Life of the Cornfield
All through the year the cornfield gives food and shelter to a host unnumbered—from seed-time to harvest, in the days of stubble and of fallow. To all manner of creatures in fur and feather, insects as the grain in number, grubs below ground, butterflies above, to rank weeds and flowers, the cornfield gives more freely than it yields bread to man. Seagulls come from the coast. Peewits make the field their home in the spring. There are congregations of sparrows and finches. Hosts of starlings that go to roost in the reeds. Wood-pigeons stuff their crops to bursting; turtle-doves come and go. Yellow-hammers sing in the hedges through the midsummer days. The corn-crake runs swiftly through the stems where the partridge has her young brood. Rooks follow the plough, with wagtails that run and dart over the furrows as if gliding on ice. Overhead are larks; and the corn-bunting flies heavily from field to field, his legs trailing as if broken. And birds of prey take their toll of the feeding multitudes. All through the year animal life finds sanctuary in the cornfield. Underground are the moles; the harvest mouse weaves its nest in the corn-stems; the rabbit makes a stop in the field near the hedge, and eats the green blades. To the ripening corn the fox brings her cubs to play. In the ditches are hedgehogs; everywhere are rats, mice, and shrew-mice. The hare follows secret paths, and there are stoats and weasels seeking prey, and finding it on every side. But nowadays there is little or no work for our mills, as wheat-field after wheat-field is turned into grass. The miller is only one among ten thousand sufferers.
The days spent in the cornfield must pass pleasantly for the little foxes in a fine summer. In cornfields, unlike hayfields, there is room between the stems for free movement, there is some chance to look about, there is air and light, cover and shade. Corn-stems are firm and dry, but grass-stems hold the soaking moisture of rain and dew, which saturates the skin even through fur and feather, and quite beyond the remedy of dog-like shakings. Wheat, as we have said, is the corn most favoured of all creatures—where not planted too thickly, and growing on ground not over clean, but dotted plentifully with bunches of knapweed, thistles, and bindweed, and intersected by furrows where the corn has grown poorly, and with open spaces bare to the wind and sun. Winged game, in case prompt flight is necessary, find it easier to start up into the air through the straight, stiff ears of wheat than through the ears of oats and barley. Barley that shares the ground with a rank plant of grass-seeds finds small favour among those many creatures that forsake the airless woods in summer.
