Part 6
The peregrines raid from their base upon the headland to the inland villages, watching for the chance of taking a tame dove from a cot; onwards to the lonely wastes of the sandhills, crowned with spike-grass, where the peewits wail throughout the springtime. They dash up the wide estuary; the ring-plover crouch low among the stones and seaweed as they pass; they even visit Barnstaple itself for the blue-gray pigeons that wheel above its old shipyards. In the skyey loftiness one moment are the hawks, watching and soaring, the male usually the higher; one will close pinions and dive like a dark arrowhead through the air, flattening as a bird is reached; there is a burst of feathers, a triumphant chattering, and the limp victim is borne to the solitudes of the dunes. A week later upon the sand a bleached skeleton will lie, surrounded by a scattered ring of feathers, in company with old bones of rabbits and bead-like shells that tell of ended generations.
The pair rarely separates. Maybe the leading hawk will miss; its mate follows instantly. Sometimes a third striking is attempted. Usually, however, it is not needed, although the course of the dive, once begun, cannot be altered--either the object is missed entirely or secured. In the pools below the cliffs the sea boils, tossing the spray afar. Shags haunt particular rocks, content in the sunlight. The falcons do not molest them, but they may watch the loving couple high in heaven, and so may the gulls that with yelping plaints rise and fall and glide upon the air. Swiftly and with quick wing-beats the peregrines climb, almost vertically, it would appear. Then a sudden speeding at eighty or ninety miles an hour, a downward dash at the rocks, beaks and wings touching; they hiss past the gulls, swoop apart and glide upwards, uttering their sweetly wild mating cries. Nothing matters in the ecstasies of spring. They may pass uncaring within a few yards of a beholder, when he may see the neck and wings, slate-ash in colour, the dark crown and nape, the hooked beak and the barred tail. He may shout and wave his arms in excitement, the ravens croak, the gulls scream, the lone buzzard wail as he circles, but the love-chase continues. On the falcons rush, above the crested waves and the marbled troughs of the ocean, past the crannies and the ledges of the precipice, among the summer cloudlets, over the hills of heather and the slopes of golden gorse, by the mounded sand-dunes and the glistening mud-flats; all the heavenly freeness is theirs to roam. Bold they are, and observe no law, but they hunt openly and in defiance--often cursed by the sporting farmer; and yet all of us are proud of our “pregun forlkns.”
MIDSUMMER NIGHT
(_To G. E. R._)
Against the deep blue of the sky a little money spider was taking a line from one veined ash leaf to another. Although so small, he was easily seen in the waning light, a dark speck moving with great care. It was evening time, and the vesper hymn of warblers and thrushes, pippits and blackbirds, was all but sung.
Throughout the day the great vibrant waves of sunlight were plangent on the cornfields and rushing with golden swell over the bee-visited hedgerows and green meadows, vitalising the slender grasses and red sorrel growing in beauty with branched buttercups and incarnadine poppy flowers. Slowly the day-tide of summer’s light and glory ebbed, the sun swung down from heaven and dipped its lower rim into the ocean. The fields and distant oakwood were laved in yellow light, and like a golden sand gleaming in the western sunlight as the sea recedes, the ebbing tide of sunlight left its pools among the woods and the hedges. Far away some children were singing as they went slowly homewards through the closed buttercups and daisies, and their careless cries were in harmony with the evening.
I sat on a gate and watched the rooks flying over the elm trees in the village below, where all was peace and quiet. The wind sighed through the hedge: a dead leaf moved listlessly, twirling as the wind spun it. The tissues of the tree’s dead lung had decayed and sunk into the earth; the winter had been mild, and the invisible hand, composing and decomposing, had not yet touched the filigree web of its brittle frame. On its parent ash tree it hung and quivered, never more to respond to the fire of summer.
Gradually the children reached their homes, and no more cries came from the meadow. The little spider paused half-way between the leaves, and hung quiescent. Perhaps some flaw in his architectural scheme was apparent to him, or he feared that the wind of the summer night would destroy his foundation threads. Born only a few weeks before, without tuition or practice, he knew the angles of his pillars, the proportions of his stanchions, the symmetry and balance of his walls. He had watched no honey-coloured parent at work, yet within his minute brain were the plans of a perfect system to entangle the smallest flying insects, feeble of wing, that would fall against his web.
The pools of gold about the oaks slowly drained away, and the sky above became a more profound blue. Three swifts passed above, wheeling in final flight before creeping to their nests of straw-speck and saliva under the tiles of the church. The songs of the warblers and thrushes as the light drains away, find an echo in the heart of the poet, for they sing of the beauty of summer: the swift’s cries belong to the spectral light of the stars and the mystery of infinite space. The swift is the mystic among birds.
The spider moved on as the first star shone in the sky. Maybe his problem was solved, or that he had waited for the beauteous whiteness of Lyra’s ray. Slowly he travelled to the leaf he had chosen as a base, paused awhile, and crept back across his life-line. The rooks were settled in the elm-tops by the church, and their _caa-caas_ came less often; the prospects of the next day’s forage among the new potatoes had been discussed thoroughly, and were known to all--in satisfaction the colony had settled down to sleep. Gradually the sun sank into the sea, its fire spreading its broad glow through the cloud strata over the far horizon. One by one the stars crept into their places, waiting for the queen-moon to lift her head above the hills of Exmoor. Antares shone in the south; above were Lyra, Aquila, Northern Crown, and all the heavenly concourse: Mars glowed red, with Spica Virginis swung low in adoration and sending its wan green fires to the watcher. Slowly the afterglow drenched in the gray waters, an owl quavered in loneliness as it fanned over the churchyard; a jackdaw answered sharply, querulously, and night had come to the earth.
A pale golden vapour over the Exmoor hills, and the moon rose, like the head of a yellow moth creeping from its case. It swam into view over the dark hills, and I looked into its face, while it shrank into a silver disk. The sky became lavender-coloured, the moon dust falling with the dew and forming a gauzy veil above. The boom of the waves pounding the distant headland was borne on the wind burthened with foam fragrance and the scent of the sweet clover fields beyond the village. It stirred the green corn, came fitfully, then sighed to silence.
The last labourer left the inn and the village slept. The walls of the cottages gleamed white under the dark thatch as the moonlight fell directly upon them. I was alone with the sapling wheat and all was still.
I was alone with the wheat that I loved. Moving over the field my feet were drenched in an instant by the dew. Lying at full length on the earth, I pressed my face among the sweet wistfulness of stalks, stained and glowing as with some lambent fire, pale, mysterious. On each pale flame-blade depended a small white light, a dew-drop in which the light of the moon was imprisoned. Each flag of wheat held the beauty of pure water, and within the sappy blades glowed the spirit of the earth--in the spectral silence a voice spoke of its ancient lineage: of the slow horses that had strained at the wooden plough through the ages, scarring the glebe in long furrows that must be sown with corn; race after race of slow horses moving in jangling harness to the deep shouts of the heavy men. Generation after generation of men, bent with age and unceasing labour, plodding the earth, sowing the yellow grains that would produce a million million berries for mankind. Spring after spring, each with its glory of blue-winged swallows speeding, wheeling, falling through the azure, the cuckoo calling in the meadows, and the lark-song shaking its silver earthchain as it strove to be free. Through all the sowings and the reapings for thousands of years the wheat had known that it was grown for man, and the soul of the wheat grew in the knowledge of its service. Lying there on the cool couch of the silver-flotten corn, with the soft earth under me, sweet with its scent of stored sunbeams, the beauty of the phantom wheat carried me away in a passion of sweet ecstasy. Faint as the sea-murmur within the shell, the voice of the corn came to the inward ear. Ever the same was the earth that it knew, the east washed with faint rosewater in the dayspring, the lark-flight loosened upon the bosom of the dawn wind, and the golden beams of the sun breasting the hills of the morning. It was but a moment since the wild men had goaded the sullen oxen, and with rude implements torn a living from the earth; all the great power of the wheat rested above the growing corn now, of kin to the grains beaten by oxen, and later, by the flails of the wretches who were ever hungry.
The moon floated in the nightpool with the Swan, the distant roar of the surf floated from over the clover fields, and still I lay there, one with the Maker of Life ... a white mistiness flapped in front, beating broad pinions as it hovered, it dropped to the earth, and a shrill scream trembled into the night. Fluttering like a moth, the ghostly barn owl struggled with the rat, held it in a remorseless clutch of powerful talons. Into the wheatfield the rat had come, urged by instinct to seek the means of life, and it had found only death. Dreamily the owl fanned the night with his broad wings and then floated away to his nest in the loft of the cottage near the church. Saddened by the consciousness of life’s tragedy--every form of life depending for existence on the death of another form--I walked towards the village, while a landrail began his jarring _crake-crake_ in the corn, and little moths went down to drink the honey of the night-opening flowers, living their short life while the moon, soon to die, was in its fullest beauty. Antares was a dull red ember in the south: the star of summer that Richard Jefferies loved. My thought was with him--he was near me, though the body had long been lying in Broadwater. Had he spoken to me in this mystic June night, I wondered; and then a blackcap warbler sang in a thorn bush; my thought was as old as its song, and I doubted no longer.
A FEATHERED WASTER
No bird-lovers can but desire the destruction of the Little Owl (_Athene Noctua_), a prolific bird introduced into England half a century ago by Lord Lilford. It has no redeeming trait. I have watched several pairs, and my observations show without doubt that he is not worth his salt, and deserves not the slightest mercy.
Old Bob, a keeper with whom I am very friendly, showed me a pollard oak standing at the side of a hazel covert, which he suspected as the home of a pair of these birds. I sat down in the dry ditch and waited, while the humble bees swung themselves among the flowering nettles. This was in the early afternoon, and not in the evening or the night; in the bright sunlight, when all self-respecting owls are dreaming in barn-loft or hollow tree. But to the Little Owl time is obviously money, for it was not long before a brown bird, not unlike a large thrush, fluttered out of the tree and flew to a may hedge running at right angles to the covert. A large white cabbage butterfly drifted past, and was captured dexterously by the alien. Now cabbage butterflies are a distinct pest, so one good mark was registered to the accused. Shortly he descended into the sapling corn, probably to take a beetle or mouse, and as these are not yet valuable as human food he was given another good mark.
He flew away after this, and landed a hundred yards down the hedge. Something drew his attention, something that was in the hedge itself. He dropped to the ground, and through my glasses I could see that he was climbing up the branches. When he returned, it was with something in his beak. I ran over the field and found that he had been robbing a chaffinch’s nest of its fledgling young. A weasel will do this, or a rat, and often a crow. But an owl! I was ashamed of my own kin.
I decided to advise the keeper to shoot all Little Owls.
Later in the day the little pirate seized a thrush, nearly as big as himself, and perching on it falcon-fashion, commenced to tear at the breast. I love the thrushes, for they do great good in the spring, destroying snails and worms. Besides, they voice with such ecstasy the joyful spirit of spring returned to the cold earth; in the winter they fill the heart with hope for the future. Most certainly the Little Owl would be outlawed.
During succeeding days I watched the pair eating worms; hunting, stoat-wise, in the ditch for baby rabbits; hovering over the meadow, like kestrel hawks, for mice and rats. Once I saw them catch a frog. And I knew that later on the partridge chicks would be taken. There was no doubt in my own mind that he must be shot and trapped whenever possible. I would tell Old Bob to bring along his twelve-bore.
With this determination in my mind I thought I would look at the nest. Now most owls will fly out when disturbed and leave the eggs or young to their fate. Much to my surprise, this bird sat tight. I broke a twig off and prodded her gently. She refused to budge. I pushed a little harder. With a mew like a distressed cat she left her four eggs and ran quickly to a hidden corner of the platform on which they were laid (the eggs were just visible as I looked down at them through a small hole in the top of the tree).
But she did not leave them uncovered for long, for with another cry of pain she crept over them again, covering them with her body. Again I tapped her with the stick, but she was obstinate. She was evidently decided to risk death in the protection of her unborn little ones.
Later, over at the rearing field, I saw Old Bob.
“Well, sir, do ee reckon ’em to be proper vermin?”
“No, Bob,” I said casually, looking at his weather-rutted hands. “No, they eat mostly beetles and mice, I think, and an occasional sparrow or so. I don’t think they will hurt your chicks.”
Mere sentiment, of course, but the mother whined so wistfully, and her little body was so soft when I, like a great bully, prodded her with the stick. Besides, she was an owl, and blood is thicker than water.
INVOCATION
Throughout the long glaring days of July pitiful cries quiver in the heat; the sheep are dying of thirst. Even some of the hill-springs are now mere trickles.
This north coast of Devon is mocked by the vision of the bluest of seas, calm and shining under the summer sun. The fields stretching down to the sands are parched and brown, the grasses mere ghosts, dry and sapless. Even the sea-breeze has little of refreshment in its motion; it is merely heated air.
Many of the sheep are dead. Jackdaws, gulls, carrion crows, and rooks are feasting on the bloated carcases which remain; the shimmering hum of flies innumerable gives to our English midsummer a tropical semblance. Nor are there any swallows to decimate these pests. I have seen about four pairs this year--the first pair, which arrived on the last day of March, was taken by the peregrine falcons. Swifts and house-martins are not scarce, but they keep to the inland villages.
The prolonged drought seems to have brought to life several rare butterflies, but even the interest that one may find in these is small. Even the blue sky and the blue sea produce an intolerable weariness. Wherever I go there sound those pitiful cries of the sheep; there is the slippery grass, and the glare of the sun on the sward. The wheat is yellow in the flag, dried and rustling; the poppies are sickly, though usually the fiercer the sun the more sultry their bloom.
A brook runs through sandhills on the other side of the headland, and at one place the red cattle stand in cool water to their dewlaps, gazing tranquilly about them. Here is the great meeting-place of the birds, and at any time of the day, from dawn to sunset, its pebbly shallow is thronged with finches, pippits, doves, warblers, and cuckoos. How the goldfinches love the water! With sweet, reedy twitterings a flock will come from orchard haunts and bathe in the running water, the yellow-barred wings aflutter and crimson faces dipped again and again. Copper finches follow, with perhaps those minute travellers the Golden-Crowned Knights, as the country folk so beautifully term the smallest British bird.
Other creatures know of this avian meeting-place. The weasel comes, and a great sombre pair of ravens; and the sparrowhawk dashes sometimes in the midst, seizing one of the bathers. To me this is a place of pilgrimage, where all things come down to the life-giving waters. Even here, however, there is heard in the heated air those sad cries from the hills.
A village girl showed me some verses she had written on the drought. She was singing by the waterside, a little maid in a print dress. With shy eyes she tendered the poem. I remember the last verse:--
_God of Pity, I beseech Thee, Send us rain in healing shower, For the fields I see around me Death and Ruin hold in power._
But from the west comes no cloud; only the fiery sun burns in a pitiless sky.
COCKNEY BIRD TRIPPERS
My work necessitated long hours in London, and I used to bless the sparrows; I was never tired of watching them. They lifted my mind from dusty pavements and the smell of motor traffic. A favourite place to see them was a garden adjoining a church in Gracechurch Street; another was by the fountains of Trafalgar Square. About the time of harvest in the country, for which I pined, I used to notice an absence of the winged urchins. Where before a noisy, squabbling party congregated in the park or near the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, in August a solitary couple or two hopped quietly. These, I imagined, had not answered the call that came to their dingy brethren, the same call that came to the weary Londoner at that period of the year.
The sparrows go into the country. Where the corn is cut and shocked you will see them in vast flocks, searching in the stubble or openly robbing the ripe ears. It is no uncommon thing to observe a thousand or more in one field. And perhaps as you watch a swooping hawk will flash over the hedgerow, the cloud will arise, chattering in terror; one miserable victim will be seized and carried swiftly away. Almost before the last floating feather has drifted to the ground the flock will be back, greedy for the golden grains. Perhaps there is some deep philosophy among the wild creatures, for immediately the danger of death is past they have forgotten it, and continue to live every moment in complete happiness.
Male chaffinches and other finches often join the trippers. So ready are sparrows to imitate, or perhaps to return to natural conditions long since abandoned in the city, that after a few pastoral days their chirps become sweeter, resembling the silvery _spink spink_ of their gay cousins.
The sparrow has the power to produce sweet notes, but in the rush of a big city he has become careless regarding his personal appearance, his song, and the construction of nest.
About the second week of September the bird trippers come back, their voices clearer and their feathers sprucer. After a while, however, they return to their old habits, quarrelsome and untidy as before.
“FULLNESS AFTER DEARTH”
(_September, 1921._)
Where the fields were scorched and drab during the drought the sweet green grass is growing. Gone are those gaping fissures in the slopes by the sea, those swarms of flies about the dead sheep, and the crows and jackdaws ever glutted with carrion. Many summery flowers that should have formed their seeds had no chance to bloom; but now the rains have blessed them, and everywhere their colours and scents have been made from cold earth, sunshine, and a dot of life.
In mythology the goddess of spring returned to the bleak woodlands and barren fields, scattering life and song as she wandered. Nowadays we do not believe in pagan deities, but the idea survives, like poetry, for ever. That _something_ has returned to this wild and lovely land by the sea there can be no doubt. In every dry ditch the nettles are springing up, and the white blossom already crests some of the clusters. The spade-shaped leaves of the celandine--a flower that usually comes in February or March, and resembles a buttercup--are among the grasses in the meadows, the cuckoo-plants are rising, a lark has two eggs in her nest, while her mate sings with vernal ecstasy high above.
The hedge-banks are refreshed with young seedling plants, dandelions, hawk-weeds, speedwell, thistles, lords-and-ladies, and a score of others. I know a damp patch by the roadway where every spring giant docks grow. In July their immense leaves, three feet long, turn crimson and brown; in August tall spires of rusty seeds are prepared, and the stalks stand next spring. This year, however, the seeds were dropped in June. Now the plants are putting forth fresh leaves that over-shadow the tiny efforts of their off-sprung life. Those docks have been there a generation, and are still unwearied--they must have launched millions of seeds into the light.
The swallows are still singing, but the chill nights are a sign to them. Yesterday a young bird flew full-tilt into the wall of a barn, and was picked up dead. It was blind, and had been so since birth. How had it existed till now? I am inclined to think that it had lost its parents, who hitherto must have been shepherding it.
Or perhaps it had seen the goddess Proserpine come back into the September days of gold and royalest blue, and had paid the penalty of vision. I burnt the tiny corpse on a bramble-fire; its ashes went up in smoke and spark towards the sun.
CUCKOO NOTES
Most people know that the “cuckoo lays its eggs in another bird’s nest.”
The few will say that the cuckoo does nothing of the sort, that she will lay her egg on the ground somewhere, and then carry it either by beak or foot to the selected nest, deposit it there, and fly away. They will say (once I said the same thing) that “it never actually lays in another nest.” They are wrong, in one case, at any rate.
This spring a hedge-sparrow built its nest in the rough edge of a pile of faggots. In the course of time four pale blue eggs appeared, and one morning very early a large bird flew down to it. She must have remained there for some time, for as I strolled past when the sun was just rising above the hills she flew off the nest. I knew by the flight that the bird was a cuckoo. Below the pile of faggots, on the ground, lay the scattered remains of the eggs, and the cuckoo, before _laying_ her solitary egg in the nest, had apparently sucked all four of them.