Wild Life in a Southern County

by Richard Jefferies

Sometimes a winter’s morning is, I think, almost as beautiful as summer, when the ice is thick with the sharp frost, and the sun shines in a blue sky free from clouds. One such morning, while putting on my skates, I happened to look up, and was surprised to see a bird of unusual appearance, and large size, soaring slowly overhead. I immediately recognised an eagle; and that was the solitary occasion on which I ever saw one here. The bird remained in sight some time, and finally left, going south-east towards the sun.

On the afternoon of the day before the beginning of the frost the wind gradually sinks, and the dead leaves which have been blown to and fro settle in corners and sheltered places. As the sun sets all is still, and there is a sense of freshness in the air. Then the logs of wood thrown on the fire burn bright and clear—the surface of a burning log breaks up into small irregular squares; and the old folk shake their heads and say, ‘It will freeze.’ As the evening advances the hoofs of horses passing by on the road give out a sharp sound—a sign that the mud is rapidly hardening. The grass crunches under foot, and in the morning the elms are white with rime; icicles hang from the thatch, and the ponds are frozen.

But there is nothing so uncertain as frost: it may thaw, and even rain, within a few hours; and, on the other hand, even after raining in the afternoon, it may clear up about midnight, and next morning the ice will be a quarter of an inch thick. Sometimes it will begin in so faint-hearted a fashion that the ground in the centre of the fields is still soft, and will ‘poach’ under the hoofs of cattle, while by the hedge it is hard. But by slow degrees the cold increases, and ice begins to form. Again, it will freeze for a week and yet you will find very little ice, because all the while there has been a rough wind, and the waves on the lake cannot freeze while in motion. So that a long frost is extremely difficult to foresee.

But it comes at last. Two really sharp frosts will cause ice thick enough to bear a lad at the edge of the lake; three will bear a man a few yards out; four, and it is safe to cross: in a week the ice is between three and four inches thick, and would carry a waggon. The character of ice varies: if some sleet has been falling—or snow, which facilitates freezing—it is thick in colour; if the wind was still it is dark, sleek, perfectly transparent. It varies, however, in different places, in some having a faint yellowish hue. There are always several places where the ice does not freeze till the last—breathing-holes in which the ducks swim; and where a brook enters it is never quite safe.

The snipes come now to the brook and water-meadows. Following the course of the stream, fieldfares and redwings rise in numbers from every hawthorn bush, where they have been feeding on the peggles. Blackbirds start out from under the bushes, where there is perhaps a little moist earth still. The foam where there is a slight fall is frozen, and the current runs under a roof of ice; the white bubbles travel along beneath it. The moorhens cannot get at the water; neither can the herons or kingfishers. The latter suffer greatly, and a fortnight of such severe weather is fatal to them.

I recollect walking by a brook like this, and seeing the blue plumage of a kingfisher perched on a bush. I swung my gun round ready to shoot as soon as he should fly, but the bird sat still and took no notice of my approach. Astonished at this—for the kingfisher sat in such a position as easily to see anyone coming; and these birds generally start immediately they perceive a person—I walked swiftly up opposite the bush. The bird remained on the bough. I put out the barrel of my gun and touched his ruddy breast with the muzzle: he fell on the ice below. He had been frozen on his perch during the night, and probably died more from starvation than from cold, since it was impossible for him to get at any fish.

More than once afterwards the same winter I found kingfishers dead on the ice under bushes, lying on their backs with their contracted claws uppermost, having fallen dead from roost. Possibly the one found on the branch may have been partly supported by some small twig.

That winter snow afterwards fell and became a few inches thick, drifting in places to several feet. Then it was the turn of the other birds and animals to feel the pain of starvation. In the meadows the tracks of rabbits crossed and recrossed till the idea of following their course had to be abandoned. At first sight it seemed as if the snow had suddenly revealed the presence of a legion of rabbits where previously no one had suspected the existence of more than a dozen. But in fact a couple of rabbits only will so run to and fro on the snow as to cover a meadow with the imprints of their feet—looking everywhere for a green blade.

Yet they only occasionally scratch away the snow, and so get at the grass. Though the natural instinct of rabbits is to dig, and though here and there a place may be seen where they appear to have searched for a favourite morsel, yet they do not seem to acquire the sense of systematically clearing snow away. They then bark ash—and, indeed, nearly any young sapling or tree—and visit gardens in the night, as the hares do also. They creep about along the mounds, being driven by hunger to search for food all day instead of remaining part of the time in the buries.

As to the hares, little more than a week of deep snow cripples their strength: they will run but twenty or thirty yards, and may be killed occasionally with a stick or captured alive. They are even more helpless than rabbits, because the latter still have holes to take refuge in from danger; but the hare while the snow lasts is a wretched creature, and knows not where to turn. Birds resort to the cattle-sheds, to roost; among them the blackbirds, who usually roost in the hedges. Birds come to the houses and gardens in numbers because the snow is there cleared away along the paths.