In a Cheshire Garden: Natural History Notes

by Geoffrey Egerton-Warburton

The whole extent of the garden, with its croft and orchard, is not three acres, but a fair proportion of the British mammals are from time to time to be found there.

The old church, largely built of timber, picturesque and quaint, stands within a few yards of the house and its roof affords shelter to many bats. We find the wings of moths, the remnants of their feasts, scattered on the floor (I have noticed the wings of a tortoise-shell butterfly among them), and I have found there more than one dead body of a common bat; I cannot say whether that is the only kind we have, but in 1908 a bat was seen near the house which, from the description given of its size and manner of flight, may perhaps have been a noctule.

On May 28th, 1899, there was an eclipse of the sun; it was only partial, and made very little difference to the light, but just so long as it lasted, from 3 to 4.30 p.m., I saw a bat flying busily round and about the church.

The soil is light and worms seem to be abundant, but one hardly ever sees a mole-hill in this part of Cheshire. One day, however, in December, 1899, we noticed that a bed of parsley had withered in a mysterious way, and when we came to look, the ground was quite undermined with mole-runs. These were very shallow, and there was no sign of a hillock above. Many of the roots of the parsley had been entirely eaten off, and we saw that nearly all that remained in the bed were full of grubs. These grubs it must have been, I suppose, that attracted the mole, but it is curious that such an exceptional condition of the roots should have been discovered, considering how seldom there is any sign of a mole in the neighbourhood. We noticed that the root of a strong raspberry cane on one side of the parsley bed had been eaten off in the same way, but it is not very likely that this would have had grubs in it.

Hedgehogs are not uncommon and we sometimes see them in broad daylight. In July one year (1900) every evening for about a week we used to see a large hedgehog running along a broad gravel walk close to the windows of the house. It came always at the same time, "just at the edge of dark," as they say here, and it always took the same route and disappeared at the same place.

Later on in the month we found a young one, a most delightful little animal, as friendly and tame as possible. We used to feed him with milk every day as long as he stayed here, which was about a week, and once when we expected some boys in the garden we brought him into the house and put him in a box. He strongly objected to the imprisonment, loudly protesting all the time in a voice like the squeaking of a rat, and it was surprising to see how nearly he managed to get out, though the sides of the box were almost two feet high.

Stoats, commonly called weasels with us, were fairly common when we had more rats and rabbits, but we do not often see one now (1912). We had a white terrier that killed several, though I had an idea that dogs looked on stoats as a kind of ferret and did not hurt them.

We can count a fox among our occasional visitors. I have watched one for some time that was smelling about among the shrubs just opposite to the front door about eight o'clock on a Sunday morning.

We are out of the regular beat of the Cheshire Hounds here, and I fancy the secret slaying of a fox is not accounted a very heinous crime, certainly the foxes that are often reported soon disappear. In 1899 a fox had its "earth" in the Abbey Croft, a field next to the garden, and we used to like to hear him barking in the still summer evenings. In the end, however, the keepers were too many for him, and he had to shift his quarters or else it may have been his lease of life ran out.

We suffered very much at one time from the plague of rats. They infested the out-buildings and the house itself, and for a long while we were in despair about them. We tried poison, with the result that dead rats made the kitchen uninhabitable and entailed the expense and nuisance of taking up the floor, and still they came. We tried every kind of trap, we had the whole of the outside walls examined, and every possible entrance hole stopped, so at least we thought, but still they came. At last we found that the simple expedient of doing away with the ashpit deprived the premises of their chief attraction in a rat's eyes, for then we had to burn on the kitchen fire all the vegetable and other refuse that formerly found its way to the ashpit, and provided such abundant and appetizing food. Certain it is that since we did this, more than twelve years ago now (1912), we never have had a rat in the house.