[40] This peculiar protective property is not confined to the partridge, but seems to apply to game birds generally. The keeper on the Woodhall shooting reported to me, on one occasion, that a pheasant had nested close to a footpath, where she was certain to be disturbed, and asked permission to take the eggs to hatch under one of his hens. Mr. E. M. Cole reports in the “Naturalist” of 1892, p. 182, Phasianus Colchicus nest of seven or eight eggs “found May 6th, on the road margin.” Mr. J. Watson, in his book “Sylvan Folk,” says: “A party of ornithologists were trying to get a specimen of the ptarmigan in breeding plumage, but failed up to luncheon time. Sitting down, the lunch was unstrapped from a pony, and a strap fell on a ptarmigan, sitting, actually, under the pony. On another occasion a dog sat down upon the hen ptarmigan, which it had not discovered in the middle of the party.”—“Sylvan Folk,” p. 147, Fisher Unwin, 1889.
[42] The writer once witnessed a fight in the air between a kite and a heron. Hearing a confused sound of harsh cries overhead, he looked up, and soon caught sight of two large birds wheeling round and round, each apparently doing its utmost to get above the other. The two, however, were very evenly matched, for, whereas the kite had its strong beak and talons, deadly weapons for seizing and rending when at close quarters, and could make a powerful swoop at his prey—the heron, though an awkward bird in the air, and ungainly in its movements, had yet its long, sharp, bill, with which it could receive its enemy as it were “at point of bayonet,” and even transfix him, should he make a reckless onset. Again and again, when the kite succeeded in getting uppermost, he would make a rapid downward swoop upon the heron; but as he neared the latter, he was forced swiftly to turn aside, to avoid being pierced through by the long bill. This went on for a considerable time, the two birds by turns surmounting each other, until they were lost to view in a cloud; and as to which ultimately gained the day, “witness deponeth not.”
As Mary Howitt prettily says;—
Up, up into the skies,
Thy strenuous pinions go;
While shouts, and cries, and wondering eyes
Still reach thee from below.
But higher and higher, like a spirit of fire,
Still o’er thee hangs thy foe;
Thy cruel foe, still seeking
With one down-plunging aim
To strike thy precious life
For ever from thy frame;
But doomed, perhaps, as down he darts,
Swift as the rustling wind,
Impaled upon thy upturned beak,
To leave his own behind.To the Heron
[44a] The writer, when the sport of hawking was revived some 40 years ago by the late Mr. Barr, witnessed several trials of his hawks, and himself tried hawking with the sparrow-hawk on a small scale. A great friend of his took up the sport at one time, and spent a good deal of money on it in securing good birds and well trained; but it almost invariably resulted in their getting away. Failing to kill his quarry, the bird would fly wildly about in search of it, thus getting beyond recall, and so would eventually go off and resume its wild habits. After losing a hawk for some days, the writer has caught sight of it again, called it, and swung his “lure” in the air to attract it. The hawk has come and fluttered about him, almost within arm’s length, but carefully eluded being taken; and so, after a little playful dalliance, has flown away again.
[44b] Lord Lilford, the great naturalist, states that a pair of owls, with their adult progeny, will, in three months, rid the land of no less than 10,000 vermin; and Frank Buckland states that he found the remains of 20 dead rats in one owl’s nest.
[45] Among his various pets the writer has tried to keep owls, but not with success. On one occasion he brought home two young birds, taken from a nest on the moor. They were put into an empty pigeon-cote. The next morning they were found dead, with their claws, in fatal embrace, buried deep in each other’s eyes. At another time he reared a couple, and got them fairly tame. They were allowed to go out at night to forage for themselves. But on one occasion, for the delectation of some visitors, he turned them out in the afternoon before dusk, and (presumably), taking offence at the affront put upon them, they never returned to their quarters. For a time he heard them in the dusk, and when he called they would even hover about him, uttering a low kind of purr but keeping carefully out of his reach.
[46a] The writer on Jan. 7, 1899, walking along a footpath, saw a pedlar who was meeting him, suddenly stop, and poke out a sort of bundle from the hedge-bottom with is stick. On coming up to him he asked what he had got. The reply was “One of the varmints that kill the ducks”; i.e., hedgehog. On his saying that he did not believe that the creature did anything of the kind, the pedlar replied, rather indignantly, that he knew an instance where a hedgehog had killed 20 ducks in a night. While, however, claiming for the hedgehog, mainly an insect, or vegetable diet, we are aware that it is open to the soft impeachment, that it does not object, like some of its betters, to an occasional “poached egg,” whether of duck, chicken, or partridge; and cases are on record of its being caught in flagrante delicto, as mentioned by Mr. E. L. Arnold, in his Bird Life in England.
[46b] The term “sewer” does not at all imply that this stream was ever used for sewerage purposes. It is a survival from old times, once meaning a drain or water course. Commissioners of sewers were appointed by Henry VIII. under the “Statute of Sewers.” But the same bucolic mind which can see in the most graceful church tower in the kingdom “Boston Stump,” gives the name of “Sewer” to a stream pellucid enough to be a fount of Castaly.
[47] There are several other birds occasionally about Woodhall, but they can hardly be counted among the regular denizens of the district. The curlew has recently been seen during a whole season, doubtless nesting somewhere in the neighbourhood, though the nest has not been found. The Green Sand-piper (Totanus Octaopus) frequents some of our ponds, but only as a bird of passage; the writer has occasionally shot them. The Razorbill (Alca Torda) is sometimes blown inland to us. A specimen was caught a few years ago, in an exhausted state, by some boys in Woodhall, and brought to the writer. A Little Auk (Alca Arctica) was caught under similar circumstances some years ago. A specimen of the Scoter, or Surf-Duck (Oidemia perspicillata), was brought to him, exhausted, but alive. He took care of it, and fed it. It recovered, and eventually regained its freedom, and was seen no more. Two stuffed specimens of that rare bird, the Ruff and Reeve, may be seen at the house of Mr. Charles Fixter, farmer, within three fields of the Bathhouse, Woodhall. They were shot by a Woodhall keeper, at Huttoft, near the sea coast.