Poachers and Poaching

by F.L.S. John Watson

Much unnatural history has been written of the owls, and unfortunately most people have their ideas from the poets.

The barn-owl, when she has young, brings to her nest a mouse every twelve minutes, and, as she is actively employed both at evening and dawn, and both male and female hunt, forty mice a day is the lowest computation we can make. How soft is the plumage of the owl, and how noiseless her flight! Watch her as she floats past the ivy tod, down by the ricks, and silently over the old wood. Then away over the meadows, through the open door and out of the loop-hole in the barn, round the lichened tower, along the course of the brook. Presently she returns to her four downy young, with a mouse in one claw and a vole in the other, soon to be ripped up, torn, and eaten by the greedy snapping imps. The young are produced from April to December, and not unfrequently both young and eggs are found in the same nest. If you would see the mid-day siesta of the owls, climb up into some hay-mow. There in an angle of the beam you will see their owlships, snoring and blinking wide their great round eyes. Their duet is the most unearthly, ridiculous, grave, like-nothing-else noise you ever heard. Here they will stay all day, digesting the mice with which they have largely gorged themselves, until twilight, when they again issue forth on their madcap revellings. This clever mouser, then, this winged cat, has a strong claim to our protection. So let not idle superstition further its destruction.

The keeper's indiscretions are fewer in fur than in feather. His larder abounds in long-bodied creatures of the weasel kind. Here is the richly-coloured dark-brown fur of the pine-martin; that of the polecat, loose and light at the base but almost black at the extremity; and there are many skins of weasels, reddish brown above with the sides and under parts white. For each of these creatures he has quaint provincial names of his own. The pine-martin he calls the "sweet-mart," in contradistinction to the polecat, which is the "foumart," or "foulmart"—a name bestowed on the creature because it emits a secretion which has an abominable stench. Also, we have the stoat or ermine, which even with us is white in winter, brown in summer; but the tip of the tail is always black.

The beautiful martins take up their abode in the rockiest parts of the wood where the pines grows thickly. They are strictly arboreal in their habits; and, seen among the shaggy pine foliage, the rich yellow of their throats is sharply set off by the deep brown of the thick glossy fur. With us they do not make their nests and produce their young in the pine-trees, but among the loose craggy rocks. Martins rarely show themselves till evening. They prey upon rabbits, hares, partridges, pheasants, and small birds; and when we say that, like the rest of the mustelidæ, they kill for the love of killing, it is not hard to understand why the keeper's hand is against them. Sometimes they do great harm in the coverts; and the old man shoots them, traps them, and does them to death with various subtle engines of his own machination. To-day the martin is rare; soon it will be extinct altogether. Weasels do much less harm. They are the smallest of our carnivorous animals, and will probably long survive. They frequently abound where least suspected, in the cultivated as well as the wildest parts of the district. They take up their abode near farmhouses, in decayed outbuildings, hay-ricks, and disused quarries; and may often be seen near old walls or running along the top of them with a mouse or bird in their mouths. These things form the staple of their food; but there is no denying that a weasel will occasionally run down the strongest hare, and that rabbits, from their habit of rushing into their burrows become an easy prey. But this does not happen often, I believe. To rats the weasel is a deadly enemy; no united number of them will attack it, and the largest singly has no chance against it. Like the polecat the weasel hunts by scent. It climbs trees easily and takes birds by stealth. The keeper has seen a brooding partridge taken in this manner, and on winter evenings the sparrows roosting in holes in a hay-rick. Weasels also kill toads and frogs; and their mode of killing these, as well as of despatching birds, is by piercing the skull.

The polecat, or fitchet, keeps much to the woods, and feeds mostly on rabbits and game. But in the northern fell districts it often takes up a temporary abode on the moors during the season that grouse are hatching. Then it not only kills the sitting birds but sucks the eggs, and thus whole broods are destroyed. Many "cheepers" of course fall victims. Knowing well the ferocity of the polecat, I believe the damage done to grouse moors where this blood-thirsty creature takes up its abode can hardly be estimated. Like others of its tribe, the polecat kills more prey than it needs. Sometimes it makes an epicurean repast from the brain alone. Fowl-houses suffer considerably from its visits; and it has been known to kill and afterwards leave untouched as many as sixteen large turkeys. In the nest of a fitchet which was observed to frequent the banks of a stream no fewer than eleven fine trout were found. The gamekeeper persistently dogs this creature both summer and winter. In the latter season every time it ventures abroad it registers its progress through the snow. It is then that the old man is most active in his destruction, and most successful. He tracks the vermin to some stone fence or disused quarry or barn, cuts off the enemy's retreat, and then unearths him. Trapped he is at all times.

The stoat or ermine is as destructive to covert game as the animals just mentioned. Upon occasion it destroys great quantities of rats, and this is its only redeeming quality. Partridge, grouse, and pheasants all fall a prey to the stoat, and hares when pursued by it seem to become thoroughly demoralised. Water is no obstacle to the ermine, and it climbs trees in search of squirrels, birds, and eggs. A pair of stoats took up their abode in a well-stocked rabbit warren. The legitimate inmates were killed off by wholesale, and many were taken from the burrows with the skull empty. The stoat progresses by a series of short quick leaps, which enable it to cover the ground more quickly than could possibly be imagined for so small an animal.

Enough has been said to sketch the characters of these creatures, and to justify their presence in the larder. Interesting in themselves as wild denizens of the woods, they would be fatal to game-preserving.

Vulpecide is no great crime in the north. Foxes abound in the fastnesses of the fells, and the little wiry foxhounds that hunt the mountains in winter account for but few in a season; and so it devolves upon the shepherds and gamekeepers and farmers to deal with them. This they do irrespective of season; if allowed to live, the foxes would destroy abundance of lambs in spring. They are tracked through the snow in winter, shot in summer, and destroyed wholesale when they bring their young to the moors in autumn. It therefore happens that even the bright red fur of the fox may be seen on the keeper's gibbet.

Hedgehogs are taken in steel traps baited with a pheasant's or a hen's egg. At times squirrels are killed in hundreds, but they do not grace the larder, neither do the spiny hedgehogs. Squirrels bark young trees, especially ash-stoles and holly.

Occasionally a creature more rare than the rest adorns the larder. The old keepers remember a white-tailed eagle and a great snowy owl. Sometimes a peregrine is shot, and more rarely, in autumn, a hobby or a goshawk. A miscellaneous row on the vermin rails comprises moles, weasels, and cats. The mole is libelled by being placed there; he is a destroyer of many creatures which are injurious to land. Domestic cats soon revert to a semi-wild state when once they take to the woods, and are terribly destructive in the coverts. They destroy pheasants, partridges, leverets, and rabbits. The life of these wild tabbies is wild indeed. Every dormant instinct is aroused; each movement becomes characteristically feline; and when these creatures revert to life in the woods it is impossible to reclaim them. Climatic influences work remarkable changes upon the fur, causing it to grow longer and thicker; and the cats take up their abode in stony crevasse or hollow tree. In summer, when kittens are produced, the destruction of game is almost incredible.