Hampshire Days

by W. H. Hudson

At the riverside, a few hundred yards from the house, I was sitting in the shade of a large elm tree one day when I was visited by a big hornet, who swept noisily down and settled on the trunk, four or five feet above the ground. A quantity of sap had oozed out into a deep cleft of the rough bark and had congealed there, and the hornet had discovered it. Before he had been long feeding on it I saw a little bank-vole come out from the roots of the tree and run up the trunk, looking very pretty in his bright chestnut fur as he came into the sunlight. Stealing up to the lower end of the cleft full of thickened sap he too began feeding on it. The hornet, who was at the upper end of the cleft, quite four inches apart from the vole, at once stopped eating and regarded the intruder for some time, then advanced towards him in a threatening attitude. The vole was frightened at this, starting and erecting his hair, and once or twice he tried to recover his courage and resume his feeding, but the hornet still keeping up his hostile movements, he eventually slipped quietly down and hid himself at the roots. When the hornet departed he came out again and went to the sap.

Wishing to see more, I spent most of that day and the day following at the spot, and saw hornet and vole meet many times. If the vole was at the sap when the hornet came he was at once driven off, and when the hornet was there first the vole was never allowed to feed, although on every occasion he tried to do so, stealing to his lower place in the gentlest way in order not to give offence, and after beginning to feed affecting not to see that the other had left off eating, and with raised head was regarding him with jealous eyes.

Rarely have I looked on a prettier little comedy in wild life.

But to return to the house. There was quite a happy family at that spot by the back door where the hornets were. A numerous family of shrews were reared, and the young, when they began exploring the world, used to creep over the white stone by the threshold. The girls would pick them up to feel their soft mole-like fur: the young shrew is a gentle creature and does not attempt to bite. Some of the more adventurous ones were always blundering into the empty flowerpots heaped against the wall, and there they would remain imprisoned until some person found and took them out.

One morning, at half-past four o'clock, when I was lying awake listening to the blackbird, a lively squirrel came dancing into the open window of my bedroom on the first floor. There were writing materials, flowers in glasses, and other objects on the ledge and dressing-table there, and he frisked about among them, chattering, wildly excited at seeing so many curious and pretty things, but he upset nothing; and by-and-by he danced out again into the ivy covering the wall on that side, throwing the colony of breeding sparrows into a great state of consternation.

Drumming of woodpecker

The river was quite near the house—not half a minute from the front door, though hidden from sight by the trees on its banks. Here, at the nearest point, there was an old half-dead dwarf oak growing by the water and extending one horizontal branch a distance of twenty feet over the stream. This was the favourite drumming-tree of a green woodpecker, and at intervals through the day he would visit it and drum half a dozen times or so. This drumming sounded so loud that, following the valley down, I measured the distance it could be heard and found it just one-third of a mile. At that distance I could hear it distinctly; farther on, not at all. It seemed almost incredible that the sound produced by so small a stick as a woodpecker's beak striking a tree should be audible at that distance.

It is hardly to be doubted that the drumming is used as a love-call, though it is often heard in late summer. It is, however, in early spring and in the breeding season that it is oftenest heard, and I have found that a good imitation of it will sometimes greatly excite the bird. The same bird may be heard drumming here, there, and everywhere in a wood or copse, the sound varying somewhat in character and strength according to the wood; but each bird as a rule has a favourite drumming-tree, and it probably angers him to hear another bird at the spot. On one occasion, finding that a very large, old, and apparently dying cedar in a wood was constantly used by the woodpecker, I went to the spot and imitated the sound. Very soon the bird came and begun drumming against me, close by. I responded, and again he drummed; and becoming more and more excited he flew close to me, and passing from tree to tree drummed at every spot he lighted on.

The other species have the same habit of drumming on one tree. I have noticed it in the small spotted, or banded, woodpecker; and have observed that invariably after he has drummed two or three times the female has come flying to him from some other part of the wood, and the two birds have then both together uttered their loud chirping notes and flown away.

On revisiting the spot a year after I had heard the green woodpecker drumming every day in the oak by the river, I found that he had forsaken it, and that close by, on the other side of the stream, a great spotted woodpecker had selected as his drumming-tree a very big elm growing on the bank. He drummed on a large dead branch about forty feet from the ground, and the sound he made was quite as loud as that of the green bird. It may be that the two big woodpeckers, who play equally well on the same instrument, are intolerant of one another's presence, and that in this case the spotted bird had driven the larger yaffle from his territory.