The Hills and the Vale

by Richard Jefferies

Now, in May, they are busy; they have paired, and each couple has a part of the copse to themselves. Just level with the gardens the wood is almost bare of undergrowth; there is little to obstruct the sight but the dead hanging branches, and one couple are always up and down here. They are near enough for us to see the dark marking at the end of the tail as it is spread open to assist the upward flight from the ground to the tree. Outside the garden gate, about twenty yards distant, there stand three or four young spruce-firs; they are in the field, but so close as to touch the copse hedge. To the largest of these one of the pigeons comes now and then; he is half inclined to choose it for his nest, and yet hesitates. The noise of their wings, as they rise and thresh their strong feathers together over the tops of the trees, may often be heard in the garden; or you may see one come from a distance, swift as the wind, suddenly half close two wings, and, shooting forward, alight among the branches. They seem with us like the sparrows, as much as if the house stood in the midst of the woods at home. The coo itself is not tuneful in any sense; it is hoarse and hollow, yet it has a pleasant sound to me—a sound of the woods and the forest. I can almost feel the gun in my hand again. They are pre-eminently the birds of the woods. Other birds frequent them at times, and then quit the trees: but the ring-dove is the wood-bird, always there some part of the day. So that the sound soothes by its associations.

Coming down the Long Ditton road on May 1, at the corner of the copse, where there are some hornbeams, I heard some low sweet notes that came from the trees, and, after a little difficulty, discovered a blackcap perched on a branch, humped up. Another answered within ten yards, and then they sang one against the other. The foliage of the hornbeam was still pale, and the blackcaps' colours being so pale also (with the exception of the poll), it was not easy to see them. The song is sweet and cultured, but does not last many seconds. In its beginning it something resembles that of the hedge-sparrow—not the pipe, but the song which the hedge-sparrows are now delivering from the top sprays of the hawthorn hedges. It is sweet indeed and cultured, and it is a pleasure to welcome another arrival, but I do not feel enraptured with the blackcap's notes. One came into the garden, visiting some ivy on the wall, but they are not plentiful just now. By these hornbeam trees a little streamlet flows out from the copse and under the road by a culvert. At the hedge it is crossed by a pole (to prevent cattle straying in), and this pole is the robin's especial perch. He is always there, or near; he was there all through the winter, and is there now. Beneath, where there are a few inches of sand beside the water, a wagtail comes now and then; but the robin does not like the intrusion, and drives him away.

The same oak at the end of the garden, where the wryneck calls, is also the favourite tree of a cock chaffinch, and every morning he sings there for at least two hours at a stretch. I hear him first between waking and sleeping, and listen to his song before my eyes are open. No starlings whistle on the house-tops this year; I am disappointed that they have not returned; last year, and the year before that—indeed, since we have been here—a pair built under the eaves just above the window of the room I then used. Last spring, indeed, they filled the gutter with the materials of their nest, and long after they had left a storm descended, and the rain, unable to escape, flooded the corner. It cost eight shillings to repair the damage; but it did not matter, they had been happy. It is a disappointment not to hear their whistle again this spring, and the flutter of their wings as they vibrate them superbly while hovering a moment before entering their cavern. A pair of house-martins built under the eaves near by one season; they, too, have disappointed me by not returning, though their nest was not disturbed. Some fate has probably overtaken late starlings and house-martins.

Then in the sunny mornings, too, there is the twittering of the swallows. They were very late this spring at Surbiton. The first of the species was a bank-martin flying over the Wandle by Wimbledon on April 25; the first swallow appeared at Surbiton on April 30. As the bank-martins skim the surface of the Thames—there are plenty everywhere near the osier-beds and eyots, as just below Kingston Bridge—their brown colour, and the black mark behind the eye, and the thickness of the body near the head, cause them to bear a resemblance to moths. A fortnight before the first swallow the large bats were hawking up and down the road in the evenings. They seem to prefer to follow the course of the road, flying straight up it from the copse to the pond, half-way to Red Lion Lane, then back again, and so to and fro, sometimes wheeling over the Common, but usually resuming their voyaging above the highway. Passing on a level with the windows in the dusk, their wings seem to expand nine or ten inches. Bats are sensitive to heat and cold. When the north or east wind blows they do not come out; they like a warm evening.

A shrike flew down from a hedge on May 9, just in front of me, and alighted on a dandelion, bending the flower to the ground and clasping the stalk in his claws. There must have been an insect on the flower: the bright yellow disk was dashed to the ground in an instant by the ferocious bird, who came with such force as almost to lose his balance. Though small, the butcher-bird's decision is marked in every action, in his very outline. His eagle-like head sweeps the grass, and in a second he is on his victim. Perhaps it was a humble-bee. The humble-bees are now searching about for the crevices in which they make their nests, and go down into every hole or opening, exploring the depressions left by the hoofs of horses on the sward when it was wet, and peering under stones and flints beside the way. Wasps, too, are about with the same purpose, and wild bees hover in the sunshine. The shrikes are numerous here, and all have their special haunts, to which they annually return. The bird that darted on the dandelion flew from the hedge by the footpath, through the meadow where the stag is generally uncarted, beside the Hogsmill brook. A pair frequent the bushes beside the Long Ditton road, not far from the milestone; another pair come to the railway arch at the foot of Cockrow Hill. In Claygate Lane there are several places, and in June and July, when they are feeding their young, the 'chuck-chucking' is incessant.

Beside the copse on the sward by the Long Ditton road is a favourite resort of peacock butterflies. On sunny days now one may often be seen there floating over the grass. White butterflies go flutter-flutter, continually fanning; the peacock spreads his wide wings and floats above the bennets. Yellow or sulphur butterflies are almost rare—things common enough in other places. I seldom see one here, and, unless it is fancy, fewer the last two seasons than previously.

In the ploughed field by Southborough Park, towards the Long Ditton road, partridges sometimes call now as the sun goes down. The corn is yet so short and thin that the necks of partridges stand up above it. One stole out the other evening from the hedge of a field beside the Ewell road into the corn; his head was high over the green blades. The meadow close by, the second past the turn, is a favourite with partridges, though so close to the road and to Tolworth Farm. Beside Claygate Lane, where the signpost points to Hook, there is a withybed which is a favourite cover for hares. There is a gateway (on the left of the lane) just past the signpost, from which you can see all one side of the osiers; the best time is when the clover begins to close its leaves for the evening. On May 3, looking over the gate there, I watched two hares enjoying themselves in the corn; they towered high above it—it was not more than four or five inches—and fed with great unconcern, though I was not concealed. A nightingale sang in the bushes within a few yards, and two cuckoos chased each other, calling as they flew across the lane; once one passed just overhead. The cuckoo has a note like 'chuck, chuck,' besides the well-known cry, which is uttered apparently when the bird is much exerted. These two were quite restless; they were to and fro from the fields on one side of the lane to those on the other, now up the hedge, now in a tree, and continually scolding each other with these 'chuck-chucking' sounds. Chaffinches were calling from the tops of the trees; the chaffinches now have a note much like one used by the yellow-hammer, different from their song and from their common 'fink tink.' I was walking by the same place, on April 24, when there was suddenly a tremendous screaming and threatening, and, glancing over the fields bordering on the Waffrons, there were six jays fighting. They screamed at and followed each other in a fury, real or apparent, up and down the hedge, and then across the fields out of sight. There were three jays together in a field by the Ewell road on May 1.

Just past the bridge over the Hogsmill brook at Tolworth Court there begins, on the left-hand side of the road, a broad mound, almost a cover in itself. At this time, before the underwood is up, much that goes on in the mound can be seen. There are several nightingales here, and they sometimes run or dart along under the trailing ivy, as if a mouse had rushed through it. The rufous colour of the back increases the impression; the hedgerows look red in the sunshine. Whitethroats are in full song everywhere: they have a twitter sometimes like swallows. A magpie flew up from the short green corn to a branch low down an elm, his back towards me, and as he rose his tail seemed to project from a white circle. The white tips of his wings met—or apparently so—as he fluttered, both above and beneath his body, so that he appeared encircled with a white ring.

The swifts have not come, up to the 10th, but there are young thrushes about able to fly. There was one at the top of the garden the other day almost as large as his parent. Nesting is in the fullest progress. I chanced on a hedge-sparrow's lately, the whole groundwork of which was composed of the dry vines of the wild white convolvulus. All the birds are come, I think, except the swift, the chat, and the redstart: very likely the last two are in the neighbourhood, though I have not seen them. In the furze on Tolworth Common—a resort of chats—the land-lizards are busy every sunny day. They run over the bunches of dead, dry grass—quite white and blanched—grasping it in their claws, like a monkey with hands and prehensile feet. They are much swifter than would be supposed. There was one on the sward by the Ewell road the other morning, quite without a tail; the creature was as quick as possible, but the grass too short to hide under till it reached some nettles.

The roan and white cattle happily grazing in the meadows by the Hogsmill brook look as if they had never been absent, as if they belonged to the place, like the trees, and had never been shut up in the yards through so terrible a winter. The water of the Hogsmill has a way of escaping like that of larger channels, and has made for itself a course for its overflow across a corner of the meadow by the road. A thin place in the rather raised bank lets it through in flood-time (like a bursting loose of the Mississippi), and down it rushes towards the moat. Beside the furrows thus soaked now and then, there are bunches of marsh-marigold in flower, and though the field is bright with dandelions and buttercups, the marigolds are numerous enough to be visible on the other side of it, 300 yards or more distant, and are easily distinguished by their different yellow. White cuckoo-flowers (Cardamine) are so thick in many fields that the green tint of the grass is lost under their silvery hue. Bluebells are in full bloom. There are some on the mound between Claygate and the Ewell road; the footpath to Chessington from Roxby Farm passes a copse on the left which shimmers in the azure; on the mound on the right of the lane to Horton they are plentiful this year—the hedge has been cut, and consequently more have shot up. Cowslips innumerable. The pond by the Ewell road, between this and Red Lion Lane, is dotted with white water-crowfoot. The first that flowered were in the pond in the centre of Tolworth Common. The understalks are long and slender, and with a filament rather than leaves—like seaweed—but when the flower appears these larger leaves float on the surface. Quantities of this ranunculus come floating down the Hogsmill brook, at times catching against the bridge. A little pond by the lane near Bone's Gate was white with this flower lately, quite covered from bank to bank, not a spare inch without its silver cup. Vetches are in flower; there are always some up the Long Ditton road on the bank by Swaynes-Thorp. Shepherd's purse stands up in flower in the waste places, and on the side of the ditches thick branches of hedge-mustard lift their white petals. The delicate wind anemones flowered thickly in Claygate Lane this year. On April 24 the mound on the right-hand side was dotted with them. They had pushed up through the dead dry oak-leaves of last autumn. The foliage of the wind anemone is finely cut and divided, so that it casts a lovely shadow on any chance leaf that lies under it: it might suggest a design. The anemones have not flowered there like this since I have known the lane before. They were thicker than I have ever seen them there. Dog-violets, barren strawberry, and the yellowish-green spurge are in flower there now.