Richard Jefferies (continued 3)

In the oaken cupboards—not black, but a deep tawny colour with age and frequent polishing—may be found a few pieces of old china, and on the table at tea-time, perhaps, other pieces, which a connoisseur would tremble to see in use, lest a clumsy arm should shatter their fragile antiquity. Though apparently so little valued, you shall not be able to buy these things for money—not so much because their artistic beauty is appreciated, but because of the instinctive clinging to everything old, characteristic of the place and people. These have been there of old time: they shall remain still. Somewhere in the cupboards, too, is a curiously carved piece of iron, to fit into the hand, with a front of steel before the fingers, like a skeleton rapier guard; it is the ancient steel with which, and a flint, the tinder and the sulphur match were ignited.

Up in the lumber-room are carved oaken bedsteads of unknown age; linen-presses of black oak with carved panels, and a drawer at the side for the lavender-bags; a rusty rapier, the point broken off; a flintlock pistol, the barrel of portentous length, and the butt weighted with a mace-like knob of metal, wherewith to knock the enemy on the head. An old yeomanry sabre lies about somewhere, which the good man of the time wore when he rode in the troop against the rioters in the days of machine-burning—which was like a civil war in the country, and is yet recollected and talked of. The present fanner, who is getting just a trifle heavy in the saddle himself, can tell you the names of labourers living in the village whose forefathers rose in that insurrection. It is a memory of the house, how one of the family paid 40 pounds for a substitute to serve in the wars against the French.

The mistress of the household still bakes a batch of bread at home in the oven once now and then, priding herself that it is never ‘dunch,’ or heavy. She makes all kinds of preserves, and wines too—cowslip, elderberry, ginger—and used to prepare a specially delicate biscuit, the paste being dropped on paper and baked by exposure to the sun’s rays only. She has a bitter memory of some money having been lost to the family sixty years ago through roguery, harping upon it as a most direful misfortune: the old folk, even those having a stocking or a teapot well filled with guineas, thought a great deal of small sums. After listening to a tirade of this kind, in the belief that the family were at least half-ruined, it turns out to be all about 100 pounds. Her grandmother after marriage travelled home on horseback behind her husband; there had been a sudden flood, and the newly-married couple had to wait for several hours till the waters went down before they could pass. Times are altered now.

Since this family dwelt here, and well within what may be called the household memory, the very races of animals have changed or been supplanted. The cows in the field used to be longhorns, much more hardy, and remaining in the meadows all the winter, with no better shelter than the hedges and bushes afforded. Now the shorthorns have come, and the cattle are housed carefully. The sheep were horned—up in the lumber-room two or three horns are still to be found. The pigs were of a different kind, and the dogs and poultry. If the race of men have not changed they have altered their costume; the smock-frock lingered longest, but even that is going.

Some of the old superstitions hung on till quite recently. The value of horses made the arrival of foals an important occasion, and then it was the custom to call in the assistance of an aged man of wisdom—not exactly a wizard, but something approaching it nearly in reputation. Even within the last fifteen years the aid of an ancient like this used to be regularly invoked in this neighbourhood; in some mysterious way his simple presence and good-will—gained by plentiful liquor—was supposed to be efficacious against accident and loss. The strangeness of the business was in the fact that his patrons were not altogether ignorant or even uneducated—they merely carried on the old custom, not from faith in it, but just because it was the custom. When the wizard at last died nothing more was thought about it. Another ancient used to come round once or twice in the year, with a couple of long ashen staves, and the ceremony performed by him consisted in dancing these two sticks together in a fantastic manner to some old rhyme or story.

The parlour is always full of flowers—the mantelpiece and grate in spring quite hidden by fresh green boughs of horse-chestnut in bloom, or with lilac, blue bells, or wild hyacinths; in summer nodding grasses from the meadows, roses, sweet-briar; in the autumn two or three great apples, the finest of the year, put as ornaments among the china, and the corners of the looking-glass decorated with bunches of ripe wheat. A badger’s skin lies across the back of the armchair; a fox’s head, the sharp white tusks showing, snarls over the doorway; and in glass cases are a couple of stuffed kingfishers, a polecat; a white blackbird, and a diver—rare here—shot in the mere hard by.

On the walls are a couple of old hunting pictures, dusky with age, but the crudity of the colours by no means toned down or their rude contrast moderated: bright scarlet coats, bright white horses, harsh green grass, prim dogs, stiff trees, human figures immovable in tight buckskins; running water hard as glass, the sky fixed, the ground all too small for the grouping, perspective painfully emphasised, so as to be itself made visible; the surface everywhere ‘painty’—in brief, most of the possible faults compressed together, and proudly fathered by the artist’s name in full.

One representing a meet, and the other full cry, the pack crossing a small river; the meet still and rigid, every horseman in his place—not a bit jingling, or a hoof pawing, or anything in motion. Now the beauty of the meet, as distinct from a drilled cavalry troop, is its animation: horses and riders moving here and there, gathering together and spreading out again, new-comers riding smartly up, in continuous freshness of grouping, and constant relief to the eye. The other—in full cry—all polished and smooth and varnished as when they left the stable; horses with glossy coats, riders upright and fatigueless, dogs clean, and not a sign of poaching on the turf. The dogs are coming out of the water with their tails up and straight—dogs as they trail their flanks out of a brook always, in fact, droop their tails, while their bodies look smaller and the curves project, because the water lays the hair flat to the body till several shakes send it out again. Not a speck on a top-boot, not a coat torn by a thorn, and the horses as plump as if fresh from their mangers, instead of having worked it down. Not a fleck of foam; the sun, too, shining, and yet no shadow—all glaring. And, despite of all, deeply interesting to those who know the countryside and have a feeling knowledge of its hunting history.

For the horses are from life, and the men portraits; the very hedges and brooks faithful—in ground-plan, at least. The costume is true to a thread, and all the names of the riders and some of the hounds are written underneath. So that a hunter sees not the crude colour or faulty drawing, but what it is intended to represent. Under its harshness there is the poetry of life. But looking at these pictures the reflection will still arise how few really truthful hunting scenes we have on canvas in this the country of hunting. The best are so conventional, and have too much colour. All nature in the season is toned down and subdued—the gleaming red and bright yellows of the early autumn leaves soaked and soddened to a dull brown; the sky dark and louring—if it is bright there is frost; the glossy coat of the horses, and the scarlet; or what coloured cloth it may be, of the riders deadened by rain and the dewdrops shaken from the bushes. Think for a moment of a finish as it is in reality, and not in these gaudy, brilliant colour-studies.

A thick mist clings in the hollow there by the osier-bed where the pack have overtaken the fox, so that you cannot see the dogs. Beyond, the contour of the hill is lost in the cloud trailing over it; the foreground towards us shows a sloping ploughed field, a damp brown, with a thin mist creeping along the cold furrows. Yonder, three vague and shadowy figures are pushing laboriously forward beside the leafless hedge; while the dirt-spattered bays hardly show against its black background and through the mist. Some way behind, a weary grey,—the only spot of colour, and that dimmed—is gamely struggling—it is not leaping—through a gap beside a gaunt oak tree, whose dark buff leaves yet linger. But out of these surely an artist who dared to face Nature as she is might work a picture.

The year really commences at Wick farmhouse immediately before the autumn nominally begins—nominally, because there is generally a sense of autumn in the atmosphere before the end of September. Just about that time there comes a slackening of the work requiring earnest personal supervision. When the yellow corn has been cut and carted, and the threshing machine has prepared a sample for the markets—when the ricks are thatched, and the steam plough is tearing up the stubble—then the farmer can spare a day or so free from the anxieties of harvest. There is plenty of work to be done; in fact the yearly rotation of labour may be said to begin in the autumn too, but it does not demand such hourly attention. It is the season for picnics—while the sun is yet warm and the sward dry—on the downs among the great hazel copses, or the old entrenchment with its view over a vast landscape, dimmed, though, by yellow haze, or by the shallow lake in the vale.

With the exception of knocking over a young rabbit now and then for household use, the farmer, even if he is independent of a landlord, as in this case, does not shoot till late in the year. Old-fashioned folk, though not in the least constrained to do so, still leave the first pick of the shooting to some neighbouring landowner between whose family and their own friendly relations have existed for generations. It is true that the practice becomes rarer yearly as the old style of men die out and the spirit of commerce is imported into rural life: the rising race preferring to make money of their shooting, by letting it, instead of cultivating social ties.

At Wick, however, they keep up the ancient custom, and the neighbouring squire takes the pick of the wing-game. They lose nothing for their larder through this arrangement—receiving presents of partridges and pheasants far exceeding in number what could possibly be killed upon the farm itself; while later in the year the boundaries are relaxed on the other side, and the farmer kills his rabbit pretty much where he likes, in moderation.

He is seldom seen without a gun on his shoulder from November till towards the end of January. No matter whether he strolls to the arable field, or down the meadows, or across the footpath to a neighbour’s house, the inevitable double-barrel accompanies him. To those who live much out of doors a gun is a natural and almost a necessary companion, whether there be much or little to shoot; and in this desultory way, without much method or set sport, he and his friends, often meeting and joining forces, find sufficient ground game and wildfowl to give them plenty of amusement. When the hedges are bare of leaves the rabbit-burrows are ferreted: the holes can be more conveniently approached then, and the frost is supposed to give the rabbit a better flavour.

About Christmas-time, half in joke and half in earnest, a small party often agree to shoot as many blackbirds as they can, if possible to make up the traditional twenty-four for a pie. The blackbird pie is, of course, really an occasion for a social gathering, at which cards and music are forthcoming. Though blackbirds abound in every hedge, it is by no means an easy task to get the required number just when wanted. After January the guns are laid aside, though some ferreting is still going on.

The better class of farmers keep hunters, and ride constantly to the hounds; so do some of the lesser men who ‘make’ hunters, and ride not only for pleasure but possible profit from the sale. Hunting is, to a considerable extent a matter of locality. In some districts it is the one great winter amusement, and almost every farmer who has got a horse rides more or less. In others which are not near the centres of hunting, it is rather an exception for the farmers to go out. On and near the Downs coursing hares is much followed. Then towards the spring, before the grass begins to grow long, comes the local steeplechase—perhaps the most popular gathering of the year. It is held near some small town, often rather a large village than a town, where it would seem impossible to get a hundred people together. But it happens to be one of the fixed points, so to say, in a wide hunting district, and is well known to every man who rides a horse within twenty miles.

Numerous parties come to the race-ground from the great houses of the neighbourhood. The labouring people flock there en masse; some farmers lend waggons and teams to the labourers that they may go. An additional—a personal—interest attaches to many of the races because the horses are local horses, and the riders known to the spectators. Some of these meetings are movable; they are held near one town one year and another the next, so as to travel round the whole hunting district—returning, say, the fourth year to the first place. Most of the market towns of any importance have their annual agricultural show now, which is well attended.

In the spring comes the rook-shooting; the date varies a week or so according to the season, whether it has been mild and favourable or hard and late. This still remains a favourite occasion for a party. Sheep-shearing in sheep districts, as the Downs, is also remembered; some of the old folk make much of it; but as a general rule this ancient festival has fallen a good deal into disuse. It is not made the grand feast it once was for master and man alike—at least, not in these parts. With the change that has come across agriculture at large a variation has taken place in the life of the people. New festivals, and of a different character, have sprung up.

The most important of these is the annual auction on the farm: the system of selling by auction which has become so widely diffused has, indeed, quite revolutionised agriculture in many ways. Where the farm is celebrated for a special breed of sheep, the great event of the year is the annual auction at home of ram lambs. Where the farm is famous for cattle, the chief occasion is the yearly sale of young shorthorns. And recently, since steam plough and artificial manure and general high pressure have been introduced, many large arable farmers sell their corn crops standing. The purchaser pays a certain price for the wheat as it grows, reaps it when ripe, and makes what profit he can.

In either case the auctioneer is called in, a dinner is prepared, and everybody who likes to come is welcome. If there happens to be a great barn near the homestead it is usually used for the dinner. The marquee has yet to be invented which will keep out a thunderstorm—that common interruption of country meetings—like an old barn. But barns are not always available, and a tent is then essential. Though the spot may be lonely and several miles from a town or station, a large number of persons are sure to be there; and if it is an auction of sheep or cattle with a pedigree, many of them will be found to have come from the other end of the kingdom, and sometimes agents are present from America or the colonies. Much time is consumed in an examination of the stock, and then the dinner begins—at least two hours later than was announced. But this little peculiarity is so well understood by all interested as to cause no inconvenience.

Scarcely any ale is to be seen; it is there if asked for; but the great majority now drink sherry. The way in which this wine has supplanted the old-fashioned October ale is remarkable, and a noticeable sign of the times. At home the farmer may still have his foaming jug, but whenever farmers congregate together on occasions like this, sherry is the favourite. When calling at the inns in the towns on market days—much business is transacted at the inns—spirits are usually taken, so that ale is no longer the characteristic country liquor. With the sherry cigars are handed round—another change. It is true the elderly men stick to their long clay pipes, and it is observable that some of the younger after a while go back to the yard of clay; but on the whole the cigar is now the proper thing.

Then follow a couple of toasts, the stockowner’s and auctioneer’s—usually short—and an adjournment takes place—if it be stock, to the yards; if corn, the cloth is cleared of all but the wine, and the sale proceeds there and then. In either case the sherry and the cigars go round—persons being employed to press them freely upon all; and altogether a very jovial afternoon is spent. Some of the company do not separate till long after the conclusion of the sale: the American or colonial agent perhaps stays a night at the farmstead. In the house itself there is all this time yet more liberal hospitality proffered: it is quite open-house hospitality, master and mistress vying in their efforts to make everyone feel at home. These gatherings do much to promote a friendly spirit in the neighbourhood.

In the summer the farmer is too much occupied to think of amusement. It is a curious fact that very few really downright country people care for fishing; a gun and a horse are as necessary as air and light but the rod is not a favourite. There seems to be greater enthusiasm than ever about horses; whether people bet or not, they talk and think and read more of horses than they ever did before.

In this locality Clerk’s Ale, which used to be rather an event is quite extinct. The Court Leet is still held, but partakes slightly of the nature of a harmless farce. The lord of the manor’s court is no terror now. A number of gentlemen, more for the custom’s sake than anything, sit in solemn conclave to decide whether or no an old pollard tree may be cut down, how much an old woman shall pay in quit-rent for her hovel, or whether there was or was not a gateway in a certain hedge seventy years ago. However, it brings neighbours together, and causes the inevitable sherry to circulate briskly.

The long summer days begin very early at Wick. About half-past two of a morning in June a faint twittering under the eaves announces that the swallows are awaking, although they will not commence their flight for awhile yet. At three o’clock the cuckoo’s call comes up from the distant meadows, together with the sound of the mower sharpening his scythe, for he likes to work while the dew is heavy on the grass, both for coolness and because it cuts better. He gets half a day’s work done before the sun grows hot, and about eight or nine o’clock lies down under the hedge for a refreshing nap. Between three and four the thrushes open song in the copse at the corner of the Home-field, and soon a loud chorus takes up their ditty as one after the other joins in.

Then the nailed shoes of the milkers clatter on the pitching of the courtyard as they come for their buckets; and immediately afterwards stentorian voices may be heard in the fields bellowing ‘Coom up! ya-hoop!’ to which the cows, recognising the well-known call, respond very much in the same tones. Slowly they obey and gather together under the elms in the corner of the meadow, which in summer is used as the milking-place. About five or half-past another clattering tells of the milkers’ return; and then the dairy is in full operation. The household breakfasts at half-past six or thereabouts, and while breakfast is going on the heavy tramp of feet may be heard passing along the roadway through the rickyard—the haymakers marching to the fields. For the next two hours or so the sounds from the dairy are the only interruption of the silence: then come the first waggons loaded with hay, jolting and creaking, the carter’s lads shouting, ‘Woaght!’ to the horses as they steer through the gateway and sweep round, drawing up under the rick.

Between eleven and twelve the waggons cease to arrive—it is luncheon time: the exact time for luncheon varies a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes, or more, according to the state of the work. Messengers come home for cans of beer, and carry out also to the field wooden ‘bottles’—small barrels holding a gallon or two. After a short interval work goes on again till nearly four o’clock, when it is dinner-time. One or two labourers, deputed by the rest and having leave and licence so to do, enter the farmhouse garden and pull up bundles of onions, lettuces, or radishes—sown over wide areas on purpose—and carry them out to the cart-house, or where-ever the men may be. If far from home, the women often boil a kettle for tea under the hedge, collecting dead sticks fallen from the trees. At six o’clock work is over: the women are allowed to leave half an hour or so previously, that they may prepare their husbands’ suppers.

As the sunset approaches the long broad dusty road loses its white glare, and yonder by the hamlet a bright glistening banner reflects the level rays of the sun with dazzling sheen; it is the gilding on the swinging wayside sign transformed for the moment from a wooden board rudely ornamented with a gilt sun, all rays and rotund cheeks, into a veritable oriflamme.

There the men will assemble by-and-by, on the forms about the trestle table, and share each other’s quarts in the fellowship of labour. Or perhaps the work may be pressing, and the waggons are loaded till the white owl noiselessly flits along the hedgerow, and the round moon rises over the hills. Then those who have stayed to assist find their supper waiting for them in the brewhouse, and do it ample justice.

Once during the morning, while busy in the hay-field, not so much with his hands as his eyes, watching that the ‘wallows’ may be turned over properly, and the ‘wakes’ made at a just distance from each other, that the waggon may pass easily between, the farmer is sure to be summoned home with the news of a swarm of bees. If the work be pressing, they must be attended to by deputy; if not, he hurries home himself; for although in these days bee-keeping is no longer what it used to be, yet the old-fashioned folk take a deep interest in the bees still. They tell you that ‘a swarm in May is worth a load of hay; a swarm in June is worth a silver spoon; but a swarm in July is not worth a fly’—for it is then too late for the young colony to store up a treasure of golden honey before the flowers begin to fade at the approach of autumn.

It is noticeable that those who labour on their own land (as at Wick) keep up the ancient customs much more vigorously than the tenant who knows that he is liable to receive a notice to quit. And farms, for one reason or another, change tenants much more frequently now than they used to do. Here at Wick the owner feels that every apple tree he grafts, every flower he plants, returns not only a money value, but a joy not to be measured by money. So the bees are carefully watched and tended, as the blue tomtits find to their cost if they become too venturesome.

These bold little bandits will sometimes make a dash for the hive, alighting on the miniature platform before the entrance, and playing havoc with the busy inmates. If alarmed they take refuge in the apple trees, as if conscious that the owner will not shoot them there, since every pellet may destroy potential fruit by cutting and breaking those tender twigs on which it would presently grow. It is a pleasant sight in autumn to see the room devoted to the honey—great broad milk-tins full to the brim of the translucent liquid, distilling slowly from pure white comb, from the top of whose cells the waxen covering has been removed.

All the summer through fresh beauties, indeed, wait upon the owner’s footsteps. In the spring the mowing grass rises thick, strong, and richly green, or hidden by the cloth-of-gold thrown over it by the buttercups! He knows when it is ready for the scythe without reference to the almanac, because of the brown tint which spreads over it from the ripening seeds, sometimes tinged with a dull red, when the stems of the sorrel are plentiful. At first the aftermath has a trace of yellow, as if it were fading; but a shower falls, and fresh green blades shoot up. Or, passing from the hollow meads up on the rising slopes where the plough rules the earth, what so beautiful to watch as the wheat through its various phases of colour?

First green and succulent; then, presently, see a modest ear comes forth with promise of the future. By-and-by, when every stalk is tipped like a sceptre, the lower stalk leaves are still green, but the stems have a faint bluish tinge, and the ears are paling into yellow. Next the white pollen—the bloom—shows under the warm sunshine, and then the birds begin to grow busy among it. They perch on the stalk itself—it is at that time strong and stiff enough to uphold their weight, one on a stem—but not now for mischief. You may see the sparrow carry away with him caterpillars for his young upon the housetop hard by; later on, it is true, he will revel on the ripe grains.

Yesterday you came to the wheat and found it pale like this (it seems but twenty-four hours ago—it is really only a little longer); to-day, when you look again, lo! there is a fleeting yellow already on the ears. They have so quickly caught the hue of the bright sunshine pouring on them. Yet another day or two, and the faint fleeting yellow has become fixed and certain, as the colours are deepened by the great artist. Only when the wind blows and the ears bend in those places where the breeze takes most; it looks paler because the under part of the ear is shown and part of the stalk. Finally comes that rich hue for which no exact similitude exists. In it there is somewhat of the red of the orange, somewhat of the tint of bronze, and somewhat of the hue of maize; but these are poor words wherewith to render fixed a colour that plays over the surface of this yellow sea, for if you take one, two, or a dozen ears you shall not find it, but must look abroad, and let your gaze travel to and fro. Nor is every field alike; here are acres and acres more yellow, yonder a space whiter, beyond that a slope richly ruddy, according to the kind of seed that was sown.

Out of the depths of what to it must seem an impenetrable jungle, from visiting a flower hidden below, a humble-bee climbs rapidly up a stalk a yard or two away while you look, and mounting to the top of the ear, as a post of vantage clear of obstructions, sails away upon the wind.

“We be all jolly vellers what vollers th’ plough!”—but not to listen to, and take literally according to the letter of the discourse. It runs something like this the seasons through as the weather changes: “Terrible dry weather this here to be sure; we got so much work to do uz can’t get drough it. The fly be swarming in the turmots—the smut be on the wheat—the wuts be amazing weak in the straw. Got a fine crop of wheat this year, and prices be low, so uz had better drow it to th’ pigs. Last year uz had no wheat fit to speak on, and prices was high. Drot this here wet weather! the osses be all in the stable eating their heads off, and the chaps be all idling about and can’t do no work: a pretty penny for wages and not a job done. Them summer ricks be all rotten at bottom. The ploughing engine be stuck fast up to the axle, the land be so soft and squishey. Us never gets no good old frosts now, like they used to have. Drot these here frosty mornings! a-cutting up everything. There’ll be another rate out soon, a’ reckon. Us had better give up this here trade, neighbour!”

And so on for a thousand and one grumbles, fitting into every possible condition of things, which must not, however, be taken too seriously; for of all other men the farmer is the most deeply attached to the labour by which he lives, and loves the earth on which he walks like a true autochthon. He will not leave it unless he is suffering severely.

Chapter Eight.

Birds of the Farmhouse—Speech of a Starling—Population of a Gable—The King of the Hedge—The Thrushes’ Anvil.

Wick farmhouse is thatched, and has many gables hidden with ivy. In these broad expanses of thatch, on the great ‘chimney-tuns’ as country folk call them, and in the ivy, tribes of birds have taken up their residence. The thatch has grown so thick in the course of years by the addition of fresh coats that it projects far from the walls and forms wide, far-reaching eaves. Over the cellar the roof descends within three or four feet of the ground, the wall being low, and the eaves here cast a shadow with the sun nearly at the zenith.

On the higher parts of the roof, especially round the chimneys, the starlings have made their holes, and in the early summer are continuously flying to and fro their young, who never cease crying form food the whole day through. A tall ash tree stands in the hedgerow, about fifty yards from the house. On this tree, which is detached, so that they can see all round, the starlings perch before they come to the roof, as if to reconnoitre and to exchange pourparlers with their friends already on the roof; for if ever birds talk together starlings do. Many birds utter the same notes over and over again; others sit on a branch and sing the same song, as the thrush; but the starling has a whole syllabary of his own, every note of which evidently has its meaning, and can be varied and accented at pleasure.

His whistle ranges from a shrill, piercing treble to a low, hollow bass; he runs a complete gamut, with ‘shakes,’ trills, tremulous vibrations, every possible variation. He intersperses a peculiar clucking sound, which seems to come from the depths of his breast, fluttering his wings all the while against his sides as he stands bolt upright on the edge of the chimney. Other birds seem to sing for the pure pleasure of singing, shedding their notes broadcast, or at most they are meant for a mate hidden in the bush. The starling addresses himself direct to his fellows: I think I may say he never sings when alone, without a companion in sight. He literally speaks to his fellows. I am persuaded you may almost follow the dialogue and guess the tenor of the discourse.

A starling is on the chimney-top; yonder on the ash tree are four or five of his acquaintance. Suddenly he begins to pour forth a flood of eloquence—facing them as he speaks: Will they come with him down to the field where the cows are grazing? There will be sure to be plenty of insects settling on the grass round the cows, and every now and then they tear up the herbage by the roots and expose creeping things. “Come,” you may hear him say, modulating his tones to persuasion, “come quickly; you see it is a fresh piece of grass into which the cows have been turned only a few hours since; it was too long for us before, but where they have eaten we can get at the ground comfortably. The water-wagtail is there already; he always accompanies the herd, and will have the pick and choice of everything. Or what do you say to the meadow by the brook? The mowers have begun, and the swathe has fallen before their scythes; there are acres of ground there which we could not touch for weeks; now it is open, and the place is teeming with good food. The finches are there as busy as may be between the swathes—chaffinch and greenfinch, hedge-sparrow, thrushes, and blackbirds too. Are you afraid? Why, no one shoots in the middle of a summer’s day. Still irresolute? (with an angry shrillness). Will you or will you not? (a sharp short whistle of interrogation). You are simply idiots (finishing with a scream of abuse). I’m off!”

Seeing him start, the rest follow at once, jealous lest he should enjoy these pleasures alone. As he flies every few minutes he closes his wings, so that for half a dozen yards he shoots like an arrow through the air; then rapidly uses them, and again closes and shoots forward, all the timekeeping a level straight course; going direct to his object.

The starlings that breed in the roof, though they leave the place later on and congregate in flocks roosting in trees, still come back now and then to revisit their homes, especially as the new year opens, when they alight on the house frequently and consult on the approaching important period of nesting. If you should be sitting near a window close under the roof where they are busy, reading a book, with the summer sunshine streaming in, now and then a flash like lightning will pass across the page. It is a starling rapidly vibrating his wings before he perches on the thatch; the swift succession of light and shadow as the wings intercept the rays of the sun causes an impression on the eye like that left by a flash of lightning. They are beautiful birds: on their plumage, when seen quite close, the light plays in iridescent gleams.

Upon the roof of the old farmstead, too, the chirp of the sparrow never ceases the livelong day. It is amusing to see these birds in the nesting season carrying up long straws—towing their burden through the air with evident labour—or feathers. These they sometimes drop just as they arrive at their destination. Eager to utter a chirp to their mates, they open their beaks, and away floats the feather, but they catch it again before it reaches the ground. Fluffy feathers are great favourites. The fowls, as they fly up to roost on the beams in the sheds, beat out feathers from their clumsy wings; these lie scattered on the ground, marking the spot. These roosting-places are magazines from which the small birds draw their supplies for domestic purposes. The sparrows have their nests in lesser holes in the thatch: sometimes they use a swallow’s nest built of mortar under the eaves, to which the owners have not returned.

The older folk still retain some faint superstitions about swallows, looking upon them as semi-consecrated and not to be killed or interfered with. They will not have their nests knocked down. If they do not return to the eaves but desert their nests it is a sign of misfortune impending over the household. So, too, if the rooks quit the rookery or the colonies of bees in the hives on the sunny side of the orchard decay and do not swarm, but seem to die off, it is an evil omen. If at night a bird flutters against the window-pane in the darkness—as they will sometimes in a great storm of wind, driven, perhaps, from their roosting-places by the breaking of the boughs, and attracted by a light within—the knocking of their wings betokens that something sad is about to happen. If an invalid asks for a pigeon—taking a fancy to a dish of pigeons to eat—it is a sign either of coming dissolution or of extreme illness.

But the swallows rarely fail to come in the spring, and soon begin to repair their nests or build new ones with mortar from the roads; a rainy day is very useful to them, and they alight at the edge of the puddles, finding the mud already mixed and tempered for them there. In such weather they will fly backwards and forwards by the side of a hedge for a length of time, skimming just above the grass, when, looking down on them instead of up at them, the white bar across the lower part of the body just before the tail forks is very noticeable. The darker feathers have a glossy bluish tinge on the black. They seem fond of flying round and near horses and cattle, as if insects were more numerous near animals. While driving on a sultry day I have watched a swallow follow the horse for a mile or more.

It is a pleasant sight to watch them gliding just above the surface of smooth water, dipping every now and then. Once, while observing some swallows flying over a lake, on a windy day, when there were waves of some size, I saw a swallow struck by the crest of a wave and overwhelmed. It was about twenty yards from a lee shore, and the bird floated on the water, rising and sinking with the waves till they threw it on the bank. It was much exhausted, but when placed on a stone in the warm sunshine soon recovered and flew off.

As another proof that quick as they are on the wing, they do not always judge their position or course precisely, I know a case where a swallow, in less than ten yards after leaving her nest under the eaves of a house, flew with great force against a door in the garden wall painted a dull blue. The beak was partly broken and the bird completely stunned: she died in a few minutes. There was some one in the garden close by at the time: his presence may have frightened the swallow; yet they are not usually timid where their nests are undisturbed. Perhaps in her hurry the dull blue colour of the gate may have deceived her sight; but she must have travelled that way a hundred times before.

Swallows frequently come down the great chimneys at the farmhouse and are found in the rooms, but are always allowed to escape from the window. Swallows are said not to perch; but I have seen them repeatedly perch on those sticks which, where the thatch has somewhat decayed, project a few inches above the roof-tree. Sometimes a row of half a dozen may be observed settled on the roof here. You may see them, too, perch on the topmost boughs of the tall damson trees in the orchard; and again, later in the autumn, after nesting is over, they assemble in hundreds—one might almost say thousands—in the withy bed by the brook, settling on the slender willow wands. There they twitter together for an hour or more every evening. They can rise without the slightest difficulty from the ground, if it is level and not encumbered with grass, as from the surface of the roads. On dull cold days they settle on the house more frequently than when it is bright and sunny.

At one end of the farmhouse, which is an irregular building, there is a quiet gable, and in it a casement arched over by the thatch, and shaded by a thick growth of ivy. The casement is low, and not more than eight or nine feet from the ground; the ivy has climbed the wall, it has spread too over the massive wall of the garden which just there abuts upon the house, so that there is a secluded corner formed by the angle. Here some time ago a number of logs of timber—oak, such as are sawn up into posts for field gateways—were left leaning half against the garden wall, half against the house, just under the window. There they have remained (there is never any hurry about things in the country) so long that the moss has begun to encase the lower portions. What with the projecting thatch, the thick ivy, the timber thrown carelessly beneath, the lichen-grown garden wall, and a large bush of lilac in the angle, the place could hardly be more quiet, and is consequently a favourite resort of the birds.

Within reach from the window the swallows have their nests, and the sparrows their holes, on the right hand; within reach on the left hand, among the ivy, the water-wagtail has built her nest year after year. The wagtail may always be seen about the place—now in the cow-yards among the cattle, now in the rickyard, and even close to the door of the dwelling-house, especially frequenting the courtyard in front of the dairy. As he flies he rises up and then sinks again, in a succession of undulations, now spreading the tail out and now closing it. On the ground he generally alights near water; he is continually jerking the tail up and down.

One spring a cuckoo came to this nest in the ivy close to the casement; she was seen flying near the house several times, and, being observed to visit the ivy-covered gable, was finally traced to the wagtail’s nest. For several days in succession, and several times a day, the cuckoo came, and would doubtless have left an egg had not she been shot by a person who wanted a cuckoo to stuff.

It is difficult to understand upon what principle the cuckoo selected a nest thus placed. The ordinary considerations put forward as guiding birds and animals in their actions quite fail. Instinct would scarcely choose a spot so close to a house—actually on it; the desire of safety would not lead to it either, nor the idea of concealment. She might, no doubt, have found nests enough at a distance from houses, and much more likely to escape observation. Was there any kind of feeling that this particular wagtail was more likely to take care of the offspring than others?

I doubt the cuckoo’s alleged total indifference to her young. They certainly linger in the neighbourhood of the nests which they have selected to deposit their eggs in. On another occasion a cuckoo used a wagtail’s nest in a different part of the garden here—in some ivy that had grown round the decaying stump of an old fir tree. This bird was watched, but not interfered with; she came repeatedly, and was seen on the nest, and the egg observed. Afterwards a cuckoo sang continuously day after day on an ash tree close to the garden.

Lower down in the ivy, behind the logs of timber under the casement, the hedge-sparrow builds every year; and on the wood itself where the trunks formed a little recess was a robin’s nest. The hedge-sparrow, unlike his noisy namesake, is one of the quietest of birds: he slips about in the hedges and bushes all round the garden so quietly and unobtrusively that unless you watch carefully you will not see him. Yet he does not seem shy, and if you sit still will come along the hawthorn within a yard.

In the thatch—under the eaves of the cellar, which are not more than four feet from the ground and come up to the ivy of the gable—the wren has a nest. Some birds seem always to make their nests in one particular kind of way, and generally in the same kind of tree or bush; robins, house-sparrows, and starlings, on the other hand, adjust their nests to all sorts of places.

The window of a room in which I used to sleep overlooked the orchard, and there was a pear tree trained against the wall, some of the boughs of which came up to the window-sill. This pear tree acted as a ladder, up which the birds came. Pear trees are a good deal frequented by many birds; their rough bark seems to shelter numerous insects. The window was left open all night in the sultry summer weather, and presently a robin began to come in very early in the morning. Encouraged by finding that no one disturbed him, at last he grew bold enough to perch morning after morning on the rail at the foot of my bed. First he seemed to examine the inside of the window, then went on the floor, and, after a good look round, finally finished by sitting on the wooden framework for a few minutes before departing.

This went on some time; then a wren came too; she likewise looked to see if anything edible could be found in the window first. Old-fashioned windows often have a broad sill inside—the window frame being placed nearly at the outer edge of the wall, so that the thickness of the wall forms a recess, which is lined with board along the bottom. Now this wooden lining was decayed and drilled with innumerable holes by boring insects, which threw up tiny heaps of sawdust, as one might say, just as moles throw up mounds of earth where they tunnel. Perhaps these formed an attraction to the wren. She also frequently visited an old-fashioned bookcase, on the top of which—it was very low—I often left some old worm-eaten folios and quartos, and may have occasionally picked up something there. Once only she ventured to the foot of the bed. After leaving the room she always perched on a thin iron projection which held the window open, and uttered her singularly loud notes, their metallic clearness seeming to make the chamber ring. Starlings often perched on the same iron slide, and sparrows continually; but only the robin and wren came inside. Tomtits occasionally entered and explored the same board-lining of the window, but no farther. They will, however, sometimes explore a room.

I know a parlour the window of which was partly overhung by a similar pear tree, besides which there were some shrubs just outside, and into this room, being quiet and little used, the tomtits ventured every now and then. I fancy the placing of flowers in vases, on the table or on the mantelpiece attracts birds to rooms, if they are still. Insects visit the flowers; birds look for the insects: and this room generally abounded with cut flowers. Entering it suddenly one day, a tomtit flew from side to side in great agitation, and then dropped on the floor and allowed me to pick it up without an effort to escape. The bird had swooned from fright, and was quite helpless—the eyes closed. On being placed outside the window, in five minutes it came to itself and flew off feebly. In this way birds may frequently become a prey to cats and hawks when to all appearance they might easily escape—becoming so overwhelmed with alarm as to lose the power of motion.

The robin is a most pugnacious creature. He will fight furiously with a rival; in fact, he never misses an opportunity of fighting. But he always chooses the very early morning for these encounters, and so escapes suspicion, except, of course, from people who rise early too. It is even said that the young cock robins, when they are full-grown, turn round on their own parents and fight with them vigorously. Neither is he a favourite with the upper class of cottagers—for there is an ‘upper ten’ even among cottagers—who have large fruit-gardens. In these they grow quantities of currants for preserving purposes. The robin is accused of being a terrible thief of currants, and meets with scant mercy.

Sometimes while walking slowly along the footpath in a lane with hedges each side a robin will dart out of the hawthorn and pick up a worm or grub almost under your feet; then in his alarm at your presence drop it, and rush back in a flutter. Other birds will do the same thing, from which it would seem that the old saying that the eye sees what it comes to see is as applicable to them as to human beings. Their eyes, ever on the watch for food, instantly detect a tiny creeping thing several yards distant, though concealed by grass; but the comparatively immense bulk of a man appears to escape notice till they fly almost up against it.

I fancy that the hive-bee and some kindred insects have a special faculty of seeing colour at a distance, and that colours attract them. It can hardly be scent, because when flowers are placed in a room and the window left open the wind generally blows strongly into the apartment, and odours will not travel against a breeze. It seems natural that in both cases the continual watch for certain things should enable bird and insect to observe the faintest indication. Slugs, caterpillars, and such creatures, too, in moving among the grass, cause a slight agitation of the grass-blades; they lift up a leaf by crawling under it, or depress it with their weight by getting on it. This may enable the bird to detect their presence, even when quite hidden by the herbage, experience having taught it that when grass is moved by the wind broad patches sway simultaneously, but when an insect or caterpillar is the agent only a single leaf or blade is stirred.

At the farmhouse here, robins, wrens, and tomtits are always hanging about the courtyard, especially close to the dairy, where one or other may be constantly seen perched on the palings; neither do they scruple to enter the dairy, the brewhouse, or wood-house adjacent, when they see a chance. The logs (for fuel) stored in the latter doubtless afford them insects from under the dead bark.

Among the most constant residents in the garden at Wick Farm are the song thrushes. They are the tamest of the larger birds; they come every morning right under the old bay-window of the sitting-room on the shady side of the house, where the musk-plant has spread abroad and covered the stone-pitching for many yards, except just a narrow path paved with broad flagstones. The musk finds root in every interstice of the pitching, but cannot push up through the solid flat flags; a fungus, however, has attempted even that, and has succeeded in forcing a great stone, weighing perhaps fifteen or twenty pounds, from its bed, so that instead of being level it forms an inclined plane. The carpet of musk yields a pleasant odour; in one corner, too, the ‘monkey-plant’ grows luxuriously, and the grass of the green or lawn is for ever trying to encroach upon the paving. In the centre of the green is a bed of gooseberries and a cherry tree; and though the fruit is so close to the window, both thrush and blackbird make as free with it as if it was in the hedgerow.

The thrush, when he wishes to approach the house, flies first to the cover of these gooseberries; then, after reconnoitring a few minutes, comes out on the green and gradually works his way across it to the stone-pitching, and so along under the very window. The blackbird comes almost as often to the lawn, but it is in a different way. His manner is that of a bold marauder, conscious that he has no right, and aware that a shot from an ambuscade may lay him low, but defiantly risking the danger. He perches first on a bush, or on the garden wall, under the sheltering boughs of the lime trees, at a distance of some twenty yards; then, waiting till all is clear, he makes a desperate rush for the fruit trees or the lawn. The moment he has succeeded in violently seizing some delicious morsel off he goes, uttering a loud chuckle—half as a challenge, half as a vent for his pent-up anxiety.

This peculiar chuckle is so well known by all the other birds as a note of alarm that every one in the garden immediately move; his position, if only a yard or two. When you are stealing down the side of the hedgerow, endeavouring to get near enough to observe the woodpecker in a tree, or with a gun to shoot a pigeon, the great anxiety is lest you startle a blackbird. If he thinks you have not seen him, he is cunning enough to slip out the other side noiselessly and fly down beside the hedge just above the ground for some distance. He then crosses the field to a hedge on the other side, and, just as he safely lands himself in a thick hawthorn bush a hundred yards away, defiantly utters his cry. The pigeon or the woodpecker will instantly glance round; but, the cry being at a distance, if you keep still a minute or two they will resume their occupation. But if you should disturb the blackbird on the side of the bank next you, where he knows you must have seen or heard him, or if he is obliged to come out on your side of the hedge, then he makes the meadow ring with his alarm-note, and immediately away goes pigeon or woodpecker, thrushes fly further down the hedge, and the rabbits feeding in the grass lift up their heads and, seeing you, rush to their burrows. In this way the blackbird acts as a general sentinel.

He has two variations of this cry. One he uses when just about to change his feeding ground and visit another favourite corner across the field; it is as much as to say, “Take notice, all you menials; I, the king of the hedge, am coming.” The other is a warning, and will very often set two or three other blackbirds calling in the same way, whose existence till then was unsuspected. These calls are quite distinct from his song.

Sometimes, when sitting on a rail in the shade of a great bush—a rail placed to close a gap—I have had a blackbird come across the meadow and perch just above my head. Till the moment of alighting he was ignorant of my presence, and for a second the extremity of his astonishment literally held him speechless at his own temerity. The next—what an outcry and furious bustle of excitement to escape! So in the garden here he makes a desperate rush, seizes his prey, and off again twenty or thirty yards, exhibiting an amusing mixture of courage and timidity. This process he will repeat fifty times a day. No matter how terribly frightened, his assurance quickly returns, and another foray follows; so that you begin by thinking him the most cowardly and end by finding him the most impudent of birds.

I own I love the blackbird, and never weary of observing him. There is a bold English independence about him—an insolent consciousness of his own beauty. He must somehow have read Shakespeare, for he seems quite aware of his ‘orange-tawny bill’ and deep black hue. He might really know that he figures in a famous ballad, and that four-and-twenty of his species were considered a dish to set before a king.

It is a sight to see him take his bath. In a meadow not far from the house here is a shallow but clear streamlet, running down a deep broad ditch overshadowed by tall hemlock and clogweed, arched over with willow, whose leaves when the wind blows and their under-side is exposed give the hedge a grey tint, with maple and briar. Hide yourself here on a summer morning among the dry grass and bushes, and presently the blackbird comes to stand a minute on a stone which checks the tiny stream like a miniature rock, and then to splash the clear water overhead and back with immense energy. He repeats this several times, and immediately afterwards flies to an adjacent rail, where, unfettered by boughs, he can preen his feathers, going through his toilet with the air of a prince. Finally, he perks his tail up, and challenges the world with the call already mentioned, which seems now to mean, “Come and see Me; am I not handsome?”

On a warm June day, when the hedges are covered with roses and the air is sweet with the odour of mown grass, it is pleasant to listen to the blackbirds in the oaks pouring forth their rich liquid notes. There is no note so sweet and deep and melodious as that of the blackbird to be heard in our fields; it is even richer than the nightingale’s, though not so varied. Just before noonday—between eleven and twelve—when the heat increases, he leaves the low thick bushes and moist ditches and mounts up into an oak tree, where, on a branch, he sits and sings. Then another at a distance takes up the burden, till by-and-by, as you listen, partly hidden in a gateway, four or five are thus engaged in the trees of a single meadow.

He sings in a quiet, leisurely way, as a great artist should—there is no haste, no notes thickening on notes in swift crescendo. His voice (so to speak) drops from him, without an effort, and is so clear that it may be heard at a long distance. It is not a set song; perhaps, in strict language, it is hardly a song at all, but rather a succession of detached notes with intervals between. Except when singing, the blackbird does not often frequent trees; he is a hedge-bird, though sometimes when you are looking at a field of green corn or beans one will rise out of it and fly to a tree—a solitary tree such as is sometimes seen in the midst of an arable field. At Wick Farm, sitting in the cool parlour, or in the garden under the shade of the trees, you may hear him almost every morning in the meadows that come right up to the orchard hedge. That hedge is his favourite approach to the garden: he flies to it first, and gradually works his way along under cover till nearer the cultivated beds. Both blackbird and thrush are particularly fond of visiting a patch of cabbages in a shady, quiet corner: there are generally two or three there after the worms and caterpillars, and so forth.

The thrushes build in the garden in several places, especially in an ivy-hidden arbour—a wooden frame completely covered with ivy and creeping flowers. Close by is a thick box-hedge, six feet high and nearly as much through, and behind this is a low-thatched tool-house, where spades, moletraps, scythes, reaping-hooks, and other implements are kept. Here lies a sarsen-stone, hard as iron, about a foot thick, the top of which chances to be smooth and level. This is the thrush’s favourite anvil.

He searches about under the ivy, under which the snails hide in their shells in the heat of the day, and brings them forth into the light. The shell is too large for his beak to hold it pincer-fashion, but at the entrance—the snail’s doorway—he can thrust his bill in, and woe then to the miserable occupant! With a hop and flutter the thrush mounts the stone anvil, and there destroys his victim in workmanlike style. Up goes his head, lifting the snail high in the air, and then, smash! the shell comes down on the stone with all the force he can use. About two such blows break the shell, and he then coolly chips the fragments off as you might from an egg, and makes very few mouthfuls of the contents. On the stone and round about it lie the fragments of many such shells—relics of former feasts. Sometimes he will do this close to the bay-window—if all is quiet—using the stone-flags for an anvil, if he chances to find a snail hard by; but he prefers the recess behind the box-hedge. The thrushes seem half-domesticated here; they are tame, too, in the hedges, and will sit and sing on a bough overhead without fear while you wait for a rabbit on the bank beneath.

Chapter Nine.

The Orchard—Emigrant Martins—The Missel-thrush—Caravan Route of Birds and Animals—A Fox in Ambush—A Snake in a Clock.

Broad green paths, wide enough for three or four to walk abreast, lead from the garden at Wick into the orchard. On the side next the meadows the orchard is enclosed by a hawthorn hedge, thick from constant cropping; on the other a solid stone wall, about nine feet high, parts it from the road. One summer day a party of martins attacked this wall outside, and endeavoured to make their nest-holes in it. These birds are called by the labourers ‘quar-martins,’ because they breed in holes drilled in the face of the sandy precipices of quarries. The boys ‘draw’ their nests—climbing up at the risk of their limbs—by inserting a long briar, and, when they feel the nest, giving it a twist which causes the hooked prickles of the stick to take firm hold, and the nest is then dragged bodily out. The flight that came to the orchard wall numbered about ten or twelve, and for the best part of the day they remained there, working their very hardest at the mortar between the stones.

The wall being old, some of the mortar had crumbled—it was not of the best quality—and here and there was a small cavity. These a portion of the birds tried to enlarge, while others boldly laboured in places where no such slight openings existed. It was interesting to watch their patient efforts as they clung to the perpendicular wall like bats. Now, two or three flew off and described a few circles in the air, as if to rest themselves, and then again returned to work. At last, convinced of the impossibility of penetrating the mortar, which was much harder beneath the surface, they went away in a body with a general twitter, leaving distinct marks of their shallow excavations. The circumstance was the more interesting because the road was much-frequented (for a rural district) and many people stopped to look at them; but the birds did not seem in the least alarmed, and evidently only left because they found the wall impenetrable. Instinct, infallible instinct, certainly would not direct these birds to such an unsuitable spot. Neither was there any peculiar advantage to attract them; it was not quiet or retired, but the reverse. The incident was clearly an experiment, and when they found it unsuccessful they desisted.

If we suppose this flight of martins to represent a party emigrating from a sand quarry (there were three such quarries within a mile radius), where the population had overflowed, it seems possible to trace the motive which animated them. I imagine that the old birds drive the young ones away, when the young return to this country with their parents after the annual migration. This is particularly the case after a very favourable breeding season, when more than the usual proportion of young birds survive. After such a season, upon returning next year to the sand quarry, the older birds drive off the younger; and if these are so numerous that they cannot find room in another part of the quarry, they emigrate in small parties.

I think the same thing happens with rooks. The older rooks will only permit a few of their last year’s offspring to build near them. If a gentleman has an avenue of fine elm trees in which he desires to have a rookery, but cannot contrive to attract them, though perhaps now and then a nest is partly built and then deserted, an experiment founded on this idea might be tried. It would be necessary to ask the assistance of the proprietors of the nearest rookeries, and beg them for one year to refrain from shooting the young rooks, after the well-known custom. An unusual proportion of young birds would then survive, and next building season the larger part of these would return to the old trees and be immediately met in battle by their older relatives. Being driven away from the hereditary group of trees, they would resort to the next nearest avenue or grove; if they attempted to mix with a strange tribe, they would encounter a still fiercer resistance. In this way possibly the avenue in question might become stocked with rooks.

One reason, I fancy, why nests begun in such distant trees are so often deserted before completion is that a solitary nest exposes both the building birds and their prospective offspring to grave danger from hawks. No hawk will attempt to approach a rookery—the rooks would attack him en masse and easily put him to flight. Chickens are safer under or near a rookery from this cause: a hawk approaching them would alarm the rooks and be beaten away. The comparative safety afforded by numbers is perhaps a reason why many species of birds are gregarious. The apparently defenceless martins and swallows in this way dwell in some amount of security. If a hawk comes near the sand quarry (or the house—in the case of swallows) they all join together and pursue him, twittering angrily, and as a matter of fact generally succeed in sending him about his business. Even those birds which do not build in close contiguity no sooner find that a hawk is near than they rise simultaneously and follow and annoy him: so much so that he will sometimes actually drop the prey he has captured. It is astonishing with what temerity small birds, emboldened by numbers—chaffinches, finches generally, sparrows, swallows, and so on—will attack a hawk.

The ‘quar-martins’ that came to the orchard wall—emigrating from the quarry, and wandering about in search of a suitable habitation—if young birds, as we have supposed them to be, would naturally not yet have had much experience, and so might think the steep wall (roughly resembling the face of a quarry) available for their purpose till they had made the experiment. I have thought, from watching the motions of birds that go in flights, that most of them have a kind of leader or chief. They do not yield anything like the same obedience or reverence to the chief as the bees do to the queen-bee, and exhibit little traces of following his motions implicitly. He is more like the president of a republic; each member is individually free, and twitters his or her mind just as he or she likes. But it seems to be reserved to one bird to give the signal for all to move. So these martins, after lingering about the wall for hours—some of them, too, leaving it and flying away only to come back again—finally started altogether. It is difficult to account for such simultaneous and combined movements, unless we suppose that it is reserved to a certain bird to give the signal.

In the fork of a great apple tree—a Blenheim orange—the missel-thrush has built her nest. Missel-thrushes, doubtless of the same family, have used the tree for many years. Though the nest is large, the young birds as they grow up soon get too big for it and fall out. This period—just before the young can fly—is the most critical in their existence, and causes the greatest anxiety to the parents. Without the resource of flight, weak and unable even to scramble fast through the long grass, betraying their presence by continually crying for food, they are exposed to dangers from every species of vermin.

The missel-thrush is a bold, determined bird, and does his utmost in the defence of his offspring. When the young birds fall out of the nest (so soon as one has clambered over, the others quickly follow), the parents rarely leave the orchard together. One or other is almost always close at hand. If any enemy approaches they immediately set up an angry chattering, by which noise you may at once know what is going on. I have seen two missel-thrushes attack a crow in this way. The crow came and perched upon a bough within a yard of their nest, which contained young. The old birds were there immediately, and they so annoyed and buffeted the murderous robber that he left without achieving his fell purpose.

The cat is the worst enemy of the missel-thrush. It is noticeable that while these thrushes will attack anything that flies they are not so bold on the ground, but seem afraid to alight. They will strike even at the human hand that touches their nest. The crow, strong as he is, they courageously drive away; but the enemy that stealthily approaches along the ground to the helpless young bird in the grass they cannot resist. On the wing they can retreat quickly if pressed; on the ground they cannot move so swiftly, and may themselves fall a prey without affording any assistance. The missel-thrushes come to the orchard frequently after the nesting season is over and before it commences. They do not seem in search of food, but alight on the trees as if to view their property. They are strong on the wing, and fly direct to their object: there is something decided, courageous, and, as one might say, manly in their character.

The bark of some of the apple trees peels of itself—that is, the thin outer skin—and insects creep under these brown scales curled at the edges. If you sit down on the elm butt placed here as a seat and watch quietly, before long the little tree-climber will come. He flies to the trunk of the apple tree (other birds fly to the branches), and then proceeds to ascend it, going round it as he rises in a spiral. His claws cling tenaciously to the bark, his tail touches the tree, and seems to act as a support—like what I think the carpenters call a ‘knee’—and his head is thrown back so as to enable him to spy into every cranny he passes. After a few turns round the trunk he is off to another tree, to resume the same restless spiral ascent there; and in a minute or so off again to a third; for he never apparently examines one-half of the trunk, though, probably, his eyes, accustomed to the work, see farther than we may imagine. The orchard is never long without a tree-climber: it seems a favourite resort of these birds. They have a habit of rushing quickly a little way up; then pausing, and again creeping swiftly another, foot, or so, and are so absorbed in their pursuit that they are easily approached and observed.

Who can stay indoors when the goldfinches are busy among the bloom on the apple trees? A flood of sunshine falling through a roof of rosy pink and delicate white blossom overhead; underneath, grass deeply green with the vigour of spring, dotted with yellow buttercups, and strewn with bloom shaken by the wind from the trees: is not this better than formal-patterned carpets, and the white flat ceilings that weigh so heavily upon the sight? Listen how happy the goldfinches are in the orchard. Summer after summer they build in the same trees—bushy-headed codlings; generation after generation has been born there and gone forth to enjoy in turn the pleasures of the field.

A year—nay, a single summer—must be a long time in their chronology, for they are so very very busy: a bright sunshiny day must be like a month to them. Now coquetting, now splashing at the sandy edge of a shallow streamlet till the golden feathers glisten from the water and the red top-knot shines, away again along the hedgerow searching for seeds, singing all the while, and the tiny heart beating so rapidly as to compress twice as many beats of emotion into the minute as our sluggish organisations are capable of. Though a path much-frequented by the household passes beneath the trees in which they build, they show no fear.

Just as men from various causes congregate in particular places, so there are spots in the fields—in the country generally—which appear to specially attract birds of all kinds. Wide districts are almost bare of them: on a single farm you may often find a great meadow which scarcely seems to have a bird in it, while another little oddly-cornered field is populous with them. This orchard and garden at Wick is one of the favourite places. It is like one of those Eastern marts where men of fifty different nationalities, and picturesquely clad, jostle each other in the bazaars: so here feathered travellers of every species have a kind of leafy capital. When the nesting time is over the goldfinches quit the orchard, and only return for a brief call now and then. I almost think the finches have got regular caravan routes round and across the fields which they travel in small bands.

In the meadow, just without the close-cropped hawthorn which encloses one side of the orchard, is a thick hedge, the end of which comas right up to the apple trees, being only separated by the ha-ha wall and a ditch. This hedge, dividing two meadows, is about two hundred yards long and well grown with a variety of underwood, hazel, willow, maple, hawthorn, blackthorn, elder, etc, and studded with some few elms and ashes, and a fine horse-chestnut. Down the ditch for some distance runs a little stream (except in a long drought); and where another hedge branches from it is a hollow space arched over and roofed with boughs. Now this hedge is a favourite highway of birds and other wild creatures, and leads direct to the orchard. Most of the visitors to the house and garden come down it—it is one of their caravan routes.

If on a summer’s morning you go and sit in the gateway about half-way up the hedge, partly hidden by a pollard ash and great hawthorn bushes, you will not have long to wait before you hear the pleasant calls of the greenfinches coming. They seem always to travel two or more pairs together, and constantly utter a soothing call, as if to say to their companions, “Here we are, close by, dearest.” They all appear to know exactly where they are going—flitting across the gateway one by one, moving of one accord in the same direction; and their contented notes gradually become inaudible as they go towards the orchard. The goldfinches use the same route; so do the bullfinches. Even the starlings, before they come to the house, usually perch on an ash tree in this hedge.

There is another hedge, running parallel to it, 150 yards distant, the end of which also approaches the premises, but it is comparatively deserted. You may wait there in vain and see nothing but a robin.

By the same caravan route the blackbirds come to the garden; they, however, are not such travelling birds as the finches. But the tomtits are: they work their way from tree to tree for miles; they also come to the orchard by this hedge highway. As I have said before, it abuts on the orchard; and a straight line carried across to the orchard wall, over that and the road outside, would strike another great hedge which, were it not for the intervention of the garden, would be a continuation of the first. The finches, after spending a little time in the apple and damson trees, fly over the wall and road to this second hedge, and follow it down for nearly half a mile to a little enclosed meadow, which, like the orchard, is a specially favourite resort. The fondness of birds for this route is very striking; they are constantly passing up or down it. There is another such a favourite route at some distance, running beside a brook and likewise leading to the same enclosed meadow—of which more presently. I think I could make a map of these fields, showing the routes and resorts of furred and feathered creatures.

Near the ha-ha wall, where the great meadow hedge comes up to the orchard, is a summer-house, with a conical thatched roof and circular window. It is hung all round under the ceiling with festoons of eggs taken by the boys of the farmstead, cordially assisted by the carters’ lads when not at work. There may be perhaps forty varieties, arranged so as to increase in size from the tiny tomtits up to the large wood-pigeons, the peewits, corncrake, and crow: some milk-white, others splotched with dark brown spots and veins, others again blue. These eggs, when taken and the yolk blown out, were strung on a bennet and so carried home. The lads like to get them as soon after laid as possible, because they blow best then; if hard set the shell may break.

In the circular window they have left a nest of the long-tailed tit, or ‘titmouse,’ built exactly in the shape of a hut with roof and tiny doorway, and always securely attached in the midst of a thorn bush to branches that are stiff and unlikely to bend with the breeze, so that this beautiful piece of bird-architecture may not be disturbed. To take it, it is generally necessary to cut away several boughs. Such nests are often seen in farmhouses placed as an ornament on the mantelpiece. Spiders have filled the window with their webs, and to these every now and then during the day—there is no door to the summer-house—come a robin, a wren, and a flycatcher. Either of these, but more particularly the two last, will take insects from the spider’s web.

The flycatcher has a favourite perch close by, and may perhaps hear the shrill buzz when an insect is caught. The flycatcher is a regular summer visitor: in the orchard, garden, and adjacent rickyard at least three pairs build every year. Under the shady apple trees near the summer-house one may be seen the whole day long ever on the watch. He perches on a dead branch, low down—not up among the boughs, but as much as possible under them. Every two or three minutes he flies swiftly from his perch a few yards, darts on an insect—you cannot see it, but can distinctly hear the snap of the bill—and returns to his post. He uses the same perch for half an hour or more; then shifts to another at a little distance, and so works all round the orchard, but regularly comes back to the same spot. By waiting near it you may be certain of seeing him presently; and he is very tame, and will carry on operations within a few yards—sometimes picking up a fly almost within reach of your hand. It is noticeable that many insect-eating birds are especially tame. They will occasionally dart after a moth, but drop it again—as if they did not care for that kind of food, and yet could not resist the habit of snapping at such things.

I once saw a flycatcher rush after a buff-coloured moth, which fluttered aimlessly out of a shady recess: he snapped it held it a second or two while hovering in the air, and then let it go. Instantly a swallow swooped down, caught the moth, and bore it thirty or forty feet high, then dropped it when, as the moth came slowly down, another swallow seized it and carried it some yards and then left hold, and the poor creature after all went free. I have seen other instances of swallows catching good-sized moths to let them go again.

The brown linnet is another regular visitor building in the orchard; so too the blackcap, whose song, though short, is sweet; and the bold bright bullfinches use the close-cropped hawthorn. They have always a nest there, made of slender fibres dexterously interwoven. There, is a group of elms near the further end of the enclosure and another by the rickyard; linnets seem fond of elms.

A pair of squirrels sometimes come down the same hedge—it is a favourite highway of wild animals as well as birds—to the orchard, and play in the apple trees: they even venture to a tree only a few yards from the house. If not disturbed they stay a good while, and then return by the way they came to a copse at the top of the meadow. The corner formed by the hedge and the copse—quiet, but in easy view from the house—is especially frequented by them. Their lively motions on the ground are very amusing: they visit the ground much oftener than may be generally supposed. Fir trees seem to attract them—where there is a plantation of firs you may be sure of finding a squirrel.

When alarmed or chased a squirrel always ascends the tree on the opposite side away from you—he will not run to a solitary tree if he can possibly avoid it: he likes a group, and his trick is, the moment he thinks he is out of sight among the upper branches, to slip quietly from one tree to the other till, while you are scanning every bough, he has travelled fifty yards away unnoticed. If the branches are not close enough to hide him, he gets as much as possible behind a large branch, and stretches himself along it—at the same time his tail, which at other times is bushy, seems to contract, so that he is less visible. He will leap in his alarm to dead branches, and, though his weight is trifling, occasionally they snap under the sudden impact; but that does not distress him in the least, because a bough rarely breaks clean off but hangs suspended by bark or splinters, so that he can scramble to the ivy that winds round the trunk. Or if he is obliged to slip down, the next branch catches him; and I have never seen a squirrel actually fall, though sometimes in their frightened haste they will send a number of little dead twigs rustling downwards. When the tail is spread out, so to say, its texture is so fine and silky that the light seems to play through it. They love this particular corner because just there the hedge is composed of hazel bushes, and even when the nuts are gone from the branches they still find some which have dropped upon the bank and are hidden in the dry grass and brown leaves.

In this corner, too, the bank being dry and sandy, there is a large settlement of rabbits, and now and then some of these find their way to the orchard and garden along the hedge. Rabbits have their own social laws and customs adapted to the special conditions of their way of life. At the breeding season there seems to be a tendency to migrate on the part of the younger rabbits from the great ‘bury’ hitherto their home. Many solitary holes at some distance are then occupied, and the fresh sand thrown out shows that a tenant has entered on possession. In this way one or two take up their residence more than half-way down the hedge towards the orchard. Then the doe seems to have a desire to separate herself at a certain period from the rest. She goes out into the mowing grass perhaps thirty yards from the ‘bury,’ and there the young are born in a short hole excavated for the purpose. The young rabbits naturally remain close to their birthplace; they are conducted to the hedge as soon as they are old enough to run about; and so a fresh colony is formed. As they get larger, or, say, soon after midsummer, they appear to show a tendency to roam; and by the autumn, if left undisturbed, descendants from the original settlement will have pushed outposts to a considerable distance. These, having been bred near, have little fear of entering the orchard, or even the garden, and next season will rear their offspring close at hand and feed in the enclosure, using the close-cropped hawthorn as a cover.

Weasels also occasionally come down the hedge into the orchard for the various prey they find there; they visit the outhouses and sheds, too, at intervals in the cattle yards adjoining the house. More rarely the stoat does the same. A weasel may frequently be found prowling in the highway hedge. When a weasel runs fast on a level hard surface—as across a road—the hinder quarters seem every now and then to jump up as if rebounding from the surface; his legs look too short for the speed he is going. This peculiar motion gives them when in haste an odd appearance. In a less degree, a mouse rushing in alarm across a road does the same. The motion ceases the moment mouse or weasel reaches the turf, which is rarely quite level.

The brown field-mouse may be found in the orchard hedge, but is so unobtrusive that his presence is hardly observed. There are many more of these mice in the hedges than are suspected to be there; their little bodies slip about so near the surface of the brown earth, the colour of which they resemble, that few notice them unless they chance to be calling each other in their shrill treble. Even then, though the sound be audible, the mouse is invisible; but you cannot sit quiet in a hedge very long in summer without becoming aware of their presence. Some of the older branches of the hawthorn bushes, bent down when young by the hedge-cutter, are nearly horizontal and free for some part of their length of twigs. The mice run along these natural bridges from one part of the hedge to the other.

Last spring I watched a mouse very busily engaged sitting on such a branch, about a foot above the bank, nibbling the tender top leaves of the ‘clite’ plant. The ‘clite’ grows with great rapidity, and climbs up into the hedge; this plant had already pushed up ten or twelve inches, so that the mouse on the branch was just about on a level with the upper and tenderest leaves. These he drew towards him with his fore feet and complacently nibbled. When he had picked out what suited his fancy he ran along the branch, and in an instant was lost to sight on the bank among the grass.

The nests of the ‘harvest trow’—a still smaller mouse, seldom seen except in summer—are common in the grass of the orchard (and in almost every meadow) before it is mown. As the summer wanes their dead bodies are frequently found in the footpaths; for a kind of epizoic seems to seize them at that time, and they die in numbers. It is curious that an animal which carefully conceals itself in health should at the approach of death seek an open and exposed place like a footpath worn clear of grass.

In the ha-ha wall, at that part of the orchard where the highway hedge comes up, is the square mouth of a rather large drain. The drain itself is of rude construction—two stones on edge and a third across at the top. It comes from the cowyard, passing under the outermost part of the garden a considerable distance away from the house. Very early one morning the labourers, coming to work, saw a fox slip into the mouth of the drain through the long grass of the meadow on which it opened. In the summer, the cattle being all out in the fields, the drain was perfectly dry, and it was known that now and then the rabbits from the hedge made use of it as a temporary place of concealment. No doubt the presence of a rabbit in it was the cause of the fox entering in the first place. The rabbit must have had a very bad time of it for, the drain being closed at the other end with an iron grating, no possibility of escape existed.

From the traces in the grass and on the dry mud at the mouth it appeared as if the fox had ventured there more than once; and, as there were many chickens about his object in lying here was evident. The great hedge being so near, and the narrow space between full of tall mowing grass—the edge of the ha-ha wall, too, clothed with stonecrop and grasses growing in the interstices of the loose stones, and further sheltered by a low box-hedge—it was a place almost made on purpose for. Reynard’s cunning ambuscade. He is as bold or even, bolder than he is cunning. A young dog sent up the drain came back quicker than he went, and refused to venture a second time. The fox remained there all day, and of course ‘made tracks’ at night, knowing that his presence had been discovered by the commotion and talking at the mouth of his cave. He might easily have been captured, but that was not attempted on account of the hunt.

Though the fox as a general rule sleeps during the day, he does not always, but sometimes makes a successful foray in broad daylight. Fowls, for instance, at night roost in the sheds at some height from the ground—often the sheds are contrived specially to protect them; but in the day they roam about in the vicinity of the rickyards where they are kept. They will make runs down the centre of a double-mound hedge, and while thus rambling occasionally stroll into the jaws of their foe, who has been patiently waiting hidden in the long grass and underwood. In the day, too, rabbits often sit out in a bunch of grass, or dry furrow, a long way from the ‘bury.’ Their form is usually within a few paces of a well-marked ‘run’—they follow the run out into the field, and then leave it and go among the grass at one side. The run, therefore, sometimes acts as a guide to the fox, who, sheltered by the tall bennets and thick bunches, occasionally glides up it in the daytime to his prey.

There is sure to be a snake or two in the grass of the orchard during the summer, especially if there chance to be an old manure-heap anywhere near; for that is the place in which they like to leave their chains of white eggs, out of which, if broken, the little snakes issue only two or three inches in length. The heat of the manure-heap acts as an incubator. When it is wet and the hay cannot be touched, the haymakers, there being nothing else for them to do, are put to turn such heaps, and frequently find the eggs of snakes. These creatures now and then get inside farmhouses, whose floors are generally on a level with the surface of the earth or nearly so. They have been found in the clock-case—the old upright eight-day clock, standing on the floor; they come after the frogs that enter at the doors—always wide open in summer—and are supposed also to eat crumbs.

In the cellar there is sure to be a toad under the barrels on the cool stone-flags; in the garden there is another, purposely kept in the cucumber-frame to protect the plant from being eaten by creeping things. It is curious to notice that they both seem to flourish equally well—one in the coolest, the other in the hottest place. A third may generally be found in the strawberry-bed. Strawberries are much eaten by insects of many kinds; so that the toad really does good service in a garden.

In winter, when snow is on the ground, a few larks sometimes venture into the garden where anything green yet shows above the white covering on the patches. If the weather is severe, the moorhen will come up from the brook, though two fields distant, in the night, and the marks of her feet may be traced round the house. Then, as the evening approaches, the wild ducks pass over, and every now and then during the night the weird cries of waterfowl resound in the frosty air. The heron sails slowly over, every night and every morning, backwards and forwards from the mere to the water-meadows and the brook, uttering his unearthly call at intervals.

Chapter Ten.

The Wood-Pile—Lizards—Sheds and Rickyard—The Witches’ Briar—Insects—Plants, Flowers, and Fruit.

The farmhouse at Wick has the gardens and orchard already mentioned upon one side, and on the other are the carthouses, sheds, and rickyard. Between these latter and the dwelling runs a broad roadway for the waggons to enter and leave the fields, and on its border stands a great wood-pile. The faggots cut in the winter from the hedges are here stacked up as high as the roof of a cottage, and near by lies a heap of ponderous logs waiting to be split for firewood. From exposure to the weather the bark of the faggot-sticks has turned black and is rapidly decaying, and under it innumerable insects have made their homes.

For these, probably, the wrens visit the wood-pile continually; if in passing anyone strikes the faggots with a stick, a wren will generally fly out on the opposite side. They creep like mice in between the faggots—there are numerous interstices—and thus sometimes pass fight through a corner of the stack. Sometimes a pole which has been lying by for a length of time is found to be curiously chased, as it were, all over the surface under the loose bark by creeping things. They eat channels interweaving and winding in and out in an intricate pattern, occasionally a little resembling the Moorish style of ornamentation seen on the walls of the Alhambra. I have found poles so curiously carved like this that the idea naturally occurred of using them for cabinet work. They might at least have supplied a hint for a design. Besides the wrens, many other birds visit the wood-pile—sparrows are perpetually coming, and on the retired side towards the meadow the robins build their nests. On the ridge where some of the sticks project the swallows often perch and twitter—generally a pair seem to come together.