The Cockney in the country is perplexed by the countryman's names for birds and beasts; especially by names denoting gender. The countryman seems to the townsman to be particular in drawing his distinctions, and his precise way of referring to an ox or a steer, a bull-calf or a heifer, is found very puzzling, particularly to ladies—who hold all cows to be bulls. And when the countryman speaks of a wether-sheep, a barrow-hog, of a hummel-stag, he is speaking in mysteries. Even the terms of the poultry-yard—cock, cockerel, pullet, fowl, hen, or capon—are not always understood.
Custom grants some creatures only one sex. A cat is usually a she, and a hare nearly always. To be precise, as to hares, one should refer to the male as a jack and a female as a jill, the terms buck and doe being more properly applied to rabbits and to fallow deer; red deer are distinguished by the terms stag and hind. Ferrets in some parts are known as hobbs and gills. Rats, like badgers and hedgehogs, may be boars and sows. The males of otters, stoats, weasels and foxes are dogs, but only the female fox is a vixen. Rams are sometimes "tups." The terms bulls and cows are applied to many kinds of animals, such as elands, moose, whales, elephants, and the seals; but the young seals are pups, and gather in rookeries. The terms for birds offer some difficulties; all common wild duck are mallards, to distinguish them from widgeon, teal and so on; but while the male may be called either the mallard or the drake, the female is always a duck. Grouse are cock and hen; blackcock, blackcock and greyhen; and all woodcock are 'cock.
No less confusing to the Cockney in the country are the terms for quantities of game. He speaks of a "brace of rabbits," and the gamekeeper's eyebrows rise at the term. Two rabbits are a "couple"—when they are not a pair. Two pheasants, two partridges, or two grouse are a "brace," three forming a "brace and a half" or a "leash"; but we speak of a "couple" of woodcock, snipe, duck, or pigeons.
When the gamekeeper speaks of "pairs" of birds he is referring to birds that have paired; but a cock and a hen pheasant remain a cock and a hen. Some confusion arises from the terms applied to gatherings of birds or beasts. Young families of birds are usually "broods," and families of animals "litters." One speaks of a brood (or pack) of grouse, a covey (or pack) of partridges, a bevy of quail, a nid of pheasants (meaning a young family), a wing of plover, a wisp of snipe, a team of duck, a company of widgeon, a flock of sparrows, rooks, or pigeons, a skein or gaggle of geese, a herd of swans or deer, and a sounder of wild pigs. The gamekeeper knows better than any one else just what is meant by a litter of cubs. There is a distinction between a big "rise" of pheasants and a good "flush." If a thousand pheasants fly up at the same time it is a big rise, but not a good one, because few can be shot. A good flush does not mean necessarily that there are many birds, but that they rose, or were flushed, so that most of them offered shots—a few at a time.
Hares and their Young
A wet, cold spring means death to the majority of early leverets. They are given a good chance of life, coming into the world as perfect little hares, with complete fur coat and open eyes; and, like partridge chicks, they can run on the day they are born. But they are not always strong enough to withstand the English spring. A leveret, no larger than a man's fist, runs with extraordinary speed, and often escapes from a dog, while a man must be sound in wind and limb to overtake it in the open. Rabbits, born naked, develop a very fair turn of speed so soon as they come above ground, but they quickly give up in despair if pursued.
There is a widespread idea that hares breed only once in a year, and produce only one leveret. The gamekeeper knows well that puss may produce several leverets at a birth, and will have family after family from as early as January to the end of September. As with rabbits, the leverets born early one year themselves may breed in the late summer of the same year. No doubt the hare is credited with only one or two young ones because only one or two are found together. Occasionally, it is true, several very young leverets may be found in one place; but they are usually cradled in separate seats, not far from each other. We once found a family of eight little leverets crouching in a bunch under a heap of hedge-trimmings. Evidently we discovered them within a few moments of their entry into the world.
The mother hare is wise to separate her family. Many dangers threaten the leveret's life; but if families were kept together the young ones would be even more open to attack from rooks and crows, and scent-hunting vermin in fur. The leveret with its eyes pecked out by a rook, yet still living, is a sight which pleads for the mercy of a swift death at the gamekeeper's hands. The mother hare is keenly alive to the dangers besetting her family. If you find a leveret one day nestling in a tuft of grass, or against a clod of earth, whether or not you handle it the mother will certainly remove it before the morrow. She will wind danger in your scent.