Part 9
If one thing annoys a keeper more than another, it is to have foxes turned down on his beat without warning. It is bad enough that foxes should be turned down at all--especially before the young pheasants have learned the trick of going into the trees to roost. Most of the pheasants living in and about the woods should go to roost by the middle of August, and only late birds may be excused if they have not acquired the roosting habit by the First. In the past the keeper was relieved of a load of anxiety if all his hand-reared birds went to tree by the First--for with the long days spent in the partridge fields he was unable to watch over his pheasants at night. But in these days, when there is so little partridge shooting in early September, the keeper has more time to give to his pheasants, and his anxieties are less, though he is always glad when his birds take to roosting out of the reach of vermin, especially of foxes--tame or wild.
Given a fair chance young pheasants soon learn to go to a perch to sleep. Where one sets a good example, others quickly follow. We remember a partridge that was reared with pheasants, and learned to go with them regularly to roost. Five-weeks-old pheasants will flutter up to roost on the first night after removal to covert. It is less difficult to induce them to seek a perch than to break them of the habit of sleeping on the ground. Pheasants have an eye rather for comfortable sleeping quarters than safe ones. Many a keeper has suffered heavy loss from putting his birds in a covert with a thick grassy undergrowth, or within reach of a field of rough grass, or a young plantation with a thick growth of rank herbage and attractive weeds. There the fox is most likely to come.
Ideal quarters for the birds, when the time comes to shift them from the rearing-field to the coverts, is ground bare of brambles, fern, and grass, where oak saplings throw out horizontal branches--not too thick--a few feet from the ground. With his young birds in such a place, the keeper may lie on his bed in peace and thankfulness--to dream of the harvest of his toil, a harvest which needs but a fine November day and straight powder to be garnered in abundance. Where the ground is unfavourable the keeper will try to teach his birds the roosting habit; one plan is to put the hen and her coop on a raised platform. This lessens any risk the hen may have to run from vermin, and encourages her brood to fly to the roost.
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The Badger's Stealth
A badger may come to a neighbourhood and stay for a long while unnoticed. He prowls at night, unseen and unsuspected, and people may suppose there is no badger within miles. In the same way otters are at home in many a stream where nobody dreams there is an otter in the neighbourhood. But let the badger's presence be discovered, and he will be persecuted to the end. The wise badger shifts his tent at once if a human nose is poked into it; all badgers would profit if they went to the fox for a few wrinkles. The foxes have a maxim: Never be at home to callers who may come again. A visiting-card, in the shape of a particle of scent, is more than enough acquaintance for a fox with a human being.
Even the gamekeeper often harbours a badger unknowingly. What he does not suspect he does not look for. And if he were to look for a month for signs of a badger he might never find one. Again and again he might pass within sight of a badger's holt, and think it to be the retreat of a fox. But by chance he might come upon a clear imprint of a badger's tracks, and after that it would not take him long to discover the badger's lair. While not a friend of the badger, he has no such bitter resentment against him as he feels for the fox. If it were not that the badger every now and then commits an outrage that brings disgrace on himself and all his kith and kin, the record of his life might be written down as fairly harmless. In these days the badger can make small claim as a provider of sport, which might mitigate the sentence most keepers pass upon him.
We knew of a badger who lived in peace, his presence unsuspected, for many long months. Then a series of mysterious poultry massacres began to disturb the district, and sometimes a dozen chickens and ducklings would be slain in one night. Some said fox, others dog; strange stories of ghosts spread abroad; it was even hinted that a wolf had been imported by mistake with foreign foxes. But one day tracks were seen that were not the tracks of fox, dog, or wolf, and a trail of feathers led to the discovery of a hidden draw-out. The badger was evicted and summarily shot.
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To Attract Bullfinches
The bullfinch is not always made welcome when he comes to gardens at the time of fruit-buds. And there are seasons and places in which he would be welcomed--but comes not. We know a way to attract bullfinches, even to gardens in towns. You should take from a hedge-side a few plants of the wild geranium, and set them in your town garden--bullfinches are wonderfully fond of their seeds. We have known the birds to find out the geranium plants in a town garden where bullfinches had never been seen before. To this garden they would come regularly, but always in the early morning. They are cheerful feeders--they live on insects and larvæ, as well as on many kinds of seeds and berries, in the spring feeding their young on seeds which have been carefully softened.
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Bird Warnings
Prominent among the birds that mob the barn-owl when he flies forth by day are jays and blackbirds. They are the noisiest, and to the gamekeeper the most useful of all the sentinels of the wood. A sudden hubbub from blackbirds and jays always has a meaning. If the birds are flying high it is a sign that the barn-owl is on the move--if low, the gamekeeper's thoughts fly to a poaching cat. A cat can hardly move a yard in a wood without a blackbird crying the alarm. His excited notes, suggesting the sound of the words "Flint, flint," are taken up by all the blackbirds within call, and soon the cat is besieged by a throng, and so closely that the keeper can follow pussy's direction, though she remains unseen. And the blackbirds give warning of the movements of stoats and weasels. The wren, too, is a lively and vigilant sentinel, and from its movements one may determine within a yard where the stoat is lurking. Jays, by their screams, give prompt warning that a fox is on the prowl, and no human trespasser, in pursuit of game or otherwise, can hope to escape their attentions. A lively reception awaits the fox moving in a wood by day, and his progress may be marked through the length of a big covert by the agitated way in which the cock pheasants mount the trees, with warning "cock-up." In the open the peewits will gather to swoop and swerve in anger and defiance above the fox's head.
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A Rabbit's Fates
There was a small rabbit in our woods who might have congratulated himself on two wonderful escapes from death. We first made his acquaintance in a quiet by-lane, and just in time to drive away a stoat that was loping swiftly along on his trail. A little rabbit is pathetic in fear, and instinctively one is angered against the stoat which would take its life--though the stoat's teeth represent the natural weapon of rabbit destruction. The rabbit fled on his way--directly towards a motor-car coming at speed round a corner. He darted to one side, escaping the wheels by the fur of his tail, then foolishly turned across the road, and again escaped the wheels by a miracle. We wondered whether the fate thus avoided would have been easier than the one delayed--no doubt soon after the stoat's teeth bit home in the tender neck.
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Game-Birds and Motors
We have seen a motor-car drive right over a covey of young partridges as they dusted themselves on a road, leaving half a dozen victims behind it. But motors are not entirely opposed to game interests. The dust they scatter on roadside hedges greatly helps the hiding nests. Then the frequent passing of cars along country roads is certainly a deterrent to the poacher; the shooting man in his car takes note of doubtful-looking tramps and gipsies, and can spread a swift warning to keepers or police. Even the smells of the car are a disguised blessing, overpowering the scent of the sitting bird, and so, no doubt, often preventing a dog from finding a roadside nest. The motor has sent up the value of many inaccessible shooting properties by eliminating distance. It may be useful to a shooting party when cartridges have come to an end, or at the close of a day for transporting game speedily to the station, or at any time for bringing a doctor when the bag has been enriched by the addition of a gamekeeper.
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Mysteries of the Nightjar
On a midsummer night, in an old wood, the crooning of the nightjar, with its whirring, vibrant, monotonous notes, now rising, now falling in key, seems the ideal of lullaby. The beautiful night-flying swallow suffers for an evil reputation. It is a bird of mystery.
The nightjar is the last of our summer visitors, coming about the middle of May to stay until September. It is known almost the world over, but few understand its ways; birds of the night suggest evil doings and inspire superstition. The plumage has the rich, quiet beauty of the woodcock and the hen pheasant, and the feathers have the softness of the owl's. In build the bird comes between a large swift and a small hawk, and is suggestive of swift or swallow when seen close at hand, with its miniature, hawk-like bill and a mouth surprisingly capacious when open. The eggs, like the swift's, are rounded at the ends.
It is commonly called night-hawk, or dor-hawk, because it preys on dor-beetles, and it is fern-owl, because it haunts the bracken fern. It is night-crow, because when on the wing it cries a crowing note, "crow-ic," and it is jar-owl, because of its owl-like love of night and its jarring or churring song. Wheel-bird is a name derived from the wheeling flight. Other names are churn-owl, eve-churr, and night-churr; but the oldest and one of the most familiar names is goat-sucker, derived from the legend that the bird sucks milk from goats, thereby poisoning them and causing blindness. Probably some one saw the bird near a goat, did not know what it was, or anything about it, and invented the goat-sucking myth.
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The Razor-grinder
Another bit of folk-lore about the nightjar is that it gave calves a disease called puckeridge; and on this account country folk still call this innocent but unfortunate bird the puckeridge. The disease, in fact, was caused by an insect which laid eggs on the backs of cattle, whence emerged grubs to cause the skin to pucker. The nightjar may often be seen wheeling about cattle, for the reason, no doubt, that the animals attract insects and disturb moths. Possibly for the same reason the nightjar, instead of flying away from human beings, will flit near about, keeping just in front of a walking man. Among other curious names is "razor-grinder." We met a countryman who only knew the nightjar by this name, derived from the noise made by itinerant razor-grinders at work.
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A Ventriloquist
Perched lengthwise on a low branch or rail, the nightjar gives to its churring a ventriloquial effect by turning its head while it croons. Though the crooning is monotonous, it varies in key, loudness, and duration; while the occasional cry, "crow-ic, crow-ic," reminds one of the cry of moorhens and tawny owls. As the bird flies, the snapping of the beak may be heard as a sharp click, whether it is snapped over a moth, or by way of showing resentment at one's presence--young wood-pigeons and doves snap in the same way if disturbed in the nest. The bird has marvellous control of its flight, and has a way of poising itself in the air with the wings meeting above the back, like the wings of the dove in a Scripture-book picture. The serrated claw on the middle toe is probably used for catching prey, and for clearing away fragments that cling round the gaping mouth; while the long bristles that grow from the jaws entangle moths as in a net, as the bird flies with mouth wide open. It finds good hunting among oak-trees, and is especially fond of several of the many insects that chiefly haunt the oaks.
The nightjar is among the nestless birds, and is content to lay its two eggs on the ground. When hatched the young are covered with down like young peewits, and they grow at an amazing rate. An old nightjar, when disturbed from its young, will go through a despairing performance, flitting to a low branch near by, and flapping or wringing its wings in a disconsolate manner, as though to say, "Please go away--please _do_ go away!" The old bird seems to know how helpless is the position of the young ones if once discovered by a foe. But it is never easy to pick out the young birds from their surroundings, while the mother bird on her nest is as good as invisible.
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The Cock and the Hen
Not all familiar with partridges know how to distinguish the cocks from the hens by the few minute differences in plumage. In flight the birds are so alike in size that it is impossible to tell them apart--unless, perhaps, they are in pairs, and one goes away ahead of the other on being put up, when the cock may be the hindmost bird. The usual test of sex is the chestnut horseshoe of the breast. The cocks display a fine bright horseshoe badge, while the hens have a few chestnut spots on a whitish ground. However, some insist that this test is not always infallible. One to be trusted absolutely, so far as we know, is the striking difference in the lesser and median wing coverts. In each case there is a light buff stripe down the shaft; but the cock's feathers have a chestnut stain which is lacking in the hen's feathers, while the hen's feathers have zigzag buff cross-bars (of the same hue as the shaft stripe), which are lacking in the cock's feathers. There are other differences which the experienced eye sees at once; and there are differences also in the neck feathers. In the adult cock they are grey, with no shaft stripe; in the hen they are brown, with a light shaft stripe. The age of birds is to be determined to a certain extent quite simply. Those with bright yellow legs are birds of the year. Those with their first pen-feathers rounded are more than a year old, for in the young birds these feathers are pointed at the tip.
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On Finding Feathers
To be able to name the different sorts of feathers to be picked up on any woodland walk is an interest like that of the knowledge of flowers, which allows one to give each wayside blossom its name. The gamekeeper may put by the more beautiful feathers he finds for presents to his friends. The jay is killed for an egg-thief, but his blue and black wing is borne afterwards to church on the hat of a village maiden. The keeper has an appreciative eye for the burnished metallic hues of the feathers of cock pheasants of every kind. What greatly pleases him is to point out to the ignorant the existence of those two peculiar feathers in the wings of woodcock--the tiny, stiff, pointed feathers, growing close against the base of the first flight feather's shaft in each wing. These he could pick out in the dark by sense of touch. They are to be found in snipe's wings--in which they are lighter in colour, and even more minute--and in other birds, but it would be difficult to say what particular purpose they serve beyond a finish or covering for the exposed edge of the first flight feather. An unwritten law entitles the shooter of a woodcock to these particular feathers, and formerly the etiquette of sport allowed him to wear them in reasonable numbers in his hat. To-day one may sometimes see them in the hard hat of the poulterer. Painters in olden times appreciated the stiff points of the feathers for delicate work. And there was an agent on a Scotch shoot whereon woodcock are plentiful who maintained the national reputation for thrift by using the feathers as nibs for writing. But we suspect he did more woodcock shooting than quill-driving.
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When the Dog's Asleep
Rats are marvellously cunning, they never fail to seize an opportunity and make the best of it. They are as bold as cunning, and take desperate risks; but no doubt they know their own powers. The cunning and the boldness of rats are made evident when one is seen eating the crumbs of a biscuit beside a sleeping dog. Rats soon find out that where there is a dog in a kennel there will be food--not crumbs only, but an assortment of bones, and many a tit-bit, despised by a fastidious dog, from that comprehensive dish, household scraps. It is strange to watch a rat stealing a feast within a few inches of a sleeping terrier--the very rat for whose blood the terrier has wearied himself by scratching at a hole for the greater part of the day. Should the dog wake up and dash for his enemy, the rat coolly darts beneath the kennel. It is a thousand to one against the dog catching the thief.
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A Story of Rats
Keepers as a class have no love for rats; but there is one keeper who regards all rats with the deadliest loathing, on account of a little experience. He had taken a new berth, and arrived at the cottage which was to be his home some days in advance of his wife, taking bread, a ten-pound cheese, and a cask of beer, on which to subsist until the more luxurious days of his wife's coming. Having found that the outgoing keeper had carried off the front-door key, he brought his most valuable possessions into his bedroom, including the bread, cheese, and beer. Thoroughly tired with his journey and his unpacking, he slept so well through the first night that some mysterious sounds, as in a dream, failed to rouse him. On awakening, he discovered that rats had paid a call, and had eaten every particle of the bread and of the ten-pound cheese. They had even assaulted the bung of the beer-barrel, happily for them and for the keeper without success. During the first three months of his residence this keeper killed no fewer than 600 rats in and about his old-fashioned cottage.
Thinking of the rats who assaulted the beer-barrel reminds us of the story of a clever rat that drank from a wine-bottle by first inserting, then licking, his tail. Rats are so cunning that one can believe almost anything told of them. They suffer, at times, terribly from thirst. There is no doubt that a dry breeding season means a small crop of rats, which seems to support the theory that when hard pressed by thirst larger rats kill the little ones for the sake of their blood. When feeding on corn, in ricks or barns, a spell of rainless weather means much suffering, even if dews compensate in some measure for the absence of water. If you would see rats at their merriest, watch a corn-stack on a summer evening when a shower has come after scorching days. In a little while a rustling will be heard, and the rats steal out to gulp the raindrops on the thatch and the herbage near by. We have seen a rat so thirsty that in spite of being driven back to his hole each time he appeared, every half-minute he would again attempt to reach a farm-yard puddle. A farmer who shot at one rat killed no fewer than seven, which had crowded to drink from a wayside pool.
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Blood and Water
We have a cat which, when thirsty, sometimes drinks from an open tub, balancing herself on the edge. When the water is too low for lapping she will dip a front paw and lick off the water in delicate and dainty fashion. Bloodthirsty creatures require deep drinks: stoats and weasels go often to water. But creatures which feed on green-stuffs seldom drink water directly, but in the shape of dew, or the moisture of their food. Sheep, when feeding off root-crops in autumn and winter, have little need of water, and rabbits and hares are not great drinkers. Partridges are among many birds that may drink only of raindrops or dew, or quench their thirst with juicy seeds or insects. Dry summers always mean plenty of partridges--yet one hears, each dry summer, that partridges are dying in numbers from drought. It is rather the absence of moisture-supplying insects that is fatal to the birds.
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The Untimely Opening
Midsummer Day might be marked as the partridge's birthday, since the majority of birds are hatched about that time--a month later than the majority of pheasants break their shells. People are sometimes puzzled when they realise that pheasants are preserved for two months longer than partridges. The reason, of course, is that pheasants mature slowly, and partridges quickly. But are partridges given fair grace? We think not--and would advocate a later opening day for partridge-shooting. Not a partridge of the year is matured on September 1, in size, or strength of flight, or endurance. The young birds are still in the drab-feather stage; their legs are bright yellow, an infallible token of youthfulness; and it is rare, before October, to find one with the horseshoe chestnut feathers on its breast, or with rufous head--the signs of maturity. The heavy toll taken on small shoots during the first fortnight of September is not only unfair, but unwise, and often fatal to the good prospects of future seasons. Another mistake commonly made is the shooting of too many hares in September. Many of the does are still suckling leverets; and does, that breed for the most part in the fields, form a large proportion of the hares met with in September partridge shooting.
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'Ware Wire
Wire netting is the cause of many a tragedy to young pheasants. One may see it stretching for miles on the fringe of woods as a fence against rabbits. Suppose a hen pheasant, with her brood, has been making an excursion to the fields. She comes to the wire and finds her return passage barred. Seeing that most of her little ones have wriggled through the meshes, the mother flies over, and goes on. But as often as not she leaves behind her one or two chicks, and these the flower of her flock--for they are the ones so well grown as to be just too large to pass through the meshes. Sooner or later, after fluttering to find a loophole, the little necks become caught, and after a few frantic struggles the chicks hang themselves. Or night comes on, and some prowling vermin saves them from a slow death by exhaustion through their vain efforts.
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Witless Pheasants
Pheasants, beside partridges, are stupid mothers: nor have young pheasants anything like the common sense of young partridges. The mother partridge is the most careful mother, and by example soon teaches her young ones to use their wings. One hears the old partridges calling all through the day to their young; but the little pheasants must fight their own battles with less encouragement, and look after themselves. One may see a hen pheasant leading her brood towards a dike, over which it is obvious they are not strong enough to pass. But without a look to see if they follow her or not, she flits across; then, finding that a few are with her, having managed the passage, she hurries on, as if she had not a thought for those left behind. They do their best to follow, only to fall into the water, in which they are drowned, or, if the dike is dry, to become exhausted in their vain efforts to scale the steep sides.
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Nature's Laws