A second wave of cold—Migrating goldfinches—Increase in number of wintering birds—Beginning of the frost—At Zennor—Feeding the birds under difficulties—A crippled robin—Crystal fruit—Prowess of a fox—Fox and raven—The foxes' larder—Migrating ravens—Frosted window panes—Starving birds—Starlings going to roost—Evening on Zennor Hill—Heath fires—The windy night—Animism and personifications of nature—The end of the frost.
THERE was no second westward movement of birds in the winter of 1906-7, although another and more intense spell of cold weather occurred a month after the one described in the last chapter. It looked as if the birds had exhausted their powers in their long disastrous flight to and from the Land's End, or that some saving instinct had failed to come to them on this occasion. Doubtless many thousands had perished in that journey over a snow-covered country to the extremity of Cornwall, and we may suppose that when the weather moderated the surviving millions redistributed themselves over the southern counties from Somerset to Kent; also that many birds had been continually slipping away across the Channel. Many of our migrants, which have not a strict migration like the swallow and cuckoo, the species which shift their quarters or of which considerable numbers remain in this country throughout the year, do annually come down in batches to the south and remain for a month or so, in some cases until December, then vanish, and these no doubt continue their journey over the sea. Thus, every autumn there is a migration of goldfinches into Cornwall, many birds appearing in the neighbourhood of Mount's Bay in September and remaining until November. These goldfinches have a brighter plumage than those which winter in England, and appear to form a body or race distinct from the earlier migrants having their own seasons and perhaps a route of their own.
To return to the great visitation of birds in December. I am sure that very many of these, exhausted by hunger and cold, dropped out of the winged army at the extremity of Cornwall, and remained there until the end of the cold season. At all events, when I returned to the scene in January, I noticed a very great increase in the number of wintering birds, particularly starlings, larks, song-thrushes, fieldfares and redwings. The weather continued cold and rough, with storms of wind and sleet and occasional flurries of snow, until January 21, when the cold became intense, and that rare phenomenon in West Cornwall, a severe frost, began, which lasted several days, and was said by some of the old natives to be the greatest frost in forty years, while others affirmed they had not experienced anything like it in their lives.
I was staying at Zennor at the time—that lonely little village nestling among its furze thickets and stone hedges, with the rough granite hills, clothed in brown dead bracken, before it and the black granite cliffs and sea behind. I had been amusing myself by feeding a few birds that came to the door, and now my small company of pensioners, suddenly grown tame, began to interest me very much. There was no garden to the house, which was situated in the centre of the village, with the church on one side and the inn on the other—nothing but the road, broadening out into a wide bare space on which my window looked, with a stone hedge and a fountain of gushing water on the other side, where the people dipped their buckets and the animals came to drink. Here the cows came on their way to and from the farm, and the pigs and dogs and a flock of geese; and as some of these animals were always about, they very naturally helped themselves to the bread they found in the public road. Fortunately the ground-floor window had a raised stone platform before it, surrounded by iron railings, and I started putting out the food for the birds in this area. The cows and pigs could not get in there, but some of the most intelligent of the village dogs managed to get a share by thrusting their paws far in and dragging the scraps out, and the geese would follow suit, putting their long necks between the rails. The birds, however, fared better than before; thrushes, blackbirds, robins, dunnocks, pied wagtails, meadow pipits and one grey wagtail were the usual feeders; the daws, too, would occasionally pluck up courage enough to drop down between the railings and snatch up something.
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One of my guests was a robin of exceptionally small size with a withered leg. This bird was first brought to me one evening by some of the children, who had caught it in the schoolroom, and thought I would be able to do something for it. A more pitiable object could not be imagined; it was nothing but a little feathered skeleton; the "comfortable little red waistcoat with legs to it" was now a sharp keel, but behind the bone one could feel the little muscular heart working away violently. One leg was crushed above the knee and was now dead and dried, the closed claws hardened into a ball. I assured them that nothing could be done to save it, that the most merciful thing we could do would be to let it fly away into the bushes, where it would quickly fall asleep and die without pain in the intense cold. I opened my hand and it darted away into the black bitter night, but great was my surprise next morning, when looking at the company gathered at the window, to find the wasted little cripple among them, eagerly picking up crumbs! I was foolishly pleased to see it there; nevertheless it was a pity that it had survived the night and in the end lived through the frost, seeing that a hopelessly injured and maimed bird is, like the caged bird, incapable of its proper life, and to any one who can feel for a bird is better dead.
The second day of the frost made a wonderful difference in the appearance of the birds out in the fields, especially the starlings. These had now lost all energy and were seen everywhere moving languidly about over the pale frosty turf in a hopeless search for a soft place, while others were found gathered at some spot sheltered by a stone hedge from the bitter north-east wind, standing crowded together in listless attitudes, with drooping wings. By degrees the fieldfares and redwings disappeared. The song-thrushes which, next to the starlings, were the most numerous, appeared to fare better than the other soft-billed species, owing to the abundance of snails in the stone hedges. It was a mystery to me how with nothing but those poor beaks they were able to get them out. Snails were exceedingly plentiful in the crevices between the stones, many of them easily got at, but so tightly were they glued and frozen to the stone that I could not pull them off with my fingers. They were like limpets on a rock, yet it was plain to see that the thrushes did get a good many out and so saved themselves from starvation. Their anvils were everywhere near the walls, each with its litter of broken shells about it. The hibernating snails were not only found in the stone hedges; they were also extraordinarily abundant among the sandhills or towans at Lelant and Phillack on the coast near St. Ives. They were hidden in the sand at the roots of the coarse marram grass growing on the hills. Here the thrushes had less difficulty in getting them out, and every stone lying in the sand was made use of. It amused me to find that the favourite anvil at one spot was a soda-water bottle which had been stuck deep in the soft sand, leaving the round end about two inches above the ground. Its form and the faint bluish tinge in the clear thick glass gave it the exact appearance of a round lump of ice, but the thrushes had discovered that it was not ice but something as hard as stone, and being immovable, better suited to their purpose than the pebbles and small fragments of stone lying about on the sand. All round the useful bottle the ground was thickly strewn with many-coloured broken snail-shells.
The soda-water bottle reminds me of the appearance of a singular and beautiful form of icicle which became common on the water-courses on the second and third days of the frost. I saw it chiefly on a stream near Zennor that gushes and tumbles over the rocks on its way to the sea and is in great part almost covered with a dense growth of dwarf blackthorn, bramble and furze bushes. Where the water pouring over the boulders splashes the overhanging branches the constant drops running down the pendent twigs grew into globular or oval crystals; these were mostly about the size as well as shape of ducks' eggs, pure as the purest glass, and had the appearance of a wonderful crystal fruit hanging from stems on the dark purple-red sloe bushes.