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.