Part 3

Though kestrels, unhappily, are still brought to the gallows, with the barn-owl and other creatures innocent of injury to game, keepers grow more discriminating in the matter of vermin. Education has had its effect--it has taught the men to think, and to act according to reason rather than convention. The old men remain obstinate, and we remember how vainly we wasted an hour's good argument on one old fellow who seemed to hold badgers chiefly responsible for his ruined game-nests. It was at a keepers' dinner, an annual entertainment given by the Hunt. Only one badger remained out of a colony that formerly had inhabited our friend's preserves; and he expressed a firm intention of "fetching her hout on it." In a rash moment he went so far as to declare that he would prefer three litters of fox cubs to one of badgers. Overhearing this, the Hunt secretary made a good point by saying: "Very well, my friend; if you kill this badger, next time hounds come your way we shall expect to find at least three litters of cubs." It was notorious that every fox seen on this keeper's ground was, according to him, a mangy one and therefore "best put out of the way."

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Once Trapped, Twice Shy

Some creatures, after they have been trapped and have escaped, learn the lesson of their lives, and are never trapped again, while others find no moral at the end of their adventure, and live to adorn the gallows. It is very seldom that a rat is trapped twice. Scores escape from traps at the expense of a leg; this is a common matter, but a man may trap vermin for a lifetime and yet never catch a three-legged rat. Stoats, on the other hand, far less cunning than rats, are often trapped again after escaping with the loss of a foot. We have known a stoat trapped by its last remaining leg, after having been about for a long time on one leg and three stumps. A keeper who was at special pains to preserve the foxes on his ground was much upset by the way in which his neighbours killed them. One year his anxiety for his cubs was so great that he caught them all in weak gins--and released them. He knew that after this experience the cubs would never allow themselves to be again caught in a gin. On the same principle, keepers sometimes net and release their own partridges, hares and rabbits, to save them from falling into the meshes of poachers. In the ordinary way, the fox is never caught in a trap set for other vermin--or foxes would have been extinct years ago. If they could be trapped as easily as the ordinary cat, twenty-four hours would be enough for catching every fox in the country.

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Cunning Trappers

The skilled trapper, setting a baited trap for vermin, places it at such a distance from the bait that the creature he wishes to catch cannot reach the food without treading on the pan. Just when it can reach the prize is the moment when it is most likely to overstep the safety-line: desire overcomes suspicion. A fox, if so minded, can reach over the pan, and take the bait of a trap properly set for vermin, without risking a pad. Yet he seldom takes a bait: he detects the scent of man for a longer time than a trap is likely to remain unvisited. A keeper with an experience of more than twelve years vouches for it that though he used a hundred traps for vermin he never lost a bait through a fox, nor the Hunt a fox through a bait. But one keeper surpassed the cunning of the fox. A certain fox had troubled him greatly by too frequent visits to his poultry-run. He decided to attempt to trap it at the bottom of a chalk-pit near by, where the fox went to eat his suppers. Before setting his trap he sacrificed some half-dozen chickens on different days, with a two-fold object: in order to practise throwing a chicken from the top of the chalk-pit so that it should fall exactly where he desired, and in order to cause the fox to expect to find a meal in the pit. One fine day he set his trap. Then he bided his time until his scent should have passed away: and after four or five days he killed another chicken. Making his way to the top of the chalk-pit, he threw the chicken into a bush at the bottom, where the fox could reach it only by treading on the pan of the trap, which it did that night, at the cost of its life.

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The Time to Catch a Weasel

February is the month when it is fashionable for stoats and weasels to begin courting. The keeper finds the trapping of stoats or weasels less difficult work than usual in consequence. He maintains that all is fair in love, war, and gamekeeping. He relies chiefly on tunnel-traps. The old way was to fix a long, low, narrow box in a likely run--a box open at each end, but with shutters which dropped when a pan in the middle of the floor was touched by a weasel's feet; so the weasel would be caught alive, without injury--only, however, to be executed. Another old-time trap was the figure 4 trap, set with a heavy stone or slate, which fell upon and instantly killed its victim. These cumbersome and not always reliable traps have passed from the woodlands, and now the keeper merely slips a gin into the entrance of a tunnel. This is made sometimes of earth and sticks, or is a drain-pipe, or is made of three lengths of plank, about a yard long and six inches wide. A hole in a hedge-bank is a favourite place for the gin. These tunnel traps are commonly set a few yards from the end of a hedge, because stoats and weasels have a weakness for cutting corners.

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Changes of Coats

We have heard the suggestion many times that there are two varieties of the common weasel, but think this is not the case. The mistake no doubt arises from the marked difference in size between the males and females; the dog weasel is twice or sometimes three times the size of its sister, and is nearly as big as a small female stoat, while the dog weasel's sister may be hardly larger than a big mouse. Then the changes in the weasel's coat are deceptive. In spring a rusty red fur takes the place of the soft winter brown of the upper parts, while the white under-parts turn to a yellow tone. The ordinary brown of rats also changes to a striking rusty red shade in spring. This is most obvious in the case of rats living in burrows in soil, and often going short of food, and the rusty fur is specially marked on rats that have been feeding on carrion sheep and lambs. Shortness of food has the effect of prolonging the business of coat-changing, as is well seen in the case of a ferret kept on short commons. A white ferret is deep yellow in the spring before it has changed its coat. Stoats, too, show yellow on parts which will be white in the new coat.

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The Vermin Bag

We met, by chance, an old keeper who, on first acquaintance, seemed a remarkable specimen--for he informed us that his orders were to set not a single trap anywhere on his ten thousand acres. Thinking that we saw a movement of his eyelid, we put the blunt question to him: How many traps did he usually set? And he replied unblushingly, "Forty dozen." He kept no record of his bag of vermin; but as he trapped on such a wholesale scale (remembering that the estate is supposed to be trapless), no doubt his employer would be startled if he knew the numbers of vermin killed; his vermin bag must be exceptional. The old-fashioned keeper is stubborn; the kestrel, as we have said before, is seen too often on his gibbet, and he has no respect for the useful wood-owl, which he ruthlessly exterminates. A record of a year's bag of vermin on one big estate reads thus: Jays, 350; magpies, 160; crows, 150; squirrels, 140; weasels, 80; cats, 70; stoats, 60; hedgehogs, 40; hawks, 30; total, 1080. This record says nothing of rats, rooks or owls, though no doubt numbers of rats and rooks were sacrificed.

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The Ways of Squirrels

The gamekeeper whose bag of vermin in a year included 140 squirrels is, we may hope, exceptional. Squirrels are not always treated by keepers as vermin. Now and again a squirrel has been proved guilty of meddling with the eggs and young of pheasants--but so rarely that even keepers speak of these misdeeds as "not worth mentioning." The traditional crime of squirrels is that they damage various sorts of coniferous trees by nipping their shoots when young. Even if they gave this work all their time and attention, their numbers in the woods to-day are so small that the whole damage done would not amount to a very great injury to the country.

Squirrels are the most innocent creatures in the woods, so far as any harm to game preserving goes. It is their misfortune that many keepers look upon them as a convenient form of ferret-food. We have found a freshly killed squirrel, apparently the victim of a bird of prey, beneath a spruce fir, from which a barn owl flew as we examined the body; no doubt owls would take a chance to attack a squirrel. As to what squirrels kill there is little evidence. We have known a squirrel to do away with part of a brood of tits in an apple-tree, and one which visited a pheasant's nest, carrying away an egg, and once we saw a young pheasant in a squirrel's mouth; but we have no doubt that the bird was picked up dead. The squirrel's alarm-cry reminds us of the sound produced from the hole in the body of a rubber doll; it is amusing to see how he stamps his fore-feet while uttering this cry, as if doing his best to frighten away his human intruder by a show of force and fury.

Squirrels always seem to be among the happiest of wild animals. They have few foes, and none to equal their agility and speed in the tree branches. The stoat is a good climber, and if he were to attack the squirrel's nest there would be small chance for the young ones; but stoats rarely climb so high. In the bitterest weather the squirrel is secure in his drey; he dreams away the hard days, while around him birds and animals die of cold and hunger. His only trouble seems to be that hazel-nuts are sometimes blighted.

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The Squirrel's Appetite

We know an old keeper who believes that squirrels eat everything eatable in a wood, and that nothing does more damage to his interests. He reviles squirrels bitterly, saying that they steal as many of his precious eggs as rats; the eggs of small birds too, and, on occasion, nestlings. There seems no end to his accusations. He declares squirrels will take strawberries and apricots if they have the chance, and that they eat mushrooms and dig up truffles. A favourite food is supplied by the Scotch pine; though in hot weather larch, silver fir, and spruce are added in liberal quantities to the dietary. While he rejoices in hazel-nuts, beech-mast, acorns, and spruce-seeds, he is sometimes tempted by berries, walnuts, and apples. He eats freely off buds and young shoots, and peels the bark off trees--digging a spiral course with his teeth near the top of the tree, so that the first strong gale blows over the tree-top. It is the sweet stuff between bark and tree, rather than the bark itself, that attracts his fancy. In the spring he plays havoc with the tender shoots of the horse-chestnut, showering them on the ground; while he is so fond of acorns that he is accused even of pulling up young oak plants to devour the remains of the acorns below. But we doubt that one squirrel in ten inflicts serious injury on anybody.

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The Departure of Cats

We suppose that more cats disappear from the domestic hearth in February than in any other month. The gamekeeper may or may not know more about this than he will admit--it is certain that the cats go, and it is true that many of them turn up again. Whatever the February fate of the cat, the nearest keeper to its home bears the blame of having spirited it away. He may deny all--that he knows anything about the cat or its colour or its fate--but the more he denies the more strongly will he be suspected, the more furiously accused. One old keeper met all inquiries about the departure of cats with this sound piece of wisdom: "If ye makes 'em bide at 'ome, there won't be no need for wantin' 'em to come back."

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Skeletons and Cobwebs

New times give the keeper new excuses. Taxed with a cat's disappearance, he blames the motor-car; some day he will blame the flying-ship; where a railway is at hand he always has a ready excuse. We would be the last to suggest that when the mortal remains of a cat are found on a road frequented by motor-cars the presumption is always justified that the cat was slain by a keeper who endeavoured to put the blame on an innocent driver. We are confident that many cats in game-preserved places live to die from old age. Ten years is a ripe age for a cat, but some die from accidents more natural than execution or murder. Like the birds, when they know their hours to be numbered, cats creep away to some quiet hiding-place to await death--perhaps beneath the floor of an old barn, or among the rafters of a familiar roof, where they hunted rats and mice in youthful days.

Now and again, in old buildings, death-chambers are discovered where the skeletons of cats have been hidden among cobwebs and dust, perhaps for hundreds of years.

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The Persecuted Magpie

Magpies will soon be exterminated in many parts of the country unless they receive special protection. Like sparrow-hawks, the tribe suffers collectively for the sins of the individual. The ordinary magpie is no more harmful to the interests of game than the ordinary rook. His beauty, certainly, is far more striking. But he has been given a bad name; and magpies are destroyed on every possible occasion. The keeper finds the magpie only too easy to destroy, in spite of the bird's wonderful keenness of eye and his wary ways.

Magpies go year after year to the same huge, domed nest. The birds may be trapped a hundred times more easily than sparrow-hawks; and they may be shot without any difficulty, so slow, laboured and straight is their flight. An imitation of their call lures them unsuspiciously to their doom. Add that the plumage is showy, and it is clear that the thoughtless keeper finds magpies easy targets.

They are in demand as cage-birds, and even if a keeper should reprieve a few lingering pairs, he is likely to complain of "they bird fanciers," who "won't let the birds bide."

Like all of its tribe, the magpie attacks the eye of its victims, whether alive or dead. His taste is for carrion, and this accounts for the ease with which he may be trapped. Here the magpies differ from the hawks, which are seldom to be caught by a dead bait, unless killed by themselves--as when they have been disturbed after a kill and return to an unfinished feast. In trapping for magpies, the keeper ties a rabbit's eye to the pan of his trap, which he covers carefully with moss so that only the eye is visible; then the magpie swoops down; unerringly, and with great force, he drives his bill into the eye, and the trap holds him fast.

While usually building in high trees, some descend to thick bushes, and from this has arisen a popular idea that there are two sorts of magpies--bush and tree. The idea is hard to shake; and it is argued that the bush magpie is the smaller of the two. The nest is always fortified with strong and ugly thorns; marauding crows or rooks would attack it at their peril. Careful as they are to protect their own nests, magpies have small respect for the sanctity of other bird homes; but though they are inveterate egg-stealers, a good word is sometimes heard for their usefulness in destroying slugs, rats, and field-mice.

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The Merciful Trap

No solution has been found to the problem of a substitute for the steel trap for rabbits and vermin. So the steel trap remains a painful necessity, as those know who have tried to keep great numbers of rabbits within bounds. But steel traps are sometimes used where more merciful ways of catching rabbits might serve as well. Rabbit catchers who never think for themselves, but do things only because they have always done them, will use steel traps where they could save themselves much labour, and the rabbits a good deal of suffering, if they were to use snares. Several hundred snares can be set in the time it would take to set a hundred traps, and the snares cost little, and weigh next to nothing--a consideration when traps or snares have to be carried a long way. A few traps make a heavy load.

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The Rabbit in a Snare

Snares themselves are far from ideal. If they are properly set a good many rabbits may run into them at speed and kill themselves almost instantly; but the majority of the rabbits caught will not be thus neatly despatched. Half a night's catch may be found dead in the morning, some having been hanged outright, others strangled more or less slowly; but half will be found still living, if nearly dead. This slow strangulation is prevented when a knot is made in the snare, or some sort of ring or washer is attached, so that the wire cannot be drawn tight enough to prevent the rabbit breathing; but no rabbit then is killed swiftly and mercifully by the wire, and on other accounts the plan could not prove a real solution to the problem. There is still another way of setting a snare which prevents a slow death: a bender--a springy stick of hazel or ash about four feet long--is fixed firmly in the ground: the snare is made fast to the thin top of it, the stick is bent down, and the top lightly inserted at the edge of the rabbit's run. When a rabbit then rushes into the snare, the bender flies up, swinging him off his feet, so that he is killed quickly. This is a poacher's dodge to prevent rabbits from squealing when caught: it can be practised only in an open place. There are many situations where the steel trap is the only means of dealing with the rabbit pest, and must be used perforce until a substitute is found--unless man is to give way to rabbits. We do not think that any gamekeeper uses steel traps for rabbits unnecessarily.

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The Sleep of Birds

The gamekeeper perhaps sees more of sleeping birds than most people; and makes many interesting mental notes of the resting habits of creatures in his woods. He observes that perch-roosting birds always rest with their heads to the wind. If when a high wind is blowing a rook alights on the home-tree, he swings his head into the wind before settling. So when the wood-pigeons come home with the wind behind them they pass over their roosting trees, then beat up into the wind. This is done to defeat the force of the wind, which might prevent the bird alighting where desired, or might blow him from his perch. At rest, the bird doubles the knees, as it were, which causes the toes to contract, the weight of the body resting chiefly on the breast and on the outspread wings--not on the eggs, if in a nest. The birds' legs and feet have sinews which work an automatic locking action of the claws, so that, roosting with knees doubled up, the feet grip the branch unfailingly. On rough nights, the pheasants take the precaution of roosting in lower branches than usual. If a strong gale springs up after a bird has gone to roost on an exposed tree, it may be driven to seek a berth on the ground--and to the wind that does no good to the pheasant the passing fox owes his supper.

Some birds seem always half-awake. Wild-fowlers will strike a match at night to test the question of the presence or absence of wild duck in the distant creek; if present, an instant quacking will betray them. Pheasants seem ever vigilant, and on the darkest night it is difficult to stalk them unawares, however quietly you move. If you come within a hundred yards of guinea-fowl at night they will raise the alarm. They excel at talking in their sleep. Sparrow catchers know that directly their nets touch one part of an ivy-covered wall birds fly out from another. But some birds, such as the wrens when cuddling in a hole in the thatch, seem to sleep soundly. And while we have found that on striking a match beneath a tree where wild pigeons were roosting they have flown out at once with a clatter of wings, a pigeon-lover in London informs us that his city birds, roosting on his window-ledge, lose their wariness by night, and will hold their own in face of a candle, while a hand is outstretched to touch their necks.

As the day closes in, the partridges seek some sheltered, dry-lying hollow in the fields, and a covey of twenty birds will huddle on a spot a yard in diameter. The colder the weather the closer they roost. The birds on the edge of the ring have their breasts outwards. Sometimes, by the way, it is unfortunate for partridges and pheasants that the positions of their nests prevent them from flying to and fro. Having to force their way through tangled undergrowth, a trail is left for the fox to follow home. The barn-door fowl, in captivity, may walk from her nest; but when in possession of a stolen nest abroad, she resumes the flying habit. Fowls suffer frequently from deformed breast-bones, perhaps from roosting when their bones are young and soft. That they and their cocks are not heavy sleepers most people have cause to know.

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Animals at Rest

Wild animals asleep fall into graceful attitudes. The fox curls himself up with all the luxurious air of a cat; he rests his head in the lap of two front pads, then twines his brush neatly round over his long, pointed nose. He is a light sleeper; but hares and rabbits are still more easily roused. We believe hares sleep with their eyes wide open; the uncapped lenses of the eyes remain active through sleep, so that any vision of danger conveys an automatic alarm to the brain. People are sometimes puzzled when, in open fields, they notice a dozen or more hare forms or beds within a few yards of each other. They may conclude that hares swarm in those fields. Probably the reason for the many forms is that a hare likes to face the wind when sleeping, and so scratches out many beds to suit the wind's changing directions. Among animals that sleep very soundly is the hedgehog--he has little to fear when asleep; in case of danger, he has only to erect his spines, to discourage effectively any disturber of his dreams. While hedgehogs, dormice, and badgers sleep deeply through the greater part of the winter, the squirrel is the lightest of sleepers; on dry, bright winter days he enjoys a frolic in the snow.

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Vigilant Fulfers

It is commonly held that fieldfares roost on the ground; yet we never remember to have disturbed them when roosting in that way, but have often done so in the woods, in which they had favourite parts. They come to the chosen haunt on the brink of darkness, after the habit of carrion crows, and they roost in companies apparently of twenty and thirty on the older growths of underwood. At all times the fieldfares are wide awake, and they never fail to take wing and utter their throaty chuckle on the slightest provocation.

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The Eyes of Wild Creatures