It is commonly held that fieldfares roost on the ground; yet we never remember to have disturbed them when roosting in that way, but have often done so in the woods, in which they had favourite parts. They come to the chosen haunt on the brink of darkness, after the habit of carrion crows, and they roost in companies apparently of twenty and thirty on the older growths of underwood. At all times the fieldfares are wide awake, and they never fail to take wing and utter their throaty chuckle on the slightest provocation.
The Eyes of Wild Creatures
There is a theory that the eyes of wild creatures magnify things seen, so that they appear many times larger than to human eyes. This has been held to explain why creatures smaller and weaker than man, like hares and rabbits, flee desperately at his approach—a reasonable habit if all men to them are as giants. One's sympathies would go out to the rabbit if he sees foxes as horses, and weasels as foxes. If birds' eyes have magnifying power, many miracles of flight and of feeding would seem natural. The swift passage of birds through obstacles that appear to our eyes to be almost impenetrable is something of a miraculous nature. Without a moment's survey of difficulties or direction, a bird flashes through a jungle where there is no possible way for it to be found by human eyes. The blackbird flies shrieking in and out of a dense hedge of thorns; but not a feather is ruffled in the course of his intricate flight. Or watch the jay or the sparrow-hawk passing at speed through an almost solid network of twigs and stems. The human eye cannot properly follow this performance by the sparrow-hawk; a swish and a streak of bluish grey, and it is gone. Many a bold jay, finding itself caught between beaters and guns, has saved its life by this wonderful power of flight at speed, going away without giving the slightest chance for a shot; it will dash out of a wall of undergrowth on one side of a ride sheer into another wall. No doubt the jay knows to an inch which is the shortest cut out of man's sight. Hardly less wonderful than birds' flight through crowded obstacles is the way in which rabbits scurry and twist through masses of fern and brambles. But where the theory of eye magnification would seem most probably true is where tits and goldcrests are searching for food on the underside of fir boughs, and finding food which no man's eye could see unaided.
The Season's End
While February 1 brings security to pheasants and partridges, hares—where any survive in spite of the Ground Game Act—are now also nearly safe from persecution, thanks, however, to the courtesy of sportsmen, and not to the law. Like rabbits, hares may be killed all the year round, but, unlike rabbits, they may not be sold or exposed for sale between the first day of March and the last day of July.
The end of the season has a strong effect on the gamekeeper. February 2 marks his annual truce with his birds, save woodcock, snipe and wild-fowl. Thereafter he loses the vindictive look of the shooting season—he becomes a man of peace. For long months he has been scheming death and destruction—he has devoted himself wholly to the science of killing game. Happy, if anxious, his face has been as he has bustled his birds to guns belching forth some three hundred pellets of lead at each discharge. At the end of the day he has rejoiced over the long rows of the dead, in feather and fur, while his hand jingles gold and silver—his reward for success in the contest of wit and reason against cunning and instinct. The second day of February comes—and his whole nature seems to undergo a change. No longer he boasts to his rival neighbour how a week ago come to-morrow the bag was so many hundred pheasants, and would have been doubled if the guns had shot "anyhow at all." But he will make a boast of the numbers of his hen pheasants. The sight of hen pheasants is the greatest joy of his days—over his hens he watches with maternal love. "And how many hens was there?"—this is the answer he will return should you mention casually that you had seen pheasants feeding in a field.
As to cock pheasants, his sensations are different. The sight of a cock pheasant is a taunt. The veteran cocks that have passed unscathed through the shooting season now grow proud in bearing, and the keeper thinks they seem to eye him with scornful looks. They are approaching the reward of their cunning, of their keen eyes, their sharp ears, their speedy legs—the possibility of several wives is before them. No matter where the keeper goes now, he is taunted by the sight and sound of these victorious veterans that have eluded all his efforts to bring them low. In summer it is the lament of the twenty thousand gamekeepers in this country that there are "too many cocks by half."
