Wild Life in a Southern County

by Richard Jefferies

In the meadow, just without the close-cropped hawthorn which encloses one side of the orchard, is a thick hedge, the end of which comas right up to the apple trees, being only separated by the ha-ha wall and a ditch. This hedge, dividing two meadows, is about two hundred yards long and well grown with a variety of underwood, hazel, willow, maple, hawthorn, blackthorn, elder, etc, and studded with some few elms and ashes, and a fine horse-chestnut. Down the ditch for some distance runs a little stream (except in a long drought); and where another hedge branches from it is a hollow space arched over and roofed with boughs. Now this hedge is a favourite highway of birds and other wild creatures, and leads direct to the orchard. Most of the visitors to the house and garden come down it—it is one of their caravan routes.

If on a summer’s morning you go and sit in the gateway about half-way up the hedge, partly hidden by a pollard ash and great hawthorn bushes, you will not have long to wait before you hear the pleasant calls of the greenfinches coming. They seem always to travel two or more pairs together, and constantly utter a soothing call, as if to say to their companions, “Here we are, close by, dearest.” They all appear to know exactly where they are going—flitting across the gateway one by one, moving of one accord in the same direction; and their contented notes gradually become inaudible as they go towards the orchard. The goldfinches use the same route; so do the bullfinches. Even the starlings, before they come to the house, usually perch on an ash tree in this hedge.

There is another hedge, running parallel to it, 150 yards distant, the end of which also approaches the premises, but it is comparatively deserted. You may wait there in vain and see nothing but a robin.

By the same caravan route the blackbirds come to the garden; they, however, are not such travelling birds as the finches. But the tomtits are: they work their way from tree to tree for miles; they also come to the orchard by this hedge highway. As I have said before, it abuts on the orchard; and a straight line carried across to the orchard wall, over that and the road outside, would strike another great hedge which, were it not for the intervention of the garden, would be a continuation of the first. The finches, after spending a little time in the apple and damson trees, fly over the wall and road to this second hedge, and follow it down for nearly half a mile to a little enclosed meadow, which, like the orchard, is a specially favourite resort. The fondness of birds for this route is very striking; they are constantly passing up or down it. There is another such a favourite route at some distance, running beside a brook and likewise leading to the same enclosed meadow—of which more presently. I think I could make a map of these fields, showing the routes and resorts of furred and feathered creatures.

Near the ha-ha wall, where the great meadow hedge comes up to the orchard, is a summer-house, with a conical thatched roof and circular window. It is hung all round under the ceiling with festoons of eggs taken by the boys of the farmstead, cordially assisted by the carters’ lads when not at work. There may be perhaps forty varieties, arranged so as to increase in size from the tiny tomtits up to the large wood-pigeons, the peewits, corncrake, and crow: some milk-white, others splotched with dark brown spots and veins, others again blue. These eggs, when taken and the yolk blown out, were strung on a bennet and so carried home. The lads like to get them as soon after laid as possible, because they blow best then; if hard set the shell may break.

In the circular window they have left a nest of the long-tailed tit, or ‘titmouse,’ built exactly in the shape of a hut with roof and tiny doorway, and always securely attached in the midst of a thorn bush to branches that are stiff and unlikely to bend with the breeze, so that this beautiful piece of bird-architecture may not be disturbed. To take it, it is generally necessary to cut away several boughs. Such nests are often seen in farmhouses placed as an ornament on the mantelpiece. Spiders have filled the window with their webs, and to these every now and then during the day—there is no door to the summer-house—come a robin, a wren, and a flycatcher. Either of these, but more particularly the two last, will take insects from the spider’s web.

The flycatcher has a favourite perch close by, and may perhaps hear the shrill buzz when an insect is caught. The flycatcher is a regular summer visitor: in the orchard, garden, and adjacent rickyard at least three pairs build every year. Under the shady apple trees near the summer-house one may be seen the whole day long ever on the watch. He perches on a dead branch, low down—not up among the boughs, but as much as possible under them. Every two or three minutes he flies swiftly from his perch a few yards, darts on an insect—you cannot see it, but can distinctly hear the snap of the bill—and returns to his post. He uses the same perch for half an hour or more; then shifts to another at a little distance, and so works all round the orchard, but regularly comes back to the same spot. By waiting near it you may be certain of seeing him presently; and he is very tame, and will carry on operations within a few yards—sometimes picking up a fly almost within reach of your hand. It is noticeable that many insect-eating birds are especially tame. They will occasionally dart after a moth, but drop it again—as if they did not care for that kind of food, and yet could not resist the habit of snapping at such things.

I once saw a flycatcher rush after a buff-coloured moth, which fluttered aimlessly out of a shady recess: he snapped it held it a second or two while hovering in the air, and then let it go. Instantly a swallow swooped down, caught the moth, and bore it thirty or forty feet high, then dropped it when, as the moth came slowly down, another swallow seized it and carried it some yards and then left hold, and the poor creature after all went free. I have seen other instances of swallows catching good-sized moths to let them go again.

The brown linnet is another regular visitor building in the orchard; so too the blackcap, whose song, though short, is sweet; and the bold bright bullfinches use the close-cropped hawthorn. They have always a nest there, made of slender fibres dexterously interwoven. There, is a group of elms near the further end of the enclosure and another by the rickyard; linnets seem fond of elms.

A pair of squirrels sometimes come down the same hedge—it is a favourite highway of wild animals as well as birds—to the orchard, and play in the apple trees: they even venture to a tree only a few yards from the house. If not disturbed they stay a good while, and then return by the way they came to a copse at the top of the meadow. The corner formed by the hedge and the copse—quiet, but in easy view from the house—is especially frequented by them. Their lively motions on the ground are very amusing: they visit the ground much oftener than may be generally supposed. Fir trees seem to attract them—where there is a plantation of firs you may be sure of finding a squirrel.