Part 6

In June, 1901, when the river-bed had been further filled up and the pools transformed into a muddy swamp, we were able from our windows to watch a brood of peewit chicks from the time when they were first hatched until they were old enough to go out into the world. They were most interesting when as quite little things with backs the colour of the eggs they had left, they busily hunted about for food, or all crowded together under the wings of their mother for short spells of rest and warmth.

Snipe breed in the Bollin meadows, and common sandpipers were always by the river and the river-bed as long as there was any water at all in it, always at least in August. They still seem to remember their old haunts, and visit us occasionally. In the latter part of August, 1910, there was one that had some feathers out of place in one of its wings and appeared unable to fly. He seemed content enough and I wondered if he would try to face the winter here, but whether by his own act and deed, or by someone else's, he had gone when I looked for him in September. In August, 1911, a sandpiper used to frequent a pit in fields a good way from the river.

In April and May, 1910, a pair of redshanks were constantly to be seen in the Bollin meadows towards Dunham, but no nest was found. In 1911 they were there again, and the keeper found a nest not far from the Fox-cover, but I think he must have told too many of his friends about it, for within a week of the eggs being hatched it was deserted.

I very well remember a good many years ago, though I can find no note of the exact year, that I saw a black tern flying backwards and forwards like a swallow over a wet spot in the corner of the garden, and the next day I saw what was probably the same bird flying in the same way over a large farmyard pit close by the road, about a mile from here.

Since the Ship Canal has been opened gulls have been among the most frequent and the most noticeable of all birds in these parts. Whenever a field is ploughed up, however far it may be from the canal, there you are sure to find gulls, and when the plough is at work in the fields opposite, which are close to its banks, the gulls come in crowds and form one long white line as the furrows are turned, the birds continually rising before the plough and settling down again when it has passed. I have identified black-headed and lesser black-backed gulls among them, but have never attempted to decide to what species the majority belong. Indeed, I do not feel very competent to do so, having always found it sufficiently difficult to distinguish the variations of gull plumage at different ages and at different times of the year.

In 1908 the keeper (Mr. J. Porter) showed me a Bohemian waxwing, a hooded crow and a hobby, all of which he had shot in Warburton within a year or two previously.

He has told me since of stockdoves ("blue rocks" he calls them) nesting here, and a curious story of a wren's nest on an ash-stump in the Fox-cover in 1910, on the top of which a hedgesparrow built her nest. Both broods, he said, hatched about the same time.

I have received from a friend in Northamptonshire (Mr. G. S. Garrett, of Little Houghton) a photograph showing a similar instance of two nests built one above the other. He says: "A piece of bark about 20 inches by 13, fell off an elm tree into a fence and dried up into a tube-like shape. A spotted flycatcher built its nest in the top and laid 5 eggs and a brown wren in the bottom laying 7 eggs.... The nests are now in the Rochester Museum."

X.

BRITISH MAMMALS.

The whole extent of the garden, with its croft and orchard, is not three acres, but a fair proportion of the British mammals are from time to time to be found there.

The old church, largely built of timber, picturesque and quaint, stands within a few yards of the house and its roof affords shelter to many bats. We find the wings of moths, the remnants of their feasts, scattered on the floor (I have noticed the wings of a tortoise-shell butterfly among them), and I have found there more than one dead body of a common bat; I cannot say whether that is the only kind we have, but in 1908 a bat was seen near the house which, from the description given of its size and manner of flight, may perhaps have been a noctule.

On May 28th, 1899, there was an eclipse of the sun; it was only partial, and made very little difference to the light, but just so long as it lasted, from 3 to 4.30 p.m., I saw a bat flying busily round and about the church.

The soil is light and worms seem to be abundant, but one hardly ever sees a mole-hill in this part of Cheshire. One day, however, in December, 1899, we noticed that a bed of parsley had withered in a mysterious way, and when we came to look, the ground was quite undermined with mole-runs. These were very shallow, and there was no sign of a hillock above. Many of the roots of the parsley had been entirely eaten off, and we saw that nearly all that remained in the bed were full of grubs. These grubs it must have been, I suppose, that attracted the mole, but it is curious that such an exceptional condition of the roots should have been discovered, considering how seldom there is any sign of a mole in the neighbourhood. We noticed that the root of a strong raspberry cane on one side of the parsley bed had been eaten off in the same way, but it is not very likely that this would have had grubs in it.

Hedgehogs are not uncommon and we sometimes see them in broad daylight. In July one year (1900) every evening for about a week we used to see a large hedgehog running along a broad gravel walk close to the windows of the house. It came always at the same time, "just at the edge of dark," as they say here, and it always took the same route and disappeared at the same place.

Later on in the month we found a young one, a most delightful little animal, as friendly and tame as possible. We used to feed him with milk every day as long as he stayed here, which was about a week, and once when we expected some boys in the garden we brought him into the house and put him in a box. He strongly objected to the imprisonment, loudly protesting all the time in a voice like the squeaking of a rat, and it was surprising to see how nearly he managed to get out, though the sides of the box were almost two feet high.

Stoats, commonly called weasels with us, were fairly common when we had more rats and rabbits, but we do not often see one now (1912). We had a white terrier that killed several, though I had an idea that dogs looked on stoats as a kind of ferret and did not hurt them.

We can count a fox among our occasional visitors. I have watched one for some time that was smelling about among the shrubs just opposite to the front door about eight o'clock on a Sunday morning.

We are out of the regular beat of the Cheshire Hounds here, and I fancy the secret slaying of a fox is not accounted a very heinous crime, certainly the foxes that are often reported soon disappear. In 1899 a fox had its "earth" in the Abbey Croft, a field next to the garden, and we used to like to hear him barking in the still summer evenings. In the end, however, the keepers were too many for him, and he had to shift his quarters or else it may have been his lease of life ran out.

We suffered very much at one time from the plague of rats. They infested the out-buildings and the house itself, and for a long while we were in despair about them. We tried poison, with the result that dead rats made the kitchen uninhabitable and entailed the expense and nuisance of taking up the floor, and still they came. We tried every kind of trap, we had the whole of the outside walls examined, and every possible entrance hole stopped, so at least we thought, but still they came. At last we found that the simple expedient of doing away with the ashpit deprived the premises of their chief attraction in a rat's eyes, for then we had to burn on the kitchen fire all the vegetable and other refuse that formerly found its way to the ashpit, and provided such abundant and appetizing food. Certain it is that since we did this, more than twelve years ago now (1912), we never have had a rat in the house.

I have heard of large young fowls being killed by rats at farms not far away, but I do not remember that they ever took one of our chickens; indeed, at a time when we used to see many rats there, a hen sat in the stable and safely hatched her chicks. I recollect an old rat that used to come every day to feed with the fowls without any objection to his presence on their part.

Rabbits were another great nuisance. They had burrows among the tree-roots on the river bank and no one seemed able to get them out or to shoot them, so between what they ate and what they dug up, we hadn't much pleasure in the garden. At last we cut off so much of the garden as we could surround with wire netting and left the rest to take its chance. No sooner had we done this than, for what reason I cannot tell, the rabbits disappeared completely, and for two or three years we hardly ever saw one on our own ground, though they seemed to be as plentiful as usual elsewhere.

We have sometimes caught long-tailed field-mice that were eating the peas, and the cats seemed to find voles and shrews pretty often.

I must confess to rather a weakness for common mice; they are pretty to look at and amusing in their ways. To give an instance of their ingenuity and enterprise, I remember some time in the summer of 1899, when we used to have a basin of sugar left in our room at night, a certain mouse appeared to think that it was placed there for his own special benefit, at any rate he was accustomed to help himself very freely to it. We could hear him working away to get a lump over the side of the basin, then rolling it along to the edge of the table and letting it fall to the floor, along which he would again roll it to a hole under the skirting-board. Sometimes he would take in this way as many as three or four lumps of sugar in one night. Besides the sugar there was often bread and butter left in the room between two plates, and one morning when I took the top one off out jumped the mouse. I cannot imagine how it got in. It certainly couldn't make its way out again, which one should have thought a far easier thing to do. The plates seemed to be exactly as I had left them the night before, and I could not see that any of the bread and butter had been eaten.

I remember what seems to me an extraordinary instance of a mouse's power of smelling out food. In the new parish church here (consecrated in 1885) the vestry is in the tower, and its ceiling, which is the floor of the bellringing-room, must be nearly 20 ft. from the ground. Just under this ceiling were suspended at one time three very long texts; they were drawn up by pulleys with a rope that was fastened off about six feet from the floor. One of these texts was used at harvest festivals, and a fringe of corn had been left round the border, but all three were elaborately done up together in brown paper, so that none of the corn could be seen. Happening to be at the church one day I found the caretaker had brought out these texts into the churchyard, because he had seen, he said, a mouse running up to them by the suspending cord. Sure enough, when he undid the wrapping the poor little thing was there, and I am sorry to say was promptly killed. I thought its wonderful cleverness deserved a better fate. The church was newly built with concrete floors, and there was no regular food supply to attract mice, so this particular mouse must have come in casually on the mere chance of picking up something, and it must from the floor, nearly 20 ft. below, have found out that there was corn in one of the bundles of texts behind the brown paper that covered them, and I think more wonderful still, it must have discovered the only way of reaching it, along the suspending cord.

There used to be an old piano in the Parish Room close to the new church. This was not often used and one day when we lifted the cover from the back part of the keyboard we found snugly placed in a corner of the bass notes an empty mouse's nest, quite round like a bird's, and beautifully made of dried bits of grass and coloured worsted. It seems strange that a mouse should have found such a place for its nest, and stranger still that in a new large bare room, with a solid wood-block floor, it should have been able unobserved to go in and out continually to fetch the materials for it. This it must have done, since none came from the room itself.

The long broad garden walk by the side of the house seems to be a favourite thoroughfare for hares; we constantly see them passing at all times of the year. I wish myself there were not quite so many hares in Warburton as there are. We could do very well with fewer in the gardens and orchards, and there would then be less inducement to hold such frequent public coursing meetings, which, in my opinion, we could do very well without. Some years before 1900 a large number were imported and turned down. These were at first a great annoyance to everybody, and did much damage to fruit trees even in mild open weather; it was almost unbelievable the height to which they could reach, gnawing off every bit of bark all the way round. They were, besides, far too thick upon the ground for their own comfort. I was told by a man who worked on the estate that he often came across bucks fighting together; they fought so savagely, he said, that they would hardly get out of his way, and almost knocked up against him. They begin fighting, it appears from his account, by giving slaps with their forefeet, but in the end they go on to worry at one another like dogs.

XI.

DOGS AND CATS.

It is hard to say which is the most wonderful, to see how a dog's intelligence can be developed by companionship with man or to look at a Great Dane and a toy terrier together, and to remember that both breeds have by man's agency been produced from the same original stock.

Cats, on the other hand, have never left their wild nature far behind, and can easily return to it, as indeed they often do. Dogs are almost entirely dependent on their human friends, but most cats do something for their living, and some without going wild will find all their own food. I remember one cat in particular that did this; she was an old cat when first I came, and lived on with me for more than fourteen years. As long as she was strong and able to hunt she never came into the house and never asked for food (she was tame enough when she met us out of doors) it was only when she got to be old and feeble that she turned to us and learnt to value the warmth of a fireside. She must have been 20, and may well have been nearer 25 when she died, and her great age showed itself plainly by every outward sign. In her prime she was a large, handsome animal, but she dwindled down to absolute skin and bone literally; her face lost all its roundness and got to be quite small and her voice died almost completely away. Towards the last she spent her days on one particular stool by the fire, eating very little, but apparently content and even happy, and responding as best as she could to any attention. I do not remember her ever lying down at that time, she was always sitting and always on the same spot, which was worn quite shiny in consequence. At last one day she failed to appear, and we never found her body.

The oddest cat we ever had was a black one that came to us of her own accord in 1881. She had such a vile temper and was altogether so uncanny that she might well have been possessed by an evil spirit.

When she had been with us only a few days, I found her hanging on to the wire-netting of an outhouse door, evidently trying to get some pigeons that she could see behind it. Very soon afterwards another cat was drowned for persistently taking pigeons, and it really seemed as if Blacky understood, for never after that did she look at a pigeon with evil intent; she would walk through a number of them as they fed on the ground, and so little did they fear her that they hardly moved out of her way.

We had a canary once (and we must have had him for more than 10 years), whose noisy song was so distracting that we used sometimes to put him down on a table and cover his cage with a cloth. One day we went out and left him there, and must have forgotten to shut the room door, for when we came back we found the cover off the cage and the cat curled up fast asleep by the side of it. The canary was unharmed and didn't appear to be even frightened; he was hopping about in his cage quite content and at ease. That the cat should have pulled off the cover and then have left the bird alone seemed the more astonishing, because she was a hardened and incurable thief.

Blacky knew the time for afternoon tea, and was always there to the minute. However, when something that came to her brought off all her hair and made her a pitiable object, she seemed to know of herself that she was not presentable, and though we did nothing to prevent her she never came into the drawing-room again until her hair had grown; then she appeared regularly as before.

There may be some truth in the old saying, "Dogs care for people and cats for places," but individuals differ very much; great love of home is often seen in dogs, and strong personal affection in cats.

A cat was born here in 1897 and lived with us for two years like any other cat. She was indeed rather more intelligent than many. She had evidently observed the manner of opening a door, for when she wanted to get into a room she used to rattle at the handle. One day she came and rattled at the door-handle of the study where I was sitting, but instead of coming in when the door was opened, she led me to the drawing-room, and standing up put her paw on the handle of the door: as plainly as possible she had fetched me to let her in.

Now although this cat was made a great deal of with us and seemed to have a strong personal affection for me, spending most of her time with me, one fine day she took herself off and disappeared altogether.

As weeks went by and we heard nothing of her we concluded she had met with the fate to which pitiless game preservation has consigned many another cat. But after about three months I saw her in the garden, when though she followed me she refused to be touched. For weeks again we never set eyes on her, and we almost came to believe that it was her wraith I had seen. At last I happened to notice her sitting outside a cottage not 200 yards from this house, by which I passed almost every day of my life, but though she looked up when I called her by name she would not come to me. After a year or two she very frequently came into the garden and was willing enough to be stroked, but she never entered this house again until (in 1909) the old man at the cottage died, and the home she had chosen for herself was broken up. Then of her own accord she returned to us as a matter of course, and up to the day of her death (in November, 1911) was as friendly and affectionate as possible.

It is odd that a cat should thus deliberately have chosen to leave a home that was her birthplace, and where she had been more than kindly treated. We thought at the time that it might have been through jealousy of her own kitten, that she often found in the study, but if of so jealous a disposition, why should she go to be one of a family of cats in which as the last-comer she could hardly hope to take the first place?

The man she went to sometimes worked here, and as he was fond of cats might have taken a fancy to this one, and possibly did something to entice her away. If this was so, it is clear that a cat's affection is not always for places rather than people.

The strangest part of it all is to me not that she should have left us for the cottage, but that at the same time her whole behaviour towards us should have so entirely changed that she wouldn't let us touch her, and couldn't be induced to set foot in the house.

The old man to whom this cat betook herself was quite a character in his way. He could neither read nor write, having been put to work on a farm when he was eight years old, but he took a very intelligent interest in things. His house was an asylum for stray cats and you would find him on a winter's evening sitting in front of a good fire with a circle of half a dozen cats round him, all staring like himself at the grate. He used to have a fancy for clocks; there must have been five or six of all sizes perpetually ticking away in his kitchen, not to speak of others that were there but refused to tick any longer. He was not content, like other cottagers, with a candle or cheap light, but had hanging from the low ceiling a large paraffin lamp, which had cost him at least fifteen shillings.

He was never married, and since his mother died, some thirty years ago, he never had a woman in the house, and yet few women could have kept it cleaner than he did himself.

A white terrier that we had for ten years from 1888 used to associate words with ideas even when spoken in ordinary conversation and not directly to him. For instance, if he was lying apparently asleep before the fire, and we happened in talking without reference to him to mention any words that he knew, such as "dog," or "carriage," or "walk," he would look up or perhaps just wag his tail.

The same dog had a wonderful gift of reckoning time. He knew Sunday perfectly well, and he knew it the first thing in the morning, before anything had been done to mark it as different from other days. Generally he would lie on the rug at breakfast time and be quite alert afterwards and on the watch to go out with us, but on Sundays he went straight to his basket when we came down and did not move or look up when breakfast was over. From very early days he used to go with my wife to afternoon Sunday School. He knew exactly the time when she ought to get ready to start, and if then she didn't move he would get up and go to her, and he gave her no peace until she went to dress. When he arrived at the school he would curl himself up on an old shawl in a corner of the room, and until the Lord's Prayer before the final grace of the dismissal prayers he would not stir. Directly he heard the Lord's Prayer, he would get up in readiness, but he never left his corner until the prayers were finished. On one Sunday in the month there was catechising in the Church, instead of Sunday school, and Snap was wont to be shut up by himself in the schoolroom until the service was over. This he didn't much care for, and often when he had started joyously as usual for his walk to the school, three-quarters of a mile away, as soon as he came near enough to hear the church bell ringing, he quietly turned round and went home. When he had been with us for about eight years we took him to London for several weeks. He made the best of it, and seemed to enjoy himself in a way, but it was almost pathetic to see the change directly we got out of the train on our way back. We had to drive three miles in a fly, and though Snap's place was at the bottom under our feet, as soon as we got within a mile of home, he seemed to know the smell of the country and was all excitement, and when he found himself really at home he was quite beside himself with joy and did not rest until he had visited in turn every familiar nook and corner in the garden, then he threw himself down on his own rug in his own house with a sigh of relief and satisfaction.