for these with gun and spaniel, when the damp mist of the morning has desired, one sign--one promise--of the warm days to come may chance to be found. Though the sky be gloomy, the hedge bare, and the trees gaunt, yet among the bushes a solitary green leaf has already put forth. It is on the stalk of the woodbine which climbs up the hawthorn, and is the first in the new year--in the very darkest and blackest days--to show that life is stirring. As it is the first to show a leaf, so, too, it is one of the latest to yield to the advancing cold, and even then its bright red berries leave a speck of colour; and its bloom, in beauty of form, hue, and fragrance, is not easily surpassed.

While the hedges are so bare the rabbits are unmercifully ferreted, for they will before long begin to breed. On the milder mornings the thrushes are singing sweetly. Clouds of tiny gnats circle in the sheltered places near houses or thatch. In February `fill-ditch', as the old folk call it, on account of the rains, although nominally in the midst of the winter quarter, there is a distinct step forward. If the clouds break and the wind is still, the beams of the sun on the southern side of the wall become pleasantly genial. In the third week they bring forth the yellow butterfly, fluttering gaily over the furze; while the larks on a sunny day, chasing each other over the ploughed fields, make even the brown clods of earth seem instinct with awakening life. The pairing off of the birds is now apparent in every hedge, and at the same time on the mounds, and under sheltering bushes and trees a deeper green begins to show as the plants push up.

The blackthorn is perhaps the first conspicuous flower; but in date it seems to vary much. On the 22nd of February, 1877, there were boughs of blackthorn in full bloom in Surrey, and elder trees in leaf; nearly three weeks before that, at the beginning of the month, there were hawthorn branches in full leaf in a sheltered nook in Kent. A degree further west, on the contrary, the hawthorn did not show a leaf for some time after the blackthorn had bloomed in Surrey. The farmers say that the grass which comes on rapidly in the latter days of February and early days of March, `many weathers' (in their phrase), often `goes back' later in the season, and loses its former progress.

Lady-day (old style) forms with Michaelmas the two eras, as it were, of the year. The first marks the departure of the winter birds and the coming of the spring visitors; the second, in reverse order, marks the departure of the summer birds and the appearance of the vanguard of the winter ones. In the ten days or fortnight succeeding Lady-day (old style)--say from the 6th of April to the 20th--great changes take place in the fauna and flora; or, rather, those changes which have long been slowly maturing become visible. The nightingales arrive and sing, and with them the white butterfly appears. The swallow comes, and the wind-anemone blooms in the copse. Finally the cuckoo cries, and at the same time the pale lilac cuckoo-flower shows in the moist places of the mead.

The exact dates, of course, vary with the character of the season and the locality; but, speaking generally, you should begin to keep a keen lookout for these signs of spring about old Lady-day. In the spring of last year, in a warm district, the nightingale sang on the 12th of April, a swallow appeared on the 13th, and the note of the cuckoo was heard on the 15th. No great reliance should be put upon precise dates, because in the first place they vary annually, and in the next an observer can, in astronomical language, only sweep a limited area, and that but imperfectly; so that it is very likely some ploughboy who thinks nothing of it--except to immediately imitate it--hears the cuckoo forty-eight hours before those who have been listening most carefully. So that these dates are not given because they are of any intrinsic value, but simply for illustration. On the 14th of April (the same spring) the fieldfares and redwings were passing over swiftly in small parties--or, rather, in a long flock scattered by the march--towards the North Sea and their summer home in Norway. The winter birds, and the distinctly spring and summer birds, as it were, crossed each other and were visible together, their times of arrival and departure overlapping.

As the sap rises in plants and trees, so a new life seems to flow through the veins of bird and animal. The flood-tide of life rises to its height, and after remaining there some time, gradually ebbs. Early in August the leaves of the limes begin to fade, and a few shortly afterwards fall: the silver birch had spots of a pale lemon among its foliage this year on August 13. The brake fern, soon after it has attained its full growth, begins to turn yellow in places. There is a silence in the hedges and copses, and an apparent absence of birds. But about Michaelmas (between the new and old styles) there is a marked change. It is not that anything particular happens upon any precise day, but it is a date around which, just before and after, events seem to group themselves.

Towards the latter part of September the geometrical spiders become conspicuous, spinning their webs on every bush. Some of these attain an enormous size, and, being so large, it is easier to watch their mode of procedure. When a fly becomes entangled, the spider seizes it by the poll, at the back of the head, and holds it for a short time till it dies. Then he rapidly puts a small quantity of web round it; and next carries it to the centre of the web. There, taking the dead fly on his feet--much as a juggler plays with a ball upon his toes--the spider rolls it round and round, enveloping it in a cocoon of web, and finally hangs up his game head uppermost, and resumes his own position head downwards. Another spider wraps his prey in a cocoon by spinning himself and the fly together round and round. At the end of September or beginning of October acres of furze may be seen covered with web in the morning, when the dew deposited upon it renders it visible. As the sun dries up the dew the web is no longer seen.

On September 21 of last year the rooks were soaring and diving; they continued to do this several days in succession. I should like to say again that I attach no importance to these dates, but give them for illustration: these, too, were taken in a warm district. Rooks usually soar a good deal about the time of the equinox. On September 29 the heaths and furze were white with the spiders' webs alluded to above. September 27, larks singing joyously. October 2, a few grasshoppers still calling in the grass--heard one or two three or four days later. October 4, the ivy in full flower. October 7, the thrushes singing again in the morning. October 6 and 7, pheasants roaming in the hedges for acorns. October 13, a dragon-fly--large and green--hawking to and fro on the sunny side of hedge. October 15, the first redwing. During latter part of September and beginning of October, frogs croaking in the ivy.

Now, these dates would vary greatly in different localities, but they show, clearer than a mere assertion, that about that time there is a movement in nature. The croaking of frogs, the singing of larks and thrushes, are distinctly suggestive of spring (the weather, too, was warm and showery, with intervals of bright sunshine); the grasshopper and dragon-fly were characteristic of summer, and there were a few swallows still flying about; the pheasants and the acorns, and the puff-balls, full of minute powder rising in clouds if struck, spoke of autumn; and, finally, the first redwing indicated winter: so that all the seasons were represented together in about the space of a fortnight. I do not know any other period of the year which exhibits so remarkable an assemblage of the representative features of the four quarters: an artist might design an emblematic study upon it, say for a tesselated pavement.

In the early summer the lime trees flower, and are then visited by busy swarms of bees, causing a hum in the air overhead. So, in like manner, on October 16, I passed under an old oak almost hidden by ivy, and paused to listen to the loud hum made by the insects that came to the ivy blossom. They were principally bees, wasps, large black flies, and tiny gnats. Suddenly a wasp attacked one of the largest of the flies, and the two fell down on a bush, where they brought up on a leaf.

The fly was very large, of a square build, and wrestled with its assailant vigorously. But in a few seconds, the wasp, getting the mastery, brought his tail round, and stung the fly twice, thrice, in rapid succession in the abdomen, and then held tight. Almost immediately the fly grew feeble; then the wasp snipped off its proboscis, and next the legs. Then he seized the fly just behind the head, and bit off pieces of the wings; these, the proboscis, and the legs dropped to the ground. The fell purpose of the wasp is not easily described; he stung and snipped and bit and reduced his prey to utter helplessness, without the pause of a second.

So eager was he that while cutting the wings to pieces he fell off the leaf, but clung tight to the fly, and, although it was nearly as big as himself, carried it easily to another leaf. There he rolled the fly round, snipped off the head, which dropped, and devoured the internal part; but slipped again and recovered himself on a third leaf, and as it were picked the remaining small portion. What had been a great insect had almost disappeared in a few minutes.

After the arrival of the fieldfares the days seem to rapidly shorten, till towards the end of December the cocks, reversing their usual practice, crow in the evening, hours before midnight. The cockcrow is usually associated with the dawn, and the change of habit just when the nights are longest is interesting.

Birds have a Feng-shui of their own--an unwritten and occult science of the healthy and unhealthy places of residence--and seem to select localities in accordance with the laws of this magical interpretation of nature. The sparrows, by preference, choose the southern side of a house for their nests. This is very noticeable on old thatched houses, where one slope of the roof happens to face the north and another the south. On the north side the thatch has been known to last thirty years without renewal--it decays so slowly. The moss, however, grows thickly on that side, and if not removed would completely cover it. Moss prefers the shade; and so in the woodlands the meadows on the north or shady side of the copses are often quite overgrown with moss, which is pleasant to walk on, but destroys the herbage. But on the south side of the roof, the rain coming from that quarter, the wind and sun cause the thatch to rapidly deteriorate, so that it requires to be constantly repaired.

Now, instead of working their holes into the northern slope, sheltered from wind and rain, nine out of ten of the sparrows make their nests on the south, and, of course, by pulling out the straw still further assist the decay of the thatch there. The influence of light seems to be traceable in this; and it does occur whether other birds that use trees and bushes for their nests may not really be guided in their selection by some similar rule. The trees and bushes they select to us look much the same as others; but the birds may none the less have some reasons of their own. And as certain localities, as previously observed, are great favourites with them and others are deserted, possibly Feng-shui may have something to do with that also.

The nomadic tribes that live in tents, and wander over thousands of miles in the East, at first sight seem to roam aimlessly, or to be determined simply by considerations of water and pasture. But those who have lived with and studied them say that, though they have no maps, each tribe, and even each particular family, has its own special route and special camping-ground. Could these routes be mapped out, they would present an interlaced pattern of lines crossing and recrossing without any appreciable order; yet one family never interferes with another family. This statement seems to me to be most interesting if compared with the habits of birds that roam hither and thither apparently without order or method, that come back in the spring to particular places, and depart again after their young are reared. Though to us they wander aimlessly, it is possible that from their point of view they may be following strictly prescribed routes sanctioned by immemorial custom.

And so itinerant labourers move about. In the particular district which has been described their motions are roughly these:--In the early spring they go up on the uplands, where there are many thousand acres of arable land, for the hoeing. Then comes a short space of employment--haymaking in the water-meadows that follow the course of the rivers there, and which are cut very early. Next, they return down into the vale, where the haymaking has then commenced. Just before it begins the Irish arrive in small parties, coming all the way from their native land to gather the high wages paid during the English harvest time. They show a pleasing attachment to the employer who has once given them work and treated them with a little kindness. To him they go first; and thus it often happens that the same band of Irish return to the same farm year after year as regularly as the cuckoo. They lodge in an open shed, making a fire in the corner of the hedge where it is sheltered. They are industrious, work well, drink little, and bear generally a good character.

After the haymaking in the vale is finished, the itinerant families turn towards the lighter soils, where the corn crops are fast ripening, and soon leave the scene of their former labours fifty miles behind them. A few perhaps straggle back in time to assist in the latter part of the corn harvest on the heavy lands, if it has been delayed by the weather. The physicians say that change of air is essential to health: the migration of birds may not be without its effect upon their lives, quite apart from the search for food alone.

The dry walls which sometimes enclose cornfields (built of flat stones) are favourite places with many birds. The yellowhammers often alight on them, so do the finches and larks; for the coarse mortar laid on the top decays and is overgrown with mosses, so that it loses the hard appearance of a wall. When the sparrow who has waited till you are close to him suddenly starts, his wings, beating the air, make a sound like the string of a bow pulled and released--to try it without an arrow.

The dexterous way in which a bird helps itself to thistledown is interesting to watch. The thistle has no branch on which he can perch; he must take it on the wing. He flies straight to the head of the thistle, stoops as it were, seizes the down, and passes on with it in the bill to the nearest bough--much in the same way as some tribes of horsemen are related to pick up a lance from the ground whilst going at full speed.

Many birds twirl their `r's;' others lisp, as the nightingale, and instead of `sweet' say `thweet, thweet' The finches call to each other, `Kywee, kywee--tweo--thweet,' which, whatever may be its true translation, has a peculiarly soothing effect on the ear. Swifts usually fly at a great height, and, being scattered in the atmosphere, do not appear numerous; but sometimes during a stiff gale they descend and concentrate over an open field, there wheeling round and to and fro only just above the grass. Then the ground looks quite black with them as they dart over it: they exhibit no fear, but if you stand in the midst come all round you so close that they might be knocked down with a walking-stick if used quick enough. In the air they do not look large, but when so near as this they are seen to be of considerable size. The appearance of hundreds of these jet black, long-winged birds, flying with marvellous rapidity and threading an inextricable maze almost, as it were, under foot is very striking.

The proverbial present of a white elephant is paralleled in bird life by the gift of the cuckoo's egg. The bird whose nest is chosen never deserts the strange changeling, but seems to feel feeding the young cuckoo to be a sacred duty, and sees its own young ejected and perishing without apparent concern. My attention was called one spring to a robin's nest made in a stubble rick; there chanced to be a slight hollow in the side of the tick, and this had been enlarged. A cuckoo laid her egg in the nest, and as it happened to be near some cowsheds it was found and watched. When the young bird began to get fledged some sticks were inserted in the rick so as to form a cage, that it might not escape, and there the cuckoo grew to maturity and to full feather.

All the while the labour undergone by the robins in supplying the wide throat of the cuckoo with food was something incredible. It was only necessary to wait a very few minutes before one or other came, but the voracious creature seemed never satisfied; he was bigger than both his foster-parents put together, and they waited on him like slaves. It was really distressing to see their unrewarded toil. Now, no argument will ever convince me that the robin or the wagtail, or any other bird in whose nest the cuckoo lays its egg, can ever confound the intruding progeny with its own offspring. Irrespective of size, the plumage is so different; and there is another reason why they must know the two apart: the cuckoo as he grows larger begins to resemble the hawk, of which all birds are well known to feel the greatest terror. They will pursue a cuckoo exactly as they will a hawk.

I will not say that that is because they mistake it for a hawk, for the longer I observe the more I am convinced that birds and animals often act from causes quite distinct from those which at first sight appear sufficient to account for their motions. But about the fact of the lesser birds chasing the cuckoo there is no doubt. Are they endeavouring to drive her away that she may not lay her egg in either of their nests? In any case it is clear that birds do recognise the cuckoo as something distinct from themselves, and therefore I will never believe that the foster-parent for a moment supposes the young cuckoo to be its own offspring.

To our eyes one young robin (meaning out of the nest--on the hedge) is almost identical with another young robin; to our ears the querulous cry of one for food is confusingly like that of another: yet the various parent birds easily distinguish, recognise, and feed their own young. Then to suppose that, with such powers of observation--with the keenness of vision that can detect an insect or a worm moving in the grass from a branch twenty feet or more above it, and detect it while to all appearance engaged in watching your approach--to suppose that the robin does not know that the cuckoo is not of its order is past credit. The robin is much too intelligent. Why, then, does he feed the intruder? There is something here approaching to the sentiment of humanity, as we should call it, towards the fellow-creature.

The cuckoo remained in the cage for some time after it had attained sufficient size to shift for itself, but the robins did not desert it: they clearly understood that while thus confined it had no power of obtaining food and must starve. Unfortunately, a cat at last discovered the cuckoo, which was found on the ground dead but not eaten. The robins came to the spot afterwards--not with food, but as if they missed their charge.

The easy explanation of a blind instinct is not satisfactory to me. On the other hand, the doctrine of heredity hardly explains the facts, because how few birds' ancestors can have had experience in cuckoo-rearing? There is no analogy with the cases of goats and other animals suckling strange species; because in those instances there is the motive--at all events in the beginning--of relief from the painful pressure of the milk. But the robins had no such interested motive: all their interests were to get rid of their visitor. May we not suppose, then, that what was begun through the operation of hereditary instinct, i.e., the feeding of the cuckoo, while still small and before the young robins had been ejected, was continued from an affection that gradually grew up for the helpless intruder? Higher sentiments than those usually attributed to the birds and beasts of the field may, I think, be traced in some of their actions.

To the number of those birds whose call is more or less apparently ventriloquial the partridge may be added; for when they are assembling in the evening at the roosting-place their calls in the stubble often sound some way to the right or left of the real position of the bird, which presently appears emerging from the turnips ten or fifteen yards farther up than was judged by the ear. It is not really ventriloquial, but caused by the rapid movements and by the circumstance of the bird being out of sight.

We constantly hear that the area of pasture in England is extending, and gradually overlapping arable lands; and the question suggests itself whether this, if it continues, will not have some effect upon bird and animal life by favouring those that like grass lands and diminishing those that prefer the ploughed. On and near ploughed lands modern agriculture endeavours to cut down trees and covers and grub up hedges, not only on account of their shade and the injury done by their roots, but because they are supposed to shelter sparrows and other birds. But pasture and meadow are favourable to hedges, trees, and covers: wherever there is much grass there is generally plenty of wood; and this again-- if hedges and small covers extend in a corresponding degree with pasture--may affect bird life.

A young dog may be taught to hunt almost anything. Young pointers will point birds' nests in hedges or trees, and discover them quicker than any lad. If a dog is properly trained, of course this is not allowed; but if not trained, after accompanying boys nesting once or twice they will enter into the search with the greatest eagerness. Labourers occasionally make caps of dog-skin, preserved with the hair on. Cats not uncommonly put a paw into the gins set for rabbits or rats. The sharp teeth break the bone of the leg, but if the cat is found and let out she will often recover--running about on three legs till the injured fore-foot drops off at the joint, when the stump heals up. Foxes are sometimes seen running on three legs and a stump, having met with a similar disaster. Cats contrive to climb some way up the perpendicular sides of wheat ricks after the mice.

The sparrows are the best of gleaners: they leave very little grain in the stubble. The women who go gleaning now make up their bundles in a clumsy way. Now, the old gleaners used to tie up their bundles in a clever manner, doubling the straw in so that it bound itself and enabled them to carry a larger quantity. Even in so trifling a matter there are two ways of doing it, but the ancient traditionary workmanship is dying out. The sheaves of corn, when set up in the field leaning against each other, bear a certain likeness to hands folded in prayer. By the side of cornfields the wild parsnip sometimes grows in great profusion. If dug up for curiosity the root has a strong odour, like the cultivated vegetable, but is small and woody. Everyone who has gathered the beautiful scarlet poppies must have noticed the perfect Maltese cross formed inside the broad petals by the black markings.

Beetles fly in the evening with such carelessness as to strike against people--they come against the face with quite a smart blow. Miserable beetles may sometimes be seen eaten almost hollow within by in numerable parasites. The labourers call those hairy caterpillars which curl in a circle `Devil's rings'--a remnant of the old superstition that attributed everything that looked strange to demoniacal agency.

There is a tendency to variation even in the common buttercup. Not long since I saw one with a double flower; the petals of each were complete and distinct, the two flowers being set back to back on the top of the stalk. The stem of one of the bryonies withers up so completely that the shrinkage, aided by a little wind, snaps it. Then a bunch of red berries may be seen hanging from the lower boughs of a tree--a part of the stem, twined round, remaining there--the berries look as if belonging to the tree itself, the other part of the stem having fallen to the ground.

In clay soils the ivy does not attain any large size; but where there is some admixture of loam, or sand, it flourishes; I have seen ivy whose main stem growing up the side of an oak was five inches in diameter, and had some pretensions to be called timber. The bulrush, which is usually associated with water, does not grow in a great many brooks and ponds; in some districts it is even rare, and it requires a considerable search to find a group of these handsome rushes. Water-lilies are equally absent from certain districts. Elms do not seem to flourish near water; they do not reach any size, and a white, unhealthy-looking sap exudes from the trunk. Water seems, too, to check the growth of ash after it has reached a moderate size. Does the May bloom, which is almost proverbial for its sweetness, occasionally turn sour, as it were, before a thunderstorm? Bushes covered with this flower certainly emit an unpleasant smell sometimes quite distinct from the usual odour of the May.

The hedge is so intensely English and so mixed up in all popular ideas that it is no wonder it forms the basis of many proverbs and sayings-- such as, `The sun does not shine on both sides of the hedge at once,' `rough as a hedge,' the verb `to hedge,' and so on. Has any attempt ever been made to cultivate the earth-nut, pig-nut, or ground-nut, as it is variously called, which the ploughboys search for and dig up with their clasp-knives? It is found by the small slender stalk it sends up, and insignificant white flower, and lies a few inches below the surface: the ploughboys think much of it, and it seems just possible that cultivation might improve it.

Rare birds do not afford much information as a rule--seen for a short time only, it is difficult to discover much about them. I followed one of the rarer woodpeckers one morning for a long time, but notwithstanding all my care and trouble could not learn much of its ways.

Even among cows there are some rudiments of government. Those who tend them say that each cow in a herd has her master (or rather mistress), whom she is obliged to yield precedence to, as in passing through a gateway. If she shows any symptoms of rebellion the other attacks her with her horns until she flies. A strange cow turned in among a herd is at once attacked and beaten till she gets her proper place--finds her level--when she is left in peace. The two cows, however, when they have ascertained which is strongest, become good friends, and frequently lick each other with their rough tongues, which seems to give them much satisfaction.

Dogs running carelessly along beside the road frequently go sideways: one shoulder somewhat in front of the other, which gives the animal the appearance of being ever on the point of altering his course. The longer axis of the body is not parallel to the course he is following. Is this adopted for ease? Because, the moment the dog hears his master whistle, and rushes forward hastily, the sidelong attitude disappears.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

SNAKE-LORE--SNAKES SWALLOWING FROGS--SWIMMING--FOND OF MILK--TRAPPING SNAKES--FROGS CLIMBING--TOADS IN TREES--THE BROOK--THE HATCH-- KINGFISHERS' HAUNTS.

There are three kinds of snakes, according to the cottage people-- namely, water snakes, grass snakes, and black snakes. The first frequent the brooks, ponds, and withy-beds; the second live in the mounds and hedges, and go out into the grass to find their prey; the third are so distinguished because of a darker colour. The cottage people should know, as they see so many during the summer; but they have simply given the same snake a different name because they notice it in different places. The common snake is, in fact, partial to the water, and takes to it readily. It does, however, seem to be correct that some individuals are of a blacker hue than the rest, and so have been supposed to constitute a distinct kind.

These creatures, like every other, have their favourite localities; and, while you may search whole fields in vain, along one single dry sandy bank you may sometimes find half a dozen, and they haunt the same spot year after year. So soon as the violets push up and open their sweet-scented flowers under the first warm gleams of the spring sunshine, the snake ventures forth from his hole to bask on the south side of the bank. In looking for violets it is not unusual to hear a rustling of the dead leaves that still strew the ground, and to see the pointed tail of a snake being dragged after him under cover.

In February there are sometimes a few days of warm weather (about the last week), and a solitary snake may perhaps chance to crawl forth; but they are not generally visible till later, and, if it be a cold spring, remain torpid till the wind changes. When the hedges have grown green, and the sun, rising higher in the sky, raises the temperature, even though clouds be passing over, the snakes appear regularly, but even then not till the sun has been up some hours. Later on they may occasionally be found coiled up in a circle two together on the bank.

In the summer some of them appear of great thickness--almost as big round as the wrist. These are the females, and are about to deposit their eggs. They may usually be noticed close to cow-yards. The cattle in summer graze in the fields and the sheds are empty; but there are large manure-heaps overgrown with weeds, and in these the snakes' eggs are left. Rabbits are fond of visiting these cow-yards--many of which are at a distance from the farmstead--and sometimes bring forth a litter there.

When the mowers have laid the tall grass in swathes snakes are often found on them or under them by the haymakers, whose prongs or forks throw the grass about to expose a large surface to the sun. The haymakers kill them without mercy, and numbers thus meet with their fate. They vary very much in size--from eighteen inches to three feet in length. I have seen specimens which could not have been less than four feet long, and as thick as a rake-handle. That would be an exceptional case, but not; altogether rare. The labourers will tell you of much larger snakes, but I never saw one.

There is no subject, indeed, upon which they make such extraordinary statements, evidently believing what they say, as about snakes. A man told me once that he had been pursued by a snake, which rushed after him at such a speed that he could barely escape; the snake not only glided but actually leaped over the ground. Now this must have been pure imagination: he fancied he saw an adder, and fled, and in his terror thought himself pursued. They constantly state that they have seen adders; but I am confident that no viper exists in this district, nor for some miles round. That they do elsewhere of course is well known, but not here; neither is the slow-worm ever seen.

The belief that snakes can jump--or coil themselves up and spring--is, however, very prevalent. They all tell you that a snake can leap across a ditch. This is not true. A snake, if alarmed, will make for the hedge; and he glides much faster than would be supposed. On reaching the `shore' or edge of the ditch he projects his head over it, and some six or eight inches of the neck, while the rest of the body slides down the slope. If it happens to be a steep-sided ditch he often loses his balance and rolls to the bottom; and that is what has been mistaken for leaping. As he rises up the mound he follows a zigzag course, and presently enters some small hole or a cavity in a decaying stole. After creeping in some distance he often meets with an obstruction, and has to remain half in and half out till he can force his way. He usually takes possession of a mouse-hole, and does not seem to be able to enlarge it for additional convenience. If you put your stick on his head as he slips through the grass his body rolls and twists, and almost ties itself in a knot.

I have never been able to find a snake in the actual process of divesting his body of the old skin, but have several times disturbed them from a bunch of grass and found the slough in it. There was an old wall, very low and somewhat ruinous, much overgrown with barley-like grasses, where I found a slough several times in succession, as if it had been a favourite resort for the purpose. The slough is a pale colour--there is no trace on it of the snake's natural hue, and it has when fresh an appearance as if varnished--meaning not the brown colour of varnish, but the smoothness. A thin transparent film represents the eyes, so that the country folk say the snake skins his own eyes.

A forked stick is the best thing to catch a snake with: the fork pins the head to the ground without doing any injury. If held up by the tail--that is the way the country lads carry them--the snake will not let its head hang down, but holds it up as far as possible: he does not, however, seem able to crawl up himself, so to say; he is helpless in that position. If he is allowed to touch the arm he immediately coils round it. A snake is sometimes found on the roofs of cottages. The roof in such cases is low, and connected by a mass of ivy with the ground, overgrown too with moss and weeds.

The mowers, who sleep a good deal under the hedges, have a tradition that a snake will sometimes crawl down a man's throat if he sleeps on the ground with his mouth open. There is also a superstition among the haymakers of snakes having been bred in the stomachs of human beings, from drinking out of ponds or streams frequented by water snakes. Such snakes--green, and in every respect like the field snake--have, according to them, been vomited by the unfortunate persons afflicted with this strange calamity. It is curious to note in connection with this superstition the ignorance of the real habits of these creatures exhibited by people whose whole lives are spent in the fields and by the hedges.

Now and then a peculiar squealing sound may be heard proceeding from the grass; on looking about it is found to be made by a frog in the extremity of mortal terror. A snake has seized one of his hind legs and has already swallowed a large part of it. The frog struggles and squeals, but it is in vain; the snake, if once he takes hold, will gradually get him down. I have several times released frogs from this horrible position; they hop off apparently unhurt if only the leg has been swallowed. But on one occasion I found a frog quite half gone down the throat of its dread persecutor: I compelled the snake to disgorge it, but the frog died soon afterwards. The frog being a broad creature, wide across the back--at least twice the width of the snake--it appears surprising how the snake can absorb so large a thing.

In the nesting season snakes are the terror of those birds that build in low bushes. I have never seen a snake in a tree (though I have heard of their getting up trees), but I have seen them in hawthorn bushes several feet from the ground, and apparently proceeding along the boughs with ease. I once found one in a bird's nest: the nest was empty--the snake had doubtless had a feast, and was enjoying deglutition. In some places where snakes are numerous, boys when bird's-nesting always give the nest a gentle thrust with a stick first before putting the hand in, lest they should grasp a snake instead of eggs. The snake is also accused of breaking and sucking eggs--some say it is the hard-set eggs he prefers; whether that be so or no, eggs are certainly often found broken and the yolk gone. When the young fledglings fall out of the nest on to the ground they run great risk from snakes.

When sitting in a punt in summer, moored a hundred yards or more from shore, I have often watched a snake swim across the lake, in that place about 300 yards wide. In the distance all that is visible is a small black spot moving steadily over the water. This is the snake's head, which he holds above the surface, and which vibrates a little from side to side with the exertions of the muscular body. As he comes nearer a slight swell undulates on each side, marking his progress. Snakes never seem to venture so far from shore except when it is perfectly calm. The movement of the body is exactly the same as on land--the snake glides over the surface, the bends of its body seeming to act like a screw. They go at a good pace, and with the greatest apparent ease. In walking beside the meadow brooks, not everywhere, but in localities where these reptiles are common, every now and then you may see a snake strike off from the shore and swim across, twining in and out the stems of the green flags till he reaches the aquatic grass on the mud and disappears among it.

One warm summer's day I sat down on the sward under an oak, and leaned my gun against it, intending to watch the movements of a pair of woodpeckers who had young close by. But the drowsy warmth induced slumber, and on waking--probably after the lapse of some time--I found a snake coiled on the grass under one of my legs. I kept perfectly still, being curious to see what the snake would do. He watched me with his keen eyes as closely as I watched him. So long as there was absolute stillness, he remained; the moment I moved, out shot his forked black tongue, and away he went into the ditch as rapidly as possible.

Some country people say they can ascertain if a hedge is frequented by snakes, by a peculiar smell: it is certain that if one is killed, especially if worried by a dog, there is an unpleasant odour. That they lie torpid during the winter is generally understood; but though I have kept an eye on the grubbing of many hedges for the purpose of observing what was found, I never saw a snake disturbed from his winter sleep. But that may be accounted for by their taking alarm at the jar and vibration of the earth under the strokes of the axe at the tough roots of thorn stoles and ash, and so getting away. Besides which it is likely enough that these particular hedges may not have been favourite localities with them. They are said to eat mice, and to enter dairies sometimes for the milk spilt on the flagstones of the floor. [Note 1.] They may often be found in the furrows in the meadows, which act as surface drains and are damp.

Frogs have some power of climbing. I have found them on the roofs of outhouses which were covered with ivy; they must have got up the ivy. Their toes are, indeed, to a certain degree prehensile, and they can cling with them. They sometimes make a low sound while in the ivy on such roofs; to my ear it sounds like a hoarse `coo.' Cats occasionally catch frogs by the leg, and torment them, letting the creature go only to seize it again, and finally devouring it. The wretched creature squeals with pain and terror exactly as when caught by a snake.

No surer sign of coming rain than the appearance of the toad on the garden paths is known. Many cottage folk will still tell you that the hundreds and hundreds of tiny frogs which may sometimes be seen quite covering the ground fall from the sky, notwithstanding the fact that they do not appear during the rain, but a short time afterwards. And there are certain places where such crowds of these creatures may be oftener found than elsewhere. I knew one such place; it was a gateway where the clayey soil for some way round the approach had been trampled firm by the horses and cattle. This gateway was close to a slowly running brook, so slow as to be all but stagnant. Here I have seen legions of them on several occasions, all crowding on the ground worn bare of grass, as if they preferred that to the herbage.

Newts seem to prefer stagnant or nearly stagnant ponds, and are rarely seen in running water. Claypits from whence clay has been dug for brickmaking, and which are now full of water, are often frequented by them, as also by frogs in almost innumerable numbers in spring, when their croaking can be heard fifty yards away when it is still.

Labourers say that sometimes in grubbing out the butt of an old tree-- previously sawn down--they have found a toad in a cavity of the solid wood, and look upon it as a great wonder. But such old trees are often hollow at the bottom, and the hollows communicate with the ditch, so that the toad probably had no difficulty of access. The belief in the venom of the toad is still current, and some will tell you that they have had sore places on their hands from having accidentally touched one.

They say, too, that an irritated snake, if it cannot escape, will strike at the hand and bite, though harmless. Snakes will, indeed, twist round a threatening stick; and, as it is evidently a motion induced by anger, the question arises whether they have some power of constriction. If so, it is slight. In summer a few snakes may always be found by the stream that runs through the fields near Wick Farm.

This brook, like many others, in its downward course is checked at irregular intervals by hatches, built for the purpose of forcing water out into the meadows, or up to ponds at some distance from the stream at which the cattle in the sheds drink. Sometimes the water is thus led up to a farmstead; sometimes the farmstead is situate on the very banks of the brook, and the hatch is within a few yards. Besides the moveable hatches, the stream in many places is crossed by bays (formed of piles and clay), which either irrigate adjacent meads or keep the water in ponds at a convenient level.

A lonely moss-grown hatch, which stands in a quiet shady corner not far from the lake, is a favourite resort of the kingfishers. Though these brilliantly coloured birds may often be seen skimming across the surface of the mere, they seem to obtain more food from the brooks and ponds than from the broader expanse of water above. In the brooks they find overhanging branches upon which to perch and watch for their prey, and without which they can do nothing. In the lake the only places where such boughs can be found are the shallow stretches where the bottom is entirely mud, and where the water is almost hidden by weeds. Willows grow there in great quantities, and some of their branches may be available; but then the water is hidden by weeds; and, being muddy at bottom, is not frequented by those shoals of roach the kingfisher delights to watch. So that the best places to look for this bird are on the streams which feed the mere (especially just where they enter it, for there the fish often assemble) and the streams that issue forth, not far from the main water.

This old hatch--it is so old and rotten that it is a little dangerous to cross it--is situate in the latter position, on the effluent, and is almost hidden among trees and bushes. Several hedges there meet, and form a small cover, in the midst of which flows the dark brook; but do not go near carelessly, for the bank is undermined by the water itself and by the water-rats, while the real edge is concealed by long coarse grasses. These water-rats are for ever endangering the bay: they bore their holes at the side through the bank from above and emerge below the hatch. Out of one such hole the water is now rushing, and if it is not soon stopped will wear away the soil and escape in such quantities as to lower the level behind the hatch. These little beaver-like creatures are not, therefore, welcome near hatches and dams.

If you approach the cover quietly and step over the decayed pole that has been placed to close a gap, by carefully parting the bushes the kingfisher may be seen in his favourite position. The old pole must not be pressed in getting over it, or the willow `bonds' or withes with which it is fastened to a tree each side of the gap will creak, and the pole itself may crack, and so alarm the bird. The kingfisher perches on the narrow rail that crosses the hatch about two feet above the water.

Another perch to which he removes now and then is formed by a branch, dead and leafless, which projects across a corner of the bubbling pool below. He prefers a rail or a dead branch, because it gives him a clearer view and better facilities for diving and snatching up his prey as it swims underneath him. His azure back and wings and ruddy breast are not equalled in beauty of colour by any bird native to this country. The long pointed beak looks half as long as the whole bird: his shape is somewhat wedge-like, enlarging gradually from the point of the beak backwards. The cock bird has the brightest tints.

In this pool scooped out by the falling water swim roach, perch, and sticklebacks, and sometimes a jack; but the jack usually abides near the edge out of the swirl. Roach are here the kingfisher's most common prey. He chooses those about four inches long by preference, and `daps' on them the moment they come near enough to the surface. But he will occasionally land a much larger fish, perhaps almost twice the size, and will carry it to some distance, being remarkably powerful on the wing for so small a bird. The fish is held across the beak, but in flying it sometimes seems to be held almost vertically; and if that is really the case, and not an illusion caused by the swiftness of the flight, the bird must carry its head then a little on one side. If he is only fishing for his own eating, he does not carry his prey farther than a clear place on the bank. A terrace made by the runs of the water-rat is a common table for him, or the path leading to the hatch where it is worn smooth and bare by footsteps. But he prefers to devour his fish either close to the water or in a somewhat open place, and not too near bushes; because while thus on the ground he is not safe. When feeding his young he will carry a fish apparently as long as himself a considerable distance.

One summer I went several days in succession to a hedge two fields distant from the nearest brook, and hid on the mound with a gun. I had not been there long before a kingfisher flew past, keeping just dear of the hedge, but low down and close under the boughs of the trees, and going in a direction which would not lead to a brook or pond. This seemed curious; but presently he came back again, uttering the long whistle which is his peculiar note. About an hour, perhaps less, elapsed when he returned again, this time carrying something in his beak that gleamed white and silvery in the sun--a fish. The next day it was the same, and the next. The kingfisher, or rather two of them, went continually to and fro, and it was astonishing what a number of fish they took. Never more than an hour, often less, elapsed without one or other going by. The fish varied much in size, sometimes being very small.

They had a nest, of course, somewhere; but being under the idea that they always built near brooks or in the high banks often seen at the back of ponds, it was difficult for me to imagine where the nest could be. To all appearance they flew straight through a small opening in another hedge, at the corner of the two in fact, about two hundred yards distant. Presently it occurred to me that this might be an illusion, that the birds did not really pass through the hedge, but had a nest somewhere in that corner.

Just in the very angle was an old disused sawpit, formed by enlarging the ditch, and made some years before for the temporary convenience of sawing up a few heavy `sticks' of timber that were thrown thereabouts. The sawpit, to prevent accidents to cattle, was roughly covered over with slabs of wood, which practically roofed it in, and of course darkened the interior. It was in this sawpit that the kingfishers had their nest in what appeared to be a hole partly excavated by a rabbit. The distance from the hatch and brook was about 400 yards, so that the parent birds had to carry the fish they captured nearly a quarter of a mile. The sawpit, too, was close to a lane used a good deal, though sheltered by a thick hedge from the observation of those who passed.

In another case I knew of, the kingfishers built in a mound overhanging a small stagnant and muddy pond, in which there were no fish, and which was within twenty paces of a farmhouse. The house was situate on a hill about three hundred yards from the nearest running stream. This little pond was full in wet weather only, and was constantly used by the horses, the cattle in the field that came almost up to the door, and by the tame ducks. Beside the pond was a wood-pile, and persons were constantly passing it to and fro. Yet the kingfishers built there and reared their young; and this not only for one season, but for several years in succession. They had to bring all the fish they captured up from the brook, over the garden, and to pass close to the house. Why they should choose such a place is not easily explained, seeing that so many apparently more suitable localities were open to them along the course of the stream.

One summer I found a family of four young kingfishers perched in a row on a dead branch crossing a brook which ran for some distance beside a double-mound hedge. There was a hatch just there too, forcing the water into two ponds, one each side of the mound. The brook had worn itself a deep channel, and so required a hatch to bring it up to a level convenient for cattle. I had known for some time that there was a nest in that mound from the continued presence of the two old birds; but could not find it. But when the young could fly a little they appeared on this branch projecting almost over the falling water, and there they took up their station day after day. Every now and then the parents came with small fish, which they caught farther down the brook, for just in that place there were only a few perch and perhaps a tench or two. The colours are much less brilliant on the young birds, and they do not obtain the deep rich hues of their parents until the following spring. I have shot many young birds in the winter; they are by that time much improved in colour, but may be distinguished without difficulty from the full-grown bird.

Though so swift, the kingfisher is comparatively easy to shoot, because he flies as straight as an arrow; and if you can get clear of bushes or willow pollards he may be dropped without trouble. When disturbed the kingfisher almost invariably flies off in one favourite direction; and this habit has often proved fatal to him, because the sportsman knows exactly which way to look, and carries his gun prepared. Wherever the kingfisher's haunt may be, he will be found upon observation to leave it nearly always in the same direction day after day. He is, indeed, a bird with fixed habits, though apparently wandering aimlessly along the streams. I soon found it possible to predict beforehand in which haunt a kingfisher would be discovered at any time.

By noting the places frequented by these birds you know where the shoals of small fish lie, and may supply yourself with bait for larger fish. Often one of those great hawthorn bushes that hang over a brook is a favourite spot. The roots of trees and bushes loosen the soil, and deeper holes are often found under them than elsewhere, to which the fish resort. These hawthorn bushes, though thick and impenetrable above, are more open below just over the water; and there the kingfisher perches, and has also the advantage of being completely hidden from observation: if he only remained still in such places he would escape notice altogether. When passing such a bush on the qui vive for snipe, how many times have I seen a brilliant streak of azure shoot out from the lower branches and watched a kingfisher skim across the meadow, rising with a piping whistle over the distant hedge! Near millponds is a favourite place with these birds.

To that hatch which stands on the effluent brook not far from the mere a coot or two comes now and then at night or in the early morning. These birds, being accused of devouring the young fry, are killed whenever they are met, and their eggs taken in order to prevent their increase; that is, of course, where the water is carefully preserved. Here they are not so persistently hunted. I have seen coots, and moorhens too, venture some distance up the dark arch of a culvert. Moorhens are fond of bridges and frequently feed under them. When alarmed, after diving, the moorhen does not always come right up to the surface, but merely protrudes its head to breathe.

One day I startled a moorhen in a shallow pond; instantly the bird dived, and I watched to see where it would come up, knowing that the moorhen cannot stay long under water, while there chanced to be scarcely any bushes or cover round the edge. After waiting some time, and wondering what had become of the bird, I fancied I saw some duckweed slightly agitated. Looking more carefully, it seemed as if there was something very small moving now and then just there--the spot was not more than fifteen yards distant. It was as if the beak of a bird, the body and most of the head quite hidden and under water, were picking or feeding among the duckweed. This continued for some few minutes, when I shot at the spot, and immediately a moorhen rose to the surface. As the pond was very shallow the bird must have stood on the bottom, and so resumed its feeding with the beak just above the surface.

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Note 1. An extraordinary instance of this has been very kindly communicated to me by the writer of the following letter:--

"Kingston Vicarage, Wareham, Dorset, October 27, 1878.

"Dear Sir--Apropos of your reference to the notion that snakes drink milk, I think it may interest you to hear of a curious instance of this which occurred near here about three months ago. At Kingswood, the home farm of Kempstone (Mr J.H. Calcraft's place, near Corfe Castle), the dairyman noticed that something seemed to enter the dairy through a hole in the wall and take the milk. Thinking it was a mouse or rat, he set a common gin at the hole, and caught a snake every day until he had caught seventeen! Mr Calcraft would corroborate this. My informant is Mr Bankes, rector of Corfe Castle, who heard it from the dairyman himself.

"Faithfully yours,

"S.C. Spencer Smith."

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

COURSE OF THE BROOK--THE BIRDS' BATHING-PLACE--ROACH--JACK ON THEIR JOURNEYS--THE STICKLEBACK'S NEST--WOODCOCK--THE LAKE--HERONS--MUSSELS-- REIGN OF TERROR IN THE LAKE.

A place where the bank of the brook has been dug away so as to form a sloping approach to the water, in order that cattle may drink without difficulty, is much visited by birds in summer. Some cartloads of small stones originally thrown down to make a firm floor to the drinking-place have in process of time become worn into sand, which the rain has washed into the water. This has helped to form a more than usually sandy bottom to the water just there. Then a bank of mud, or little eyot in the centre of the stream, thickly overgrown with flags, divides the current in two, and the swiftest section passes by the drinking-place and brings with it more sand washed out from the mud; so that just at the edge there is a floor of fine sand covered with water, which six inches from shore is hardly an inch deep. This is just the bathing-place in which birds delight, and here they come, accordingly, all the summer through, day after day.

Sparrows, starlings, finches (including the beautiful goldfinches), blackbirds, and so on, are constantly to and fro. Often several of different species are bathing together. The wagtails, of course, are there. The wagtail wades into the water and stands there. Sometimes he has the appearance of scraping the bottom with his feet, as if to find food. Blackbirds are especially fond of this spot, and may be seen coming to it from the adjacent hedges. They like water, and frequently feed near it; a blackbird may often be found under the great hawthorn bushes which overhang the stream. Hawks may be seen occasionally following the course of the brook or perched on the trees that grow near; they are doubtless aware of the partiality for water shown by so many birds.

The fish have their own favourite places, as the birds in the hedge, and after leaving the hatch there are none for some distance. Then the brook suddenly curves and forms a loop, returning almost upon itself something like the letter 12. The tongue of land thus enclosed is broad at the top, and but two or three yards across at the bottom. There the current on either side is for ever endeavouring to eat away the narrow neck, and forms two deep pools. Some few piles have been driven in on one side to check the process of disintegration, and a willow tree overhangs the pool there. By lying on the grass and quietly looking over the brink, the roach may be seen swimming in the deeper part, and where it shallows up stream is a perch waiting for what may come down. Where the water runs slowly on account of a little bay, there, in semi-darkness under the banks on the mud, are a few tench.

There are several jacks not far off; but, though they prey on the roach, it is noticeable that, unless driven by some one passing by, they rarely go into these deep holes. The jack lies in shallower water and keeps close to the shore under shelter of the flags, or concealed behind the weeds. It is as if he understood that every now and then the shoal of roach will pass round the curve--going from one pool to the other--when they have to swim through the shallower water. Sometimes a solitary fish will shift quarters like this, and must go by the jack lying in ambush.

At the top of the tongue of land (which is planted with withy) another brook joins the first: this brook is very deep, and all but stagnant. In the quiet back-water here--close to and yet out of the swifter stream--is another haunt of the jack.

If alarmed, he does not swim straight up or down the centre of the current but darts half-a-dozen yards in a slanting direction across the stream and hides under another floating weed. Then, if started afresh, he makes another zigzag, and conceals himself once more. At first he remains till you could touch him, if you tried, with a long stick; but at every remove he grows more suspicious, till at last as you approach he is off immediately.

Jacks lie a great deal in the still deep ponds that open off the brook or are connected with it by a deep ditch; they have been known to find their way up to a pond from the brook through a subterranean pipe which supplied it with water. Those that remain in the ponds are usually much larger than those found in the stream: these are often small--say, a pound to two pounds in weight. In the spawning season, however, they come out from the ponds and go up the brook in pairs or trios. They keep close together side by side--the largest in the centre when there are three. The brook at that time seems full of jacks; and to any one who has been accustomed to stroll along it is surprising where they all come from.

Although the jacks lie in the quiet ponds most of the time, yet some of them travel about a great deal, especially the smaller ones ranging from one to two pounds. These will leap a bay or dam if it interrupts their voyaging down the stream. I have seen a young jack, about a foot long, leap over a bay, and fall three or four feet on to the stony floor below, the stones scarcely covered with water. The jack shot himself perhaps two feet, and fell on his side on the stones; there he lay quietly a minute or so, and then gave a bound up, and, lighting in the current, went down with it. A small jack like this will sometimes go out into the irrigated meadows, following the water-carriers for a long distance.

In quiet, sheltered places, where the water is clear but does not run too swiftly, the `minnie,' as the stickleback is locally called, makes its nest beside the bank. A small hole in the sand is excavated, and in this are laid a number of tiny fibres such as are carried along by the stream, resembling a miniature faggot. On these fibres the ova are deposited, and they are then either purposely partly covered with sand by the minnie, or else the particles that are brought down by the current gather over the bundle of fibres and conceal it, excepting one small spot. There several of the slender roots seem to slightly project, and they are kept clear of mud or sand so as to answer the purpose of a doorway. I have watched these operations many times, but never saw the minnie attempt to enter the nest; indeed, he could not have done, so, the opening not being large enough.

When the nest has reached this stage of completion it is easy to discover, because the stickleback keeps watch before it, and at that season his breast is of a bright crimson hue. He guards the nest with the greatest care, and if he is tempted away for a minute by some morsel of food he is back again immediately. If a tiny twig or fibre comes along and threatens to catch against the nest, he removes it in his mouth, carrying it out into the stream that it may be swept away. He also removes the sand whenever it begins to accumulate overmuch. It would seem as if a current of fresh water were essential to the ova, and that that is why the opening of the nest is so carefully kept from becoming choked up. After a while the fry come forth--the most minute creatures imaginable, mere lines about half the length of the fingernail. They play round the opening, and will retreat within if alarmed.

Where the brook passes under a bridge of some size the current divides to go through several small arches. There is here some fall, and the stream is swift and bright, chafing round and bubbling over stones. Here the `miller's thumbs' are numerous--a bottom fish growing to about four inches in length, and with a head enormously broad and large in proportion to its body. They rarely rise from the mud or sand; they hide behind stones, their heads buried in the sand, but their tails in sight. Every now and then they change positions, swimming swiftly over the bottom to another spot. Their voracity is very great, and they often disappoint the angler by taking his bait. The cottage people are said to eat them.

The `stwun loach'--stone loach, as the lads call it--hides also behind and under stones, and may be caught by hand. These loach are apparently capricious in their habits; certain spots abound with them, in others you may search the stream in vain for a long distance. So, too, with the gudgeon: I noticed in one brook I frequently passed that they never came up beyond one particular bend, though there was no apparent difference in the soil or in the stream itself. In the brook the jack do not seem to care much about them; but in the lake above there are no gudgeon, and there a gudgeon is a fatal bait. Nothing is so certain to take; the gudgeon will tempt the pike there when an ordinary roach may be displayed before him without the slightest effect.

A flood which brings down a large quantity of suspended mud and sand discolouring the water attracts the fish: they are looking for food. But too much mud compels them to shift their quarters. This is well known to those who net the stream. They stretch the net across the brook a few yards below a bridge or short culvert--places much haunted by fish. Then the bottom of the stream above the culvert is thoroughly stirred up with a pole till the water is thick with mud, and this, passing through the culvert (where the pole cannot be used and the fish would otherwise be safe), forces them to descend the stream and enter the net. Probably they attempt to swim up stream first, but are deterred by the pole thrust under the water, and then go down. It is said that even eels, who like mud, will move if the volume of mud sent through is thick enough and continued sufficiently long.

The fact that a little stirring of the bottom attracts fish is made use of along the Thames to attract bait for those night-lines which are the detestation of the true angler. The bait catcher has a long pole, at the end of which are iron teeth like a rake. With this he rakes up the mud, waits a few seconds, and then casts a net, which generally brings some minnows or other small fish to shore. These fish are then placed in a bucket, and finally go on the night-lines.

The ditches as they open on the brook are the favourite resorts of all aquatic life, and there most of the insects, beetles, etc, that live in the water may be discovered. They form, too, one of the last resorts of the reeds; these beautiful plants have been much diminished in quantity by the progress of agriculture. One or two great mounds by the brook can show a small bed still, and here and there a group grows at the mouth of these deep ditches, on the little delta formed of the sand, mud, and decaying twigs brought down. I have cut them fifteen feet in length. Some people, attracted by the beauty of the feathery heads of these reeds, come a considerable distance to get them. I have made pens of them: it is possible to write with such pens, and they are softer than quills, but on account of that softness quickly wear out.

A woodcock may occasionally be flushed from such a ditch in winter. Woodcocks are fond of those ditches down which there always trickles a tiny thread of water--hardly so much as would be understood by the term streamlet--coming from a little spring which even in severe frosts is never frozen. Ever when the running brook is frozen such little spring: are free of ice, and so, too, is the streamlet for some distance.

From the bed of the brook proper the reeds are gone--they have taken refuge in nooks and corners. This is probably accounted for by the periodical cleaning out of the brook--not annually, but every now and then, in order to prevent the flooding which would be caused by the accumulation of mud and sand. The roots of the flags seem to withstand this rod: treatment; but many other water plants cannot, and are consequently only found in places which have not been disturbed for many years.

There is as much difference in ponds as in hedges, so far as inhabitants are concerned. Many fields and hedges seem comparatively deserted, while others are full of birds; and so of several ponds which do not apparently vary much--one is a favourite haunt of fish, and another has not got a single fish in it. One pond particularly used to attract my attention, because it seemed devoid of any kind of life: not even a stickleback could be found in it, though they will live in the smallest ditches, and this pond was fed by a brook in which there were fish. Not even a newt lived in it--it was a miniature Dead Sea. Another pond was remarkable for innumerable water-snails. When the wind blew hard they sometimes lined the lee shore to which they had drifted.

The herons are at the same time the largest and most regular visitors to the mere out of which the brook flows. One or more may generally be found there at some time of the day all the year round; but there is a remarkable diminution in their numbers during the nesting season. The nearest heronry must be about thirty miles distant, which probably explains their absence at that time. It also happens that just before the summer begins the mere is usually at its greatest height; the water is deep almost everywhere, and there are fewer places where the herons could fish with success.

They fly at a great height in the air, and a single stroke of the huge wings seems to propel the bird a long distance; so that though at first sight they appear to move very slowly, the eye being deceived by the slow stroke of the wings, they really go at a good pace. They do not seem to have any regular hours of visiting the lake--though more seem to arrive in the afternoon--but they have distinct lines of flight along which they may be expected to come. In winter, however, they show more regularity, going down from the lake to the water-meadows in the evening, and returning in the early morning--that is, supposing the lake to be open and free from ice. If the shores are frozen a heron or two may be found in the water-meadows all day.

In the autumn, after a dry summer, is the best time to watch them. The water is then low; numerous small islands appear, and long narrow sandbanks run out fifty or sixty yards with shoals on either side. After a very dry season the level of the water is so much reduced that in the broadest (and shallowest) part the actual strand where the water begins is a hundred yards or more from the nearest hedge. This is just what the heron likes, because no one can approach him over that flat expanse of dried mud without being immediately detected. I have seen as many as eight herons standing together in a row on one such narrow sandbank in the daytime, in regular order like soldiers: there were six more on adjacent islands. They were not feeding--simply standing motionless. As soon as it grew dark they dispersed, and ventured then down the lake to those places near which footpaths passed.

But although the night seems the heron's principal feeding time, he frequently fishes in the day. Generally, his long neck enables him to see danger, but not always. Several times I have come right on a heron, when the banks of the brook were high and the bushes thick, before he has seen me, so as to be for the moment within five yards. His clumsy terror is quite ludicrous: try how he will he cannot fly fast at starting; he requires fifty yards to get properly underway.

What a contrast with the swift snipe, that darts off at thirty miles an hour from under your feet! The long hanging legs, the stretched-out neck, the wide wings and body, seem to offer a mark which no one could possibly miss: yet, with an ordinary gun and snipe-shot, I have had a heron get away safely like this more than once. You can hear the shot rattle up against him, and he utters a strange, harsh, screeching `quaack,' and works his wings in mortal fright, but presently gets half-way up to the clouds and sails away in calm security. His neck then seems to drop down in a bend, the head being brought back as he settles to his flight, so that the country people say the heron often carries a snake.

The mark he offers to shot is much less than would be supposed; he is all length and no breadth; the body is very much smaller than it looks. But if you can stalk him in the brook till within thirty or forty yards, and can draw `a bead' on his head as he lifts it up every now and then to glance over the banks, then you have him easily; a very small knock in the head being sufficient to stop him.

The tenacity of life exhibited by the heron is something wonderful: though shot in the head, and hung up as dead, a heron will sometimes raise his neck several hours afterwards. To wring the neck is impossible--it is like leather or a strong spiral spring: you cannot break it, so that the only way to put the creature out of pain is to cut the artery; and even then there are signs of muscular contraction for some time. A labourer once asked me for a heron that I had shot; I gave it to him, and he cooked it. He said he boiled it eight hours, and that it was not so very fishy! But even he could not manage the neck part.

This bird must have a wonderful power of sight to catch its prey at night, and out of some depth of water. In severe winter weather, when the lake is frozen, herons evidently suffer much. Most of them leave, probably for the rivers which do not freeze till the last; but one or two linger about the water-meadows till they seem to despair of catching anything; and will alight in the centre of a large pasture field where there is no water, and stand there for hours disconsolate. I suspect that the herons in winter time that come to the ponds do so for the fish which lie at the bottom on the mud packed close together, that is, when the water is not deep. It is said that when ice protects the fish herons eat the frogs in the water-meadows; but they can scarcely find many, for though I have been over the water-meadows day after day for snipe, I seldom saw a frog about them here.

When the level of the mere, after a peculiarly dry season, is very low, is also a good time to observe the habits of many other creatures. There are always one or more crows about the neighbourhood of the lake; but at such times a dozen or so may be seen busily at work along the shore. They prey on the mussels, of which there are great numbers in the lake. Anyone passing by the water when it is so shallow can hardly fail to notice long narrow grooves in the sand of the bottom. These grooves begin near the edge--perhaps within a foot of it--and then run out into the deeper part. By following these with the eye, the mussel may often be seen in a foot or two of water--sometimes open, but more generally closed. The groove in the sand is caused by the keel of the shell as the creature moves.

There are hundreds of these tracks; the majority appear to run from shallow to deep water, but there are others crossing and showing where the mussel has travelled. One may occasionally be seen in the act of moving itself, and making the groove in the sand. But they seem as a rule to move most at night, and to approach the shore closest in the darkness. In the deep water they are safe; but near the edge the crows pounce on them and may be seen peering about almost all day long.

Besides those that are eaten on the shore, numbers of mussels are carried up on the rising ground where the turf is short and the earth hard. Until stepped on and broken, the two halves of the shell are usually complete, and generally still attached, showing that the crow has split the shell open skilfully. They range from two or three to nine inches in length. The largest are much less common; those of five or six inches are numerous. Some of the old-fashioned housewives use a nine-inch mussel-shell, well cleaned, as a ladle for their sugar jars.

Now and then, at long intervals, an exceptionally dry season so lowers the level of the mere that all the shallower parts become land, and are even passable on foot, though in places quicksands and deep fine mud must be carefully avoided. The fish that previously could enjoy a swim of some three-quarters of a mile are then forced to retire to one deep hole only a few acres in extent. Now commences a reign of terror, of which it is difficult to convey an adequate idea.

These waters have not been netted for years, and consequently both pike and perch have increased to an extraordinary degree, and many of them have attained huge proportions. Pike of six pounds are commonly caught; eight, ten, twelve, and fourteen pound fish have often been landed. There was a tradition of a pike that weighed a quarter of a hundredweight but one day the tradition was put into the shade by the capture of a pike that scaled a little over thirty pounds. There are supposed to be several more such monsters of the deep, since every now and then some labourer passing by on a sunny day, when jack approach the shore and bask near the surface, declares that he has seen one as big as a man's leg. But about the vast number of ordinary-sized jack there can be no doubt at all; since anyone may see them who will stroll by the water's edge on a bright warm day, taking care to walk slowly and not to jar the ground or let his shadow fall on the water before he can glance round the willows and bushes. Jack may then be seen basking by the weeds.

When an exceptionally long continuance of dry weather forces all the fish to retire to the few acres of water that remain, then these voracious brutes do as they please with the other fish, and the roach especially suffer. Every two or three minutes the fry may be seen leaping into the air in the effort to escape, twenty or thirty at a time, and falling with a splash. The rush of hundreds and hundreds of roach causes a wave upon the surface which shows the course they take. This wave never ceases: as soon as it sinks here it rises yonder, and so on through the twenty-four hours, day and night.

The miserable fish, flying for their lives, speed towards the shallow water, and often, unable to stop themselves, are carried by their impetus out on the mud and lie there on the land for a few seconds till they leap back again. Even the jack will sometimes run himself aground in the eagerness of his pursuit. Looking over the pool, the splash of the falling fish as they descend after the leap into the air may be heard in several directions at once, and the glint of their silvery sides in the sunshine is at the same time visible. At night it is clear the same thing is going forward, for the splashing continues, though the wave raised by the panic-stricken crowds cannot be distinguished in the darkness.

It is curious to notice how the solitary disposition of the jack shows itself almost as soon as he comes to life. While the fry of most other fish swim in shoals, sometimes in countless numbers, the tiny jack, hardly so long as one's little finger, lurks all alone behind a stone which forms a miniature harbour. On a warm day almost every such place has its youthful pirate. Notwithstanding the terror of the roach when pursued, they will play about apparently without the slightest fear when the pike is basking in the sun with his back all but on a level with the surface--that is, when the lake is at its ordinary height. It is as if they knew their tyrant was enjoying his siesta.

These roach literally swarm. At their spawning time that part of the lake the shore of which is stony is positively black with them. For a distance of some hundred and fifty yards the water for seven or eight feet from shore is simply a moving mass of roach. They crowd up against the stones, get underneath them and behind them, enter every little creek and interstice, and are so jammed by their own numbers that they may easily be caught by hand. In their anxiety to secure a place they crush against each other and splash up the water. This impulse only lasts a day or two in its full vigour, when the multitude gradually retires into deeper water.

When thus spawning the roach are preyed on by rats--not the water-rat, but the house or drain rat. There are always a few of these about the lake, and they grow to an enormous size. They destroy the roach in great numbers. I have seen the sand strewn with dead fish opposite and leading up to their holes; for they catch and kill many more than they can eat, or even have time to carry away. I have shot at these great rascals when they have been swimming fifty yards from shore, and I strongly suspect them of visiting the nests of moorhens and other waterfowl with felonious purposes. They catch fish at any time they see a chance, but are most destructive during the spawning season, because then the roach come within reach. Such rats, too, haunt the ditches and mounds, and are as dangerous to all kinds of game as any weasel, crow, or hawk.

Tench lie in the deep muddy holes. With the exception of the tench, the greater number of the fish in this mere haunt the sandy and stony shores. When the lake is full there are broad stretches of water which are shallow and where the bottom is mud. You may look here in vain for fish: of course there are some; but as you glide over noiselessly in a punt, gazing down into the water as you drift before the gentle summer breeze, you will not see any of those shoals that frequent the other shores where the bottom is clearer. Other favourite places are where the brooks run in and where there are sudden shallows in the midst of deep water. The contour and character of the bottom seem to affect the habits of fish to a large extent; consequently those who are aware of the form of the bottom are usually much more successful as fishermen.