Under this great oak in the stillness is a place to dream—in summer, looking upward into the vast expanse of green boughs, is an intricate architecture, an inimitable roof, whose lattice-windows are set with translucent lapis lazuli, for the deep blue of the sky seems to come down and rest upon it. The acorns are already there, as yet all cup, and little of the acorn proper showing; there is a tiny black speck on the top, and the young acorn faintly resembles some of the ancient cups with covers, the black speck being the knob by which the cover is lifted. After the first frosts, when the acorns are browned and come out of their cups from their own weight as they fall and strike the ground, the lads select the darkest or ripest, and eat one now and then; they half-roast them, too, like chestnuts.
In the early spring, when the night is bright and clear, it is a place to stand a moment and muse awhile. For the copse is dark and gloomy, the bare oaks are dark behind; the eye cannot see across the prairie, whose breadth is doubled by the night. But yonder lies a great grey sarsen boulder, like an uncouth beast of ancient days crouching in the hollow. Hush! there was a slight rustling in the grass there, as of a frightened thing; it was a startled hare hastening away. The brightest constellations of our latitude pour down their rays and influence on the birth of bud and leaf in spring; and at no other season is the sky so gorgeous with stars.
The grass in the meadow or home-field as it begins to grow tall in spring is soon visited by the corncrakes, who take up their residence there. In this district (though called the corncrake) these birds seem to frequent the mowing grass more than the arable fields, and they generally arrive about the time when it has grown sufficiently high and thick to hide their motions. This desire of concealment—to be out of sight—is apparently more strongly marked in them than in any other bird; yet they utter their loud call of ‘Crake, crake, crake!’ not unlike the turning of a wooden rattle, continuously though only at a short distance.
It is difficult to tell from what place the cry proceeds: at one moment it sounds almost close at hand, the next fifty yards off; then, after a brief silence, a long way to one side or the other. The attempt to mark the spot is in vain; you think you have it, and rush there, but nothing is to be seen, and a minute afterwards ‘Crake, crake!’ comes behind you. For the first two or three such attempts the crake seems to move but a little way, dodging to and fro in a zigzag, so that his call is never very far off; but if repeated again and again he gets alarmed, there is a silence, and presently you hear him in a corner of the mead a hundred yards distant. Perhaps once, if you steal up very, very quietly, and suddenly dart forward, or if you have been waiting till he has come unawares close to you, you may possibly see the grass move as if something passed through it; but in a moment he is gone, without a glimpse of his body having been seen. His speed must be very great to slip like this from one side of the field to the other in so few seconds.
The fact that the call apparently issues from the grass in one place, and yet upon reaching it the bird is not to be found, has given rise to the belief that the crake is a ventriloquist. It may be so; but even without special powers of that kind, ventriloquial effects would, I think, be produced by the peculiar habits of the bird. When that which causes a sound is out of sight it must always be difficult to fix upon the exact spot whence the sound comes. When the sound is made now here, now yonder, as the bird travels swiftly—still out of sight—it must be still more difficult. The crake doubtless often cries from a furrow, which would act something like a trough, tending to draw the sound along it. Finally the incessant repetition of the same note, harsh and loud, confuses the ear.
Some say in like manner that the starling ventriloquises. He has, indeed, one peculiar long-drawn hollow whistle which goes echoing round the chimneypots and to and fro among the gables; but it never deceives you as to his position on the roof unless you are indoors and cannot see him. It is the same with the finches in the trees, when the foliage is thick. Their notes seem to come from this side among the branches, but on peering carefully up there is no bird visible; then it sounds higher up, and even in the next tree; all the while the finch is but just overhead, and the moment he moves he is seen. Other birds equally deceive the ear: the yellowhammer does sometimes, and the chattering brook-sparrow; so will the blackbird when singing—always provided that they are temporarily invisible.
When the crake remains a long time in one place, uttering the call continuously, the illusion disappears, and there is no more difficulty in approximately fixing its position than that of any other bird. One summer a crake chose a spot on the ‘shore’ of the ditch of the highway hedge, not forty yards from the orchard ha-ha. There was a thick growth of tall grass, clogweed, and other plants just there, and some of the bushes pushed out over the sward. The nest was placed close to the ditch (not in it), and the noise the crakes made was something astonishing. ‘Crake, crake; crake!’ resounded the moment it was light—and it is light early at that season: ‘Crake, crake, crake!’ all the morning; the sound now and then, if the bird moved a few yards nearer, echoing back from some of the buildings. There was, or seemed to be, a slight cessation in the middle of the day, but towards evening it recommenced, and continued without cessation till quite dark. This lasted for some weeks: it chanced that the meadow was mown late, so that the birds were undisturbed. Why so apparently timid a bird should choose a spot near a dwelling is not easy to understand.
The crakes, however, when thus localised deceived no one by their supposed ventriloquial powers; therefore it seems clear that the deception is caused by their rapid changes of position. The mouse in like manner often gives an impression that it must be in one spot when it is really a yard away, the shrill squeak, as it were, left behind it. It is not easy sometimes to fix the position of the death-tick in woodwork. The home-field or meadow here is a favourite haunt of the crakes, for like all other birds they have their special places of resort. Another meadow, at some distance on the same farm, is equally favoured by them. This meadow adjoins that second line of bird-travel, following a brook previously alluded to. But as the crakes, though they will take refuge in a hedge, do not travel along it habitually, this circumstance may be accidental. Crakes, notwithstanding they run so swiftly, do not seem to move far when once they have arrived; they appear to restrict themselves to the field they have chosen, or, at the furthest, make an excursion into the next and return again, so that you may always know where to go to hear one.
The mowers cutting these meadows find the eggs—the nest being on the ground—and bring them to the farmstead, both as a curiosity and to be eaten, some thinking them equal to plover’s eggs. Though you may follow the sound ‘Crake, crake!’ in the grass for hours at a time, and sometimes get so near as to throw your walking-stick at a bunch of grass, you will never see the bird; and nothing, neither stick nor stone, will make it rise. Yet it is easy to shoot, as I found, in one particular way. The trick is to drive it into a hedge. Two persons and a spaniel well in hand walk towards the ‘Crake, crake!’ keeping some distance apart. The bird at first runs straight away; then, finding himself still pursued, tries to dodge back, but finds the line extended. He then takes refuge in silence, and endeavours to slip past unseen and unheard; but the spaniel’s power of scent baffles that. At last he makes for the hedge, when one person immediately goes on the other side, and the spaniel beats up it. The bird is now surrounded and cannot escape, and, as the dog comes close upon him, is compelled to rise and fly. As he rises his flight at first somewhat resembles the partridge’s, but it is slower and heavier, and he can be shot with the greatest ease. But if not fired at, after he has got well on the wing the flight becomes much stronger, and it is evident that he is capable of a long voyage.
Sometimes, by patience and skilfully anticipating his zigzag motions in the grass, the crake may be driven to the hedge without a dog. He will then, after a short time, if still hunted, ‘quat’ in the thickest bunch of grass or weeds he can find in the ditch, and will stay till all but stepped on, when he can be knocked down with a walking-stick. After the grass is mown, the crakes leave the meadows and go to the arable fields, where the crops afford them shelter. This district seems a very favourite resort of these birds.