The golden-crested wren—smallest of the birds—scarcely ever leaves the shelter of the hedges and trees. The crest or top-knot is not exactly golden, but rather orange; and as the body of the tiny creature is dusky in hue, the bright colour on its head shines like flame in contrast. By this ruddy lamp upon its head the wren may be discovered hidden deep in the intricate mazes of the thorn bushes, where otherwise it would be difficult to find it. These wrens are usually in pairs; I have seldom seen one by itself. They are not rare, and yet are comparatively little seen, and must I think travel a good deal. All the same, they have their favourite places; there was one hedge where, if the bird was anywhere in the neighbourhood, I could feel sure of finding him. It was very thick and entirely of hawthorn and blackthorn, and divided two water-meadows.
Chapter Seventeen.
Notes on the Year—The Two Natural Eras—Spiders—The Seasons Represented Together—A Murderous Wasp—Feng-Shui—The Birds’ White Elephant—Hedge Memoranda.
There are few hedges so thick but that in January it is possible to see through them, frost and wind having brought down the leaves. The nettles, however, and coarse grasses, dry brown stems of dead plants, rushes, and moss still in some sense cover the earth of the mound, and among them the rabbits sit out in their forms. Looking for these with gun and spaniel, when the damp mist of the morning has desired, one sign—one promise—of the warm days to come may chance to be found. Though the sky be gloomy, the hedge bare, and the trees gaunt, yet among the bushes a solitary green leaf has already put forth. It is on the stalk of the woodbine which climbs up the hawthorn, and is the first in the new year—in the very darkest and blackest days—to show that life is stirring. As it is the first to show a leaf, so, too, it is one of the latest to yield to the advancing cold, and even then its bright red berries leave a speck of colour; and its bloom, in beauty of form, hue, and fragrance, is not easily surpassed.
While the hedges are so bare the rabbits are unmercifully ferreted, for they will before long begin to breed. On the milder mornings the thrushes are singing sweetly. Clouds of tiny gnats circle in the sheltered places near houses or thatch. In February ‘fill-ditch’, as the old folk call it, on account of the rains, although nominally in the midst of the winter quarter, there is a distinct step forward. If the clouds break and the wind is still, the beams of the sun on the southern side of the wall become pleasantly genial. In the third week they bring forth the yellow butterfly, fluttering gaily over the furze; while the larks on a sunny day, chasing each other over the ploughed fields, make even the brown clods of earth seem instinct with awakening life. The pairing off of the birds is now apparent in every hedge, and at the same time on the mounds, and under sheltering bushes and trees a deeper green begins to show as the plants push up.
The blackthorn is perhaps the first conspicuous flower; but in date it seems to vary much. On the 22nd of February, 1877, there were boughs of blackthorn in full bloom in Surrey, and elder trees in leaf; nearly three weeks before that, at the beginning of the month, there were hawthorn branches in full leaf in a sheltered nook in Kent. A degree further west, on the contrary, the hawthorn did not show a leaf for some time after the blackthorn had bloomed in Surrey. The farmers say that the grass which comes on rapidly in the latter days of February and early days of March, ‘many weathers’ (in their phrase), often ‘goes back’ later in the season, and loses its former progress.
Lady-day (old style) forms with Michaelmas the two eras, as it were, of the year. The first marks the departure of the winter birds and the coming of the spring visitors; the second, in reverse order, marks the departure of the summer birds and the appearance of the vanguard of the winter ones. In the ten days or fortnight succeeding Lady-day (old style)—say from the 6th of April to the 20th—great changes take place in the fauna and flora; or, rather, those changes which have long been slowly maturing become visible. The nightingales arrive and sing, and with them the white butterfly appears. The swallow comes, and the wind-anemone blooms in the copse. Finally the cuckoo cries, and at the same time the pale lilac cuckoo-flower shows in the moist places of the mead.
The exact dates, of course, vary with the character of the season and the locality; but, speaking generally, you should begin to keep a keen lookout for these signs of spring about old Lady-day. In the spring of last year, in a warm district, the nightingale sang on the 12th of April, a swallow appeared on the 13th, and the note of the cuckoo was heard on the 15th. No great reliance should be put upon precise dates, because in the first place they vary annually, and in the next an observer can, in astronomical language, only sweep a limited area, and that but imperfectly; so that it is very likely some ploughboy who thinks nothing of it—except to immediately imitate it—hears the cuckoo forty-eight hours before those who have been listening most carefully. So that these dates are not given because they are of any intrinsic value, but simply for illustration. On the 14th of April (the same spring) the fieldfares and redwings were passing over swiftly in small parties—or, rather, in a long flock scattered by the march—towards the North Sea and their summer home in Norway. The winter birds, and the distinctly spring and summer birds, as it were, crossed each other and were visible together, their times of arrival and departure overlapping.