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.