Grain and Chaff from an English Manor

by Arthur Herbert Savory

The woodcock often breeds in the south of England, but is usually a migrating bird, arriving during the first moon in November; it is not difficult to shoot when it first rises, but when steam is really up and it is zig-zagging between the branches of an oak, it takes a good shot to make sure of it. I shall never forget the first woodcock I shot as a boy; it was a thick misty day in November, I fired, and though I felt certain I had not missed, the smoke hung and the air was too thick to see, and, after a long search, I left the wood and was going home when our old spaniel, Flush, turned his head to examine something in a deep cart rut. Following the direction of his eyes, I saw my woodcock; it must have flown 100 yards or more after I fired. I was still more pleased with the last shot I fired in our old Surrey covers at a woodcock going like an express train—and faster, for they are said to fly at the rate of 150 miles an hour—with all his tricks, through thick branches in the adjoining cover, where he fell at least 65 yards from where I stood. A friend of mine had the good-fortune to see an old woodcock, which had evidently bred in his woods, flying, followed by five or six young ones; he said it was one of the prettiest bits of natural history he had ever seen.

"If a woodcock had a partridge's breast
He'd be the best bird that ever was dressed;
If a partridge had a woodcock's thigh
He'd be the best bird that ever did fly."

is a very old description, and fairly divides the honours between the two birds.

The hawfinch is very easily recognized by its distinct and beautiful colouring; it is a shy bird, and though it bred regularly at Aldington, we rarely saw it. It is commoner here, and is sometimes very destructive, its powerful beak making havoc with the "marrowfats"; but, though I am partial to green peas of this description, I would sooner suffer some damage than have the hawfinches shot.

In 1918 the cuckoos were exceedingly numerous here, and round my house they were calling all day long. Owing to the terrible winter and early spring months of the previous year, so many of the insectivorous birds had been destroyed, that the caterpillars had escaped, and were more numerous than ever in the following spring. The oaks in places were completely stripped of their foliage by the larvae of Tortrix viridana, almost as soon as the leaves were out. The cuckoos discovered them, but were not in sufficient numbers to keep them down, and it was midsummer before the trees recovered. I have referred to the damage in my plum orchard at Aldington from the attack of the larvae of the winter-moth; the damage is not confined to the actual year of its occurrence, the crop suffers the following year owing to the previous defoliation of the tree, which is weakened and is unable to mature healthy fruit buds. At Aldington, in a hot summer, the cuckoos used to call nearly all night, and I have heard them when it was quite dark.

For some years, until 1918, goldfinches were quite common in Hampshire and Dorsetshire. I have seen a flock of over forty together. I had seven nests on my premises here one summer; they go on breeding very late, and I have found their nests with young birds half-fledged while summer-pruning apple trees in August. They come into my garden close to the windows in May, after the ripening seeds of the myosotis (forget-me-not) in the spring-bedding. I never remember seeing a goldfinch at Aldington, which should show that the thistles were well under control, for the seed is a great attraction. One often hears the practice of allowing thistles to run to seed condemned as criminal, for everybody knows that each thistle-down, carried by the wind, contains a seed, and that the attachment of a light structure of plumes is one of Nature's methods of ensuring dissemination. But, in Worcestershire, it is always asserted that thistle seed will not germinate—I am referring to Cnicus arvensis—and it is said that a prize of £50 offered for a seedling thistle remains unclaimed to this day. I failed, myself, in trying to obtain young plants from seeds sown in a flower-pot, and I have never seen a seedling in all the thousands of miles I must have walked over young cornfields when my men were hoeing.

I have heard an interesting story about rooks which were causing a farmer much damage in a field newly sown with peas. He erected a small shelter of hurdles, from which to shoot them, and for a time the shelter was sufficient to scare them, until they got used to it; but, when he entered it with his gun, they would not come near. Thinking to deceive their sentinel, watching from a tree, he took a companion to the shelter, who remained for a time and then left, but still no rooks came near. The farmer then took two companions, and presently sent them both away. The arithmetic was too much for the rooks, and the scheme succeeded. He concluded that their powers of enumeration were limited to counting "two," and that "three" was beyond them.

Nightingales are scarce in the Forest; they do not like the solitude of the great woods, apparently preferring to inhabit roadsides and places where people and traffic are constantly passing. They are specially abundant at the foot of the Cotswolds, and it is a treat to cycle steadily along the road between Broadway and Weston Subedge on a summer evening, where you no sooner lose the liquid notes of one, than you enter the territory of another, so continuous is the song for miles together.

In severe winters wood-pigeons did much damage at Aldington to young clover a few inches high; they roosted in "the island" adjoining my garden. When they first descended they alighted in the wide-spreading branches of the leafless black poplars, where they could see all round, and reconnoitre the position; then, if all was quiet, in about ten minutes they took to the shelter of the fir trees for the night with much fluttering and beating of wings against the thick branches. They devour the acorns in the Forest very greedily in the autumn, and I have seen one with crop so full that on my approach it could only with difficulty fly away to a short distance. I found it near a small pond where, apparently, it had been drinking, and the acorns had expanded to an inconvenient extent.

The golden-crested wren was a common bird here before the severe winter of 1916-1917, but it has since become comparatively rare; it is the smallest of British birds, and could often be seen in the hedges exploring every twig and crevice for insects, and it was a great pleasure to watch the nimble movements of such a sweet little fairy. Its first cousin, the fire-crest, which is almost its exact counterpart, except for the flame-coloured crest, is much rarer; and I only remember seeing one specimen, to which with great circumspection I managed to approach quite closely, in the wood near my house.