CHAPTER XV A GREAT FROST
A second wave of cold—Migrating goldfinches—Increase in number of wintering birds—Beginning of the frost—At Zennor—Feeding the birds under difficulties—A crippled robin—Crystal fruit—Prowess of a fox—Fox and raven—The foxes' larder—Migrating ravens—Frosted window panes—Starving birds—Starlings going to roost—Evening on Zennor Hill—Heath fires—The windy night—Animism and personifications of nature—The end of the frost.
THERE was no second westward movement of birds in the winter of 1906-7, although another and more intense spell of cold weather occurred a month after the one described in the last chapter. It looked as if the birds had exhausted their powers in their long disastrous flight to and from the Land's End, or that some saving instinct had failed to come to them on this occasion. Doubtless many thousands had perished in that journey over a snow-covered country to the extremity of Cornwall, and we may suppose that when the weather moderated the surviving millions redistributed themselves over the southern counties from Somerset to Kent; also that many birds had been continually slipping away across the Channel. Many of our migrants, which have not a strict migration like the swallow and cuckoo, the species which shift their quarters or of which considerable numbers remain in this country throughout the year, do annually come down in batches to the south and remain for a month or so, in some cases until December, then vanish, and these no doubt continue their journey over the sea. Thus, every autumn there is a migration of goldfinches into Cornwall, many birds appearing in the neighbourhood of Mount's Bay in September and remaining until November. These goldfinches have a brighter plumage than those which winter in England, and appear to form a body or race distinct from the earlier migrants having their own seasons and perhaps a route of their own.
To return to the great visitation of birds in December. I am sure that very many of these, exhausted by hunger and cold, dropped out of the winged army at the extremity of Cornwall, and remained there until the end of the cold season. At all events, when I returned to the scene in January, I noticed a very great increase in the number of wintering birds, particularly starlings, larks, song-thrushes, fieldfares and redwings. The weather continued cold and rough, with storms of wind and sleet and occasional flurries of snow, until January 21, when the cold became intense, and that rare phenomenon in West Cornwall, a severe frost, began, which lasted several days, and was said by some of the old natives to be the greatest frost in forty years, while others affirmed they had not experienced anything like it in their lives.
I was staying at Zennor at the time—that lonely little village nestling among its furze thickets and stone hedges, with the rough granite hills, clothed in brown dead bracken, before it and the black granite cliffs and sea behind. I had been amusing myself by feeding a few birds that came to the door, and now my small company of pensioners, suddenly grown tame, began to interest me very much. There was no garden to the house, which was situated in the centre of the village, with the church on one side and the inn on the other—nothing but the road, broadening out into a wide bare space on which my window looked, with a stone hedge and a fountain of gushing water on the other side, where the people dipped their buckets and the animals came to drink. Here the cows came on their way to and from the farm, and the pigs and dogs and a flock of geese; and as some of these animals were always about, they very naturally helped themselves to the bread they found in the public road. Fortunately the ground-floor window had a raised stone platform before it, surrounded by iron railings, and I started putting out the food for the birds in this area. The cows and pigs could not get in there, but some of the most intelligent of the village dogs managed to get a share by thrusting their paws far in and dragging the scraps out, and the geese would follow suit, putting their long necks between the rails. The birds, however, fared better than before; thrushes, blackbirds, robins, dunnocks, pied wagtails, meadow pipits and one grey wagtail were the usual feeders; the daws, too, would occasionally pluck up courage enough to drop down between the railings and snatch up something.
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One of my guests was a robin of exceptionally small size with a withered leg. This bird was first brought to me one evening by some of the children, who had caught it in the schoolroom, and thought I would be able to do something for it. A more pitiable object could not be imagined; it was nothing but a little feathered skeleton; the "comfortable little red waistcoat with legs to it" was now a sharp keel, but behind the bone one could feel the little muscular heart working away violently. One leg was crushed above the knee and was now dead and dried, the closed claws hardened into a ball. I assured them that nothing could be done to save it, that the most merciful thing we could do would be to let it fly away into the bushes, where it would quickly fall asleep and die without pain in the intense cold. I opened my hand and it darted away into the black bitter night, but great was my surprise next morning, when looking at the company gathered at the window, to find the wasted little cripple among them, eagerly picking up crumbs! I was foolishly pleased to see it there; nevertheless it was a pity that it had survived the night and in the end lived through the frost, seeing that a hopelessly injured and maimed bird is, like the caged bird, incapable of its proper life, and to any one who can feel for a bird is better dead.
The second day of the frost made a wonderful difference in the appearance of the birds out in the fields, especially the starlings. These had now lost all energy and were seen everywhere moving languidly about over the pale frosty turf in a hopeless search for a soft place, while others were found gathered at some spot sheltered by a stone hedge from the bitter north-east wind, standing crowded together in listless attitudes, with drooping wings. By degrees the fieldfares and redwings disappeared. The song-thrushes which, next to the starlings, were the most numerous, appeared to fare better than the other soft-billed species, owing to the abundance of snails in the stone hedges. It was a mystery to me how with nothing but those poor beaks they were able to get them out. Snails were exceedingly plentiful in the crevices between the stones, many of them easily got at, but so tightly were they glued and frozen to the stone that I could not pull them off with my fingers. They were like limpets on a rock, yet it was plain to see that the thrushes did get a good many out and so saved themselves from starvation. Their anvils were everywhere near the walls, each with its litter of broken shells about it. The hibernating snails were not only found in the stone hedges; they were also extraordinarily abundant among the sandhills or towans at Lelant and Phillack on the coast near St. Ives. They were hidden in the sand at the roots of the coarse marram grass growing on the hills. Here the thrushes had less difficulty in getting them out, and every stone lying in the sand was made use of. It amused me to find that the favourite anvil at one spot was a soda-water bottle which had been stuck deep in the soft sand, leaving the round end about two inches above the ground. Its form and the faint bluish tinge in the clear thick glass gave it the exact appearance of a round lump of ice, but the thrushes had discovered that it was not ice but something as hard as stone, and being immovable, better suited to their purpose than the pebbles and small fragments of stone lying about on the sand. All round the useful bottle the ground was thickly strewn with many-coloured broken snail-shells.
The soda-water bottle reminds me of the appearance of a singular and beautiful form of icicle which became common on the water-courses on the second and third days of the frost. I saw it chiefly on a stream near Zennor that gushes and tumbles over the rocks on its way to the sea and is in great part almost covered with a dense growth of dwarf blackthorn, bramble and furze bushes. Where the water pouring over the boulders splashes the overhanging branches the constant drops running down the pendent twigs grew into globular or oval crystals; these were mostly about the size as well as shape of ducks' eggs, pure as the purest glass, and had the appearance of a wonderful crystal fruit hanging from stems on the dark purple-red sloe bushes.
I greatly liked to follow this same stream in its swift downward course, as it ran through the roughest bit of ground in all this roughest spot in West Cornwall, and where it finished its course, rushing down through a cleft into the sea, the sloping shore was abundantly strewn with masses of granite lying everywhere among the furze thicket, a spot where adders and lizards (the longcripple, as called here) are common in summer and a favourite refuge and dwelling-place of the fox. A fox belonging to this spot distinguished himself at one of the small neighbouring farms at the beginning of the cold spell. There were two small farm-houses very little bigger than cottages together, with nothing but a cart-road to divide them, and each one had its hen-house close by. The fox came, and the door not being properly fastened got in and succeeded in carrying away eight fowls besides injuring several more, without disturbing either the inmates of the house or the dogs. A few nights later he came again and finding the door locked turned his attention to the second hen-house. It was built of stone and the door was securely fastened, but it had a thatched roof, and getting on it he gnawed a hole big enough to let himself in. The fowls screamed, the dogs barked, and the farmer, roused from slumber, jumped out of bed and seizing his gun rushed out. Just as he got up to the hen-house he saw the fox pop up out of the hole in the thatch, leap down and vanish into the black night. Twelve fowls were found dead or dying of their bites as the result of this attempt which was not a complete success.
The poor man was very much cast down at his loss when I saw him next day. "I've been feeding them all the winter," he said, "and they never laid an egg until now, and now just when they begin to lay the fox comes and kills them! If I go to the gentleman of the hunt he perhaps gives me a shilling a head at the outside, and perhaps nothing at all. He'll say, We're very sorry for you, but we can't do anything for you because the money isn't enough and you should take better care of your fowls." He went on in this mournful strain for about half an hour and said that what made it seem worse to him was the fact that the foxes had bred during the summer in the rocks quite near the farm, down by the sea, and he never disturbed them—never had a thought against them! I agreed that it was very hard lines and all the rest, but secretly my sympathies were with the fox rather than with him and his fowls.
It was certainly an almost incredibly audacious act on the part of the fox, seeing that in letting himself down through the hole he had made—"hardly big enough for a cat" the farmer said—he had put himself in a trap; yet in spite of the joyful excitement of killing and of the screaming and the fluttering of the birds he became aware of the danger he was in and made good his escape. His mouth must have watered for many a day at the recollection of the fowls he had killed and left behind, and in the following month he actually came again one dark night and made a hole as before in the roof and then smelling danger made off.
The day after the second raid I was down among the rocks and bushes by the sea, half a mile from the farm, when I heard the repeated angry croak of a raven not far away. He was perched on a rock on the further side of a gully a couple of hundred yards from me, and getting my binocular on to him I was surprised at his excited appearance as I could see nothing to account for such a state. Presently he rose up to a height of about a hundred yards in the air, then turning and letting himself go he came down like a raven gone mad, violently doubling about this way and that in his descent until, nearing the ground, he struck savagely at a fox which I now perceived for the first time. A big gaunt-looking dog-fox standing motionless on a large rock rising about three feet above the surface. Just as the raven made the last sudden twist in his flight and delivered his blow the fox dropped flat down on the stone as if he had dropped dead, then, as the raven rose, he got up and stood again, motionless as before. Again and again the raven repeated the mad swoop, eight or nine swoops following in quick succession, and on every occasion the fox threw himself down just as the blow was struck, but invariably keeping his face towards the assailant with his mouth wide open and all his dangerous teeth displayed. Then the raven gave it up; he could not drive the fox from the big flat-topped rock on which he had placed himself apparently to defy the bird, and he knew, I imagined, that he was playing an exceedingly dangerous game. The extraordinary manner in which he twisted about in descending was evidently meant to intimidate and confuse his enemy and enable him to deliver his blow in an unexpected place, but there was danger in this method, seeing that the least miscalculation or the slightest accident would have placed him at the mercy of the savage beast hungry to get his sharp teeth into his hated black carcass.
The bird rose high up with a sullen croak and flew away out of sight, and only then the fox quitted his post. He did not see me among the rocks on my side of the gully, although I was able to keep my glass on him all the time. He came at a quiet trot straight towards me, springing lightly from stone to stone and only dropping down to the rough frozen ground when there was no other way. After travelling about a hundred yards in this way he turned aside at right angles and went a distance of about forty yards straight to a spot where a mass of heather grew in the cleft of a rock. Thrusting his head and half his body into the heather he began digging and presently pulled out something which he had concealed there and which he now proceeded to devour, holding it down with his paws. Having eaten it he sat down and licked his chops, then picked up the crumbs so to speak and sat down and licked his chops once more. Evidently the meat had not satisfied his hunger, for by and by he thrust himself into the clump and began digging again, but there was no more, and coming out he sat up again and with head inclining downwards remained for some moments in a dejected attitude, revolving things in his mind perhaps, and then, perhaps all at once remembering that he had another little hoard somewhere else, he started up and went off in a new direction with the same quiet trot as before, jumping lightly from stone to stone, and was soon lost to sight.
The raven I have spoken of was one of four that haunted this part of the coast, where they were very much hated by a pair of kestrels. One evening just before sunset I had a great surprise—when standing in a field half a mile from the sea talking to a farmer a flock of thirty-two ravens flew over our heads. It was impossible to make a mistake in this case, as the birds were flying quietly and low, passing directly over us at a height of scarcely forty yards. Undoubtedly they were strangers from a great distance, perhaps from the northern extremity of Scotland, and were making a tour round the whole island, but I had never heard of a migration of ravens into Cornwall in winter.
The two coldest days during the frost were the one on which I watched the fox and the day following. In the morning I had found the large window panes of my sitting-room thickly coated with a beautiful frost pattern, but the sky was clear and with the sun shining on the window and a big fire in the grate I thought it would soon be gone. It continued all day, although the fire never went out! The birds were now in desperate case: it appeared as if they had given up searching for food in despair, and were now idly waiting for a change or for the end, hunched up in any shelter they could find from the deadly north-east wind. The very daws were silent now, and dropped their wings like the others, as if they had not energy enough to fold them over their backs. Even the wren, that most vigorous little creature, the very type and embodiment of cheerfulness, had now too fallen into the universal misery, and came out of hiding languidly if it came at all, its feathers fluffed out and not a ghost of its sharp angry little voice to scold you with.
Towards evening on the second of the two worst days I went out to Zennor Hill to see the sun set from the top and watch the big furze and heath fires which were burning far and wide on the moor. On the slope of the hill I found a number of small companies of starlings, huddled together as usual by a hedge-side, making no attempt to feed, there being nothing to be got from the iron earth; and as the sun declined they began to rise and fly away southwards to their roosting-place—a spot three or four miles inland, where a depression in the moor is covered with a dense growth of old furze mixed with blackthorn and brambles. Their miserable day was ended and numbers of small flocks of from a dozen to forty or fifty birds could now be seen against the sky, all directing their flight to the same point. It was a strangely slow and laborious flight, and many of the birds were going for the last time to their roost. From the summit where I tried to shelter myself from the fury of the wind among the large black masses of granite, the scene I looked upon was exceedingly desolate. The brown moor stretched away inland, lonely and dark, to the horizon. There was on all that expanse but one small object to arrest the sight—a frozen pool a couple of miles away which gleamed like grey glass in the level beams. Many heath fires were burning, one not above a mile from the hill and near enough for one to see the yellow flames running before the wind and leaping a dozen to twenty yards high. The sun seen through the vast clouds of dun smoke had the appearance of a globe of fiery red copper. After it had gone down and the earth began to darken the smoke took an intense orange colour from the flames, which seen against the pale blue sky gave a dreadful magnificence to the scene.
With this picture in my mind I went down the hill, chilled to the marrow, thinking of the birds asleep and occasionally disturbing one as I stumbled over the stones in the dark and picked my way among the black furze bushes. Indoors it was very comfortable, sitting by the fire, with the lighted lamp on the table and a book waiting to be read; then supper and a pipe, but through it all that strange and desolate aspect of nature remained persistently before my inner sight. I went to bed and lay soft and warm, covered with many blankets, but did not sleep; the wind increased in violence as the hours went on, making its doleful wailing and shrieking noises all round the house and causing the doors and windows to rattle in their frames. In spirit I was in it, out on the hillside where the birds were in their secret hiding-places, in the black furze and heath, in holes and crevices in the hedges, their little hearts beating more languidly each hour, their eyes glazing, until stiff and dead they dropped from their perches. And I was on the summit of the hill among the rude granite castles and sacred places of men who had their day on this earth thousands and thousands of years ago. Here there are great blocks and slabs of granite which have been artificially hollowed into basins—for what purpose, who shall say? The rain falls and fills them to the brim with crystal-clear water, and in summer the birds drink and bathe in these basins. But they were doubtless made for another, possibly for some dreadful, purpose. Perhaps they were filled from time to time with the blood of captive men sacrificed on the hill-top to some awful god of the ancient days. Now it seemed to me, out there in spirit on the hill, that the darkest imaginings of men—the blackest phantom or image of himself which he has sacrificed to—was not so dark as this dreadful unintelligible and unintelligent power that made us, in which we live and move and have our being.
It was this terrible aspect of nature, as I had seen it on that evening, which was uppermost in the mind of the race at an earlier stage of culture before man's cunning brain had found out so many inventions and created new and pleasant conditions for his own species. When animistic promptings survive in him he is now apt to personify nature in its milder beneficent aspects. Such personifications, fanciful and religious at the same time, are common in our imaginative writers, especially in the poets, but, when lying awake that night, I tried to recall the passages I had read just to contrast the brighter picture with that dark one in my mind, I could only remember one, in a prose writer, and it was this:—
"Nature is now at her evening prayers, kneeling before the red hills. On the steps of her great altar she is praying for a fair night for mariners at sea, for travellers in lonely deserts, for lambs on moors and for unfledged little birds in their nests. She appears to me as a Titanic woman, her robe of blue air spread to the outskirts of the heath; a veil white as an avalanche extends from her head to her feet with arabesques of lightning flame on its borders. Under her breasts is seen her purple zone, and through its blush shines the evening star. Her eyes are clear and deep as lakes, and are lifted and full of worship and tremble with the softness of love and the lustre of prayer."
Very curiously in this the only poetic passage I could recall the author's religion has mixed itself with the sense of a living and intelligent principle in nature—that which at times makes nature seem a person to us. The person may be interested in or indifferent to us, but is all-knowing and all-powerful and cannot be an intercessor. There is no doubt that this sense or feeling in us, when strong, is disturbing to the religious mind, producing as it does the notion of a something unknown and uncanny (probably the devil) in nature—something which is ever trying in all solitary places to seduce the soul from a jealous and watchful God. It was, I think, a religious poet and an American who wrote of the "dreadful wilderness of mind"—I read it when a boy:
There is a wilderness more dark
Than groves of fir on Huron's shore.
Many of us have just such visions of the person that nature is on occasions to us: a woman-Titan, a beautiful female, the mother of men and of all life, all breathing sentient things, and of grass and flowers; a being in whom all beauty in the visible world and all sweetness and love and compassion in a mother's heart and in all hearts are concentrated and intensified. But it is a personification of a reclaimed and softened nature and of the soft conditions of life in which we are nursed. My vision of nature as a person that night had no softness or beauty in it and was not woman. Standing on the hills I saw him coming up from the illimitable moaning sea, riding on the blast as on a chariot, and he was himself wind and cloud and sea and land. He towered above the granite hills, blotting out the stars with his streaming hair which covered the heavens like a cloud. I saw his face, dark as granite, as he rose up before me and passed over the stony desolate hills, and his eyes gazing straight before him were like two immense round shields of grey ice and had no speculation in them. This indeed was to my mind the most dreadful thing, that this being, all-powerful and everlasting, creator and slayer of all things that live, of all beauty and sweetness and compassion, was himself without knowledge or thought or emotion, and that that which he had made and would unmake was without significance to him.
If there be nothing but this mechanical world, and if the pure materialist even in spite of his materialism should invent for himself or imagine a god, it would be such a one as I beheld on that windy night.
So passed the miserable darkling hours, "as I lay a-thynkinge," and saw no hope until I slept, and when I woke and the grey morning was come, the wind had fallen and the cold was not so intense.
The frost continued that day and the next, and although very cold with occasional storms of sleet and snow, it was getting milder all the time. The change was so gradual one could hardly feel it, but it had a great effect on the birds; they were recovering very rapidly, and on the morning of the 27th, when the ground had once more grown soft except in shady places, my birds did not turn up at feeding-time in the morning: they were back in the fields getting their natural food, which no doubt tasted best after their long abstinence. It was a pleasure to go out again to see the thrush standing up stiff and alert on the green turf in the old way, and the speckled starlings scattered about and once more busily prodding the turf. The daws rose up with the old insolent ring in their clamouring voices, and the wren was himself again, briskly hopping out of his hiding-place in the stones for a moment or two just to fling that sharp little note of indignation at you for disturbing him—"Go away—mind your own business!"
The mortality had undoubtedly been very great, but a majority of the birds died in the night-time, dropping from their perches in the close bushes and dying in holes in the hedges, where their bodies remained hidden. But they had died in the daytime too, and I found their remains all about the fields, mostly starlings, but dead redwings and thrushes were also plentiful.
