Poachers and Poaching

by F.L.S. John Watson

The peculiarly wild whistle of the curlew comes from out the night sky, and swifts screech for an hour after darkness has fallen. We are now by the covert side, and a strange churring sound comes from out the darkened glades. Waiting silently beneath the bushes, it approaches nearer and nearer until a loud flapping is heard in the bushes. The object approaches quite closely, and it is seen that the noise is produced by a large bird striking its wings together as they meet behind. Even in the darkness it may be detected that each wing is crossed by a definite white bar. The bird is a goatsucker or nightjar. Had we it in our hand, we should see that it was a connecting link between the owls and the swallows, having the soft plumage and noiseless flight of the one and the wide gape of the other. The object of the noise it produces is probably to disturb from the bushes the large nightflying moths upon which it feeds. The name goatsucker the bird has from a superstitious notion that it sucks goats and cows—a myth founded probably upon the fact of its wide gape. It is certain that these birds may often be seen flitting about the bellies of cattle as they stand knee-deep in the summer pastures. The reason of this is obvious, as there insect food is always abundant. Unless disturbed, the nightjar rarely comes abroad during the day, but obtains its food at twilight and dusk. Upon the limestone-covered fells it conforms marvellously to its environment, it being almost impossible to detect its curiously mottled plumage as it basks upon the grey stones, not more still than itself. Here it lays its two eggs, often without the slightest semblance of a nest, frequently upon the bare rock. Quite a peculiar interest attaches to the bird, inasmuch as it is furnished with a remarkable claw, the use of which is guessed at rather than known. This claw is serrated on its inner edge, and from actual experiments made upon nightjars in captivity, we should surmise that its use is to free the long whiskers from the soft, silvery dust which usually covers the bodies of night-flying moths. Certain it is that this substance gets upon the whiskers of the bird, and that the long hairs referred to are combed through the serrated claw. About the mouth the goatsucker is very swallow-like. It has a bullet-shaped head, large eyes, and a wide gape. Like the swallows, too, it has a weak, ineffective bill, and weak feet. This is explained by the fact that the bird, except when nesting, is rarely seen on the ground, and that it captures its insect prey on the wing. From twilight till grey does the fern-owl "churr" and fly through the night.

As we proceed, a splash comes from the river, and some large-winged fly has been sucked under. The night food comes on, and the reach boils. Water-rats, voles, and shrews are busy among the stones searching for insect larvæ, or gnawing the stalks of water-plants. The wafting of wings overhead betokens a curlew flying through the darkness to its feeding ground. The peculiarly lonely wail of the summer-snipe comes down stream, and a teal stretches her neck low over the sand. The river here resolves itself into a gorge, and runs deep betwixt shelving rocks. The water ceaselessly moans and chafes down there in the darkness. Badgers have their haunt deep in the brambles, their tortuous burrows running far out among the boulders. From the tree-tops we may watch them digging for roots and wasps' nests, and now and then snapping at flies. Passing the deep dub by the "Force," we find old Phil, the fisher, plying his silent trade even thus into the night. Phil leads his own life, and is contemplative as becomes his craft. Nature's every sight and sound he has, as it were, by heart, and he makes friends even with the creeping things. As we watch, a salmon, fresh from the sea, leaps from the silvery foam and flashes in the moonlight.

One of the greatest night-helps to the gamekeeper in staying the depredations of poachers is the lapwing. It is the lightest sleeper of the fields, starting up from the fallows and screaming upon the slightest alarm. Poachers dread the detection of this bird, and the keeper closely follows its cry. A hare rushing wildly past will put the plover away from its roost; and when hares act thus in the darkness, there is generally some good cause for it. The skylark and woodlark are both occasional night-singers, and it is common to hear cuckoos call in the densest darkness. Still we follow on. Rabbits have made pitfalls in the loose, yellow sand, and we see their white scuts as vanishing points in the darkness. Mice rustle away, and a hedgehog comes to the pool to drink. One of the latter we saw just now taken in the keeper's trap, the latter baited with a pheasant's egg. The squeal of a foumart comes from the loose stones. Later it will feed on the frogs now croaking from the ditch; these it kills by piercing their skulls.

If the cuckoo tells her name to all the hills, so does the sedge-warbler to the fluted reeds. And, like that wandering voice, our little bird seems dispossessed of a corporeal existence, and on through summer is "still longed for, never seen"—and this though common enough, for you may wander long among the willows, with a bird in every bush, without one showing outside its corral of boughs. Wherever vegetation grows tall and luxuriant, there the "reed-wren" may be found. It travels in the night: you go out some May morning, and the rollicking intoxication of the garrulous little bird comes from out the self-same bush from which you missed it in autumn. From the time it first arrives it begins to sing louder and louder as the warm weather advances, especially in the evenings. Then it is that it listens to the loud-swelling bird-choir of the woods, selecting a note from this and another from that; for the sedge-warbler is an imitator, a mocking bird, and reproduces in fragments the songs of many species. The little mimic runs up and down the gamut in the most riotous fashion, parodying not only the loud, clear whistle of the blackbird, but the wholly differing soft, sweet notes of the willow-wren. This is kept up through the night, and the puzzle is when the little musician sleeps. If the sedge-warbler ceases its song through any hour of the day or night, a clod thrown into the bushes will immediately set it going again. Yet what can be said of a song that a clod of earth will produce? Sometimes for a moment it is sweet, but never long-sustained. In the North, where there are few ditches, the species frequents river-banks and the sides of tarns; in the South, it abounds everywhere in marshy places. Here the rank grass swarms with them; the thicker the reed-patch or willow, the more birds are there. With perfect silence, a distant view of the bird is sometimes obtained at the top of the bushes, as it flits after an insect. As it runs up and clings to the tall grass stalks, it is pleasing both in form and colour. Among the grasses and water-plants it has its game preserves. Water-beetles, ephemeræ, and the teeming aquatic insects constitute its food. To watch through a glass the obtaining of these is most interesting. Reed-sparrow and reed-wren are pretty provincial names of the bird, each expressive enough.

A powerful perfume rises from the ground-weeds, and stooping low, we detect dame's violet. The purple Hesperis matronalis emits its sweet smell only at night, and is fertilised by moths. This, too, holds good of the evening campion (Lychins vespertina), only its scent is fainter. For this, however, the colour of its white petals amply compensates, as they are more easily seen in the darkness. Further on, we detect Orchis bifolia, which is also particularly sweet, and with the same object. All these emit fragrance at night, and are fertilised only by night-flying insects. A crash! the underwood is rudely torn, and a form disappears in the darkness. The crackling of boughs and dead sticks mark on the stillness of night the poacher's sinuous path through the woods. Soon his old black bitch slinks by the hedge, clears the fence at a bound, and doggedly follows her master's footsteps. Crake answers crake from the meadows as they have done through the night. Now they are at our feet, now far out yonder. The night call of the partridge comes from the gorse, and the first pheasant crows from the larch branches. On the hill we wade through a herd of recumbent heifers, their sketchy forms sharply outlined in the darkness. These are quietly chewing the cud, and turn upon us their great soft eyes; some even press their dewy noses against us. The sweet breath of kine is wafted on the night, and the drone of many insects.

It is wonderful how lightly the creatures of the fields and woods sleep. The faintest rustle brings chirping from the bushes, and in the densest darkness the wood pigeons coo. Jays screech in the glade, and the wood-owls hoot. One of the essentially night-singers is the grasshopper warbler. Shy and retiring in its habits, it is rarely found far distant from aquatic vegetation. Moist situations are most congenial, as among the plants that effect them it finds its winged food. Although generally effecting such spots as indicated, it sometimes seeks out considerable elevations. These are covered with coarse grass, bent, furze, and heather; and here, far into the night, it reels out its continuous cricket-like song. It returns to the same spot year after year, and although from these the particular notes may be often heard, the singer itself is nowhere to be seen. At the least noise it drops from the support on which it may be depending into the grass beneath, then is silent. The song is long continued, but the sounds are constantly shifting, marking the restless track of the singer on the night. It needs no stretch of imagination to detect in the notes of this species the similarity to the grasshopper, and the "monotonous whirr like the spinning of a fishing-reel," is fairly expressible of the bird's song. Perfect master of intricate maze and covert, it is never far from them. Even though it has ventured above his accustomed limits, its vigilance sends it back at the least noise, though its retreat is rarely observed, for instead of flying, it creeps closely, never rising when alarmed. Again we pass into the darkness. Moles have thrown up ridges of loose, light soil; and these cross us again and again. The short, sharp bark of a fox comes from the scrub; and soon dog and vixen answer each other across the dale.

And now we enter the park. The deer, disturbed in the darkness, get up and walk quietly away. A white fawn is outlined against the dark herd. Whenever an owner dies, say the menials at the Hall, a great bough is riven from the giant oak; whenever a new heir comes to the estate, a white fawn is born. Under the dark slabs by the river the otters breed; but it is impossible to dislodge them. Iron-sinewed, shaggy otter-hounds have tried, but never with success. The fishermen complain of the quantity of fish which the otter destroys. Trout are found dead on the rocks; salmon are there bitten in the shoulder, but only partially eaten. The evolutions of the otter in its native element are the poetry of motion minus only the metre.

When almost the whole of the insect-world has folded its wings in sleep, there is a class of night-flyers whose hours of activity are those of darkness. Among the more interesting of these is the male glow-worm—the English lantern-fly—whose light may be plainly seen as he flits past, pale and ghostly against the dark background of some deeply-foliaged bank or shadowy wood. Then there is the great army of night-flying moths, whose nocturnal wanderings present such a weird appearance in the darkness, and whose life-history contrasts so sharply with the sunny dalliance of their butterfly cousins. As moths have to contend with the night winds their constitution is more robust than that of the rhopolocera, or day-fliers. Their bodies are thicker, their wings narrower and more strongly nerved. As they settle themselves on corrugated bark or grey stones to their deep, diurnal sleep, their sober and inconspicuous colouring invariably saves them even from detection. In many species this daily trance is so profound that a slumbering insect may be transfixed and never detect the occurrence until twilight again comes round. But if the closely-folded upper wings are quiet and sober in colouring this is only for protective reasons; for brilliant toilets are presented when twilight falls and affords its dewy veil. Under the closely-folded wings of dusky grey are bright bodices of red, scarlet, crimson, and orange. What an admirable chapter "The Loves of the Night-Flyers" would afford by one who had fondly watched the fairy things through the dewy hours of a short summer night.

The twilight-flyers afford a distinct class to the night-flyers, and have several well-marked characteristics. These are termed hawk-moths, and have long, sharp, scythe-like wings. The death's-head moth, the largest and most interesting British species, belongs to this group. It seldom comes abroad before darkness has fallen, and is always conspicuous in its nocturnal flight. Linnæus, following his habitual system of nomenclature, placed this insect in the "sphinx" family on account of the form of its magnificent caterpillar, and gave it the specific name of Atropos, in allusion to the popular superstition. Atropos being, according to Hesiod, the one of the fates whose office it was to cut the thread of human life, spun by her sisters, Clotho and Lachesis. Modern entomologists have preserved the idea of Linnæus, giving to the new genus the name of acherontia—pertaining to Acheron, one of the streams which, in the Greek mythology, have to be passed before entering the infernal regions. A low, wailing sound which this insect emits has greatly added to the terror which its appearance inspires among ignorant rustics. The death's-head moth is a really splendid insect. Its stretched wings cover four and a half inches, and it is the largest of the British Lepidoptera. As is well known, it has its popular name from a marvellously good representation of a skull and crossbones upon the upper part of the thorax—a mark which has caused it to be an object of dread in every country which it inhabits. Fluttering at the window in the darkness, or entering the house by the open door, just after the close of twilight, it is considered a certain omen of death. Like the hoarse croak of the raven, and the "boding" hoot of the owl, the appearance of this moth is said to be followed by disease and death. The power possessed by the death's-head insect of emitting a shrill, creaking sound, is thought to be unique among the British Lepidoptera, and each time the strange sound is emitted, the whole body gives a convulsive sort of start. The insect can be induced to utter this strange note by being irritated.

Another especially interesting night-flyer is the ghost moth. Just as the twilight of a summer evening is deepening into darkness, and a soft, warm wind stirs the foliage of the woods, the ghost moth comes abroad. The observer sees a fitful apparition which suddenly vanishes into space. First a large insect with long wings is seen advancing, it comes straight on, then flutters in the air—and is gone. Whilst endeavouring to discover the mysterious retreat of the moth, it will suddenly reappear, and even whilst the eye closely follows its flight, will again vanish. This effect is produced by the different colour of the wings on their upper and lower sides. Above they are snowy white, and consequently visible even in the deep twilight; but on the under side they, as well as the whole body, are of a deep dusky brown so that when that side is suddenly turned towards the spectator it becomes invisible. As the male flies in the night, the white shining upper surface of the wings glitters curiously, almost appearing as if they were giving out their own light.