very large fish," was the message given me one very hot evening at the end
of July, at the hour which the poet describes as being "about the flitting
of the bats," plenty of which were just visible hawking over the willows
on the eyot. Thinking that it was an odd time for a visit from a
fishmonger, I was just wondering what could be the reason for such a
request when I remembered a talk I had had at the ferry a week or two
before on the subject of the continued increase of fish in the London
Thames. It turned out to be as I expected; my visitor was one of the last
local fishermen, and brought with him a splendid silver eel, weighing
nearly 4 lb., taken in his nets that evening just opposite Chiswick Eyot.
It was the largest eel taken so low down for some years, and when held up
at arm's length, was a good imitation of one of Madame Paula's pythons in
the advertisement. He was anxious that I should come out for an evening's
netting and see for myself how clear the water now is, and how good the
fish. The previous summer, about the same date, I had asked him to see
what he could catch in an evening as specimens; he had returned with over
ninety fish, dace, roach, eels, barbel, and smelts, many of which were
exhibited alive the next day before a good many people interested in the
purification of the Thames. As a further proof I forwarded the big eel to
the previous chairman of the London County Council, under whose sceptre
the marked improvement in the river began first to be felt, and begged his
acceptance of it as a tribute from the river. Then I arranged to be at the
old ferry next day at 6.30 p.m.
It was the end of a blazing hot London day when I went down the hard to
the water's edge, among the small, pink-legged boys, paddling, and the
usual group of contemplative workmen, who smoke their pipes by the landing
place. The river was half empty, and emptying itself still more as the ebb
ran down. The haze of heat and twilight blurred shapes and colours, but
the fine old houses of the historic "Mall," the tower of the church, and
the tall elms and taller chimneys of the breweries, which divide with
torpedo boats the credit of being the staple industries of Chiswick, stood
out all black against the evening sky; the clashing of the rivetters had
ceased in the shipyard, but the river was cheerfully noisy; many eights
were practising between the island and the Surrey bank, coaches were
shouting at them, a tug was taking a couple of deal-loaded barges to a
woodwharf with much puffing and whistling, and bathers, sheltered by the
eyot willows, were keeping up loud and breathless conversations. "Not
exactly the kind of surroundings the fishermen seeks," you will say; but,
apparently, London fish get used to noise. Our boat was what I, speaking
unprofessionally, should call a small sea-boat, but I believe she was
built years ago at Strand-on-the-Green, the pretty old village with
maltings and poplar trees that fringes the river below Kew Bridge. She was
painted black and red, and furnished with a shelf, rimmed with an
inch-high moulding inboard and drained by holes, to catch the drip from
the net as it was hauled in. We were at work in two minutes. The net was
fastened at one end to two buoys; these dropped down with the ebb, and
formed a fixed, yet floating, point--if that is not a bull--from which the
boat was rowed in a circle while one of the brothers who own the boat
payed out the net. Thus we kept rowing in circles, alternately dropping
and hauling in the net, as we slipped down what was once the Bishop of
London's Fishery towards Fulham. There are still no flounders on the
famous Bishop's Muds, but other fish were in evidence at once. Though the
heat had made them go to the bottom, we had one or two at every haul. The
two fishermen were fine specimens of strong, well-built Englishmen. The
pace at which they hauled in the net, or rowed the boat round, was great;
the rower could complete the circle--a wide one--in a minute, and the net
was hauled in in less time, if the hauler chose to. Dace were our main
catch--bright silvery fish, about three to the pound, for they do not run
large in the tideway; but they were in perfect condition, and quite as
good to eat, when cooked, as fresh herring. For some reason the Jews of
London prefer these fresh-water fish; they eat them, not as the old
Catholics did, on fasts, but for feasts. They will fetch 2d. each at the
times of the Jews' holidays, so our fisherman told me, and find a ready
sale at all times, though at low prices. Formerly the singularly bright
scales were saved to make mother-of-pearl, or rather, to coat objects
which were wished to resemble mother-of-pearl. After each haul the fish
were dropped into a well in the middle of the boat. A few roach were
taken, and an eel; but the most interesting part of the catch was the
smelts. These sea-fish now ascend the Thames as they did before the river
was polluted. We took about a dozen, some of very large size; they smelt
exactly like freshly-sliced cucumber. I stayed for an hour, till the
twilight was turning to dark, and the tugs' lights began to show. We had
by then caught seventy fish, or rather more than one per minute; a hundred
is a fair catch on a summer evening. In winter very large hauls are made;
then the fish congregate in holes and corners. In summer they are all over
the river. When the net happens to enclose one of these shelter holes,
hundreds may be taken. Consequently the two fishermen work regularly all
through the winter. Sometimes their net is like iron wire, frozen into
stiff squares. In a recent hard winter the ice floated up and down the
London Thames in lumps and floes; yet they managed to fish, and made a
record catch of two thousand in one tide. I believe that if the
Conservancy and the County Council go on as they are doing, we shall see
the flounder back in the river above bridges, and that possibly sea-trout
may adventure there too; though unless the latter can get up to spawn,
there can be no regular run of sea-trout. But they probably also act like
grey mullet, and run up the estuaries merely for a cruise.[1]
[Illustration: SMELTS. _From a photograph by E. Seeley_.]
The last of the "Peter-boat" men mentioned in a previous chapter, has
other claims to notice than that of being the only survivor of an ancient
outdoor industry. He has given evidence before more than one committee of
the House of Commons on the state of the river and the condition of its
waters, and is the oldest salesman in that curious survival of antiquity,
the free eel market held at Blackfriars Stairs on Sunday mornings; and, in
addition, he has added to his original industry another branch of
"fishing" of a different kind, of which he is acknowledged to be the
greatest living exponent. He is an expert at grappling and "creeping" for
objects lying on the bed of the river, work for which his life-long
acquaintance with the contours of the bottom and the tides and currents
makes him particularly well fitted. Consequently he is now regularly
employed by many firms and shipping companies to fish up anything dropped
overboard, whether gear or cargo, which is heavy enough to sink. The
oddest thing about this double business is that all the summer, while he
lies and sleeps in his "Peter-boat" at Chiswick, he is in receipt of
telegrams whenever an accident of this kind chances to happen, summoning
him down river, to the Docks or the Pool, and these telegrams are
delivered to him (I think by the ferryman) on his "Peter-boat." But the
regular time for this other Thames "fishery" is in winter. Then the eels
"bed," _i.e._, bury themselves in the mud, and the eel man goes
either "gravelling," that is, scooping up gravel from the bottom to deepen
any part of the channel desired by the Conservancy, or doing these odd
salvage jobs. Getting up sunken barges is one side of the business. These
are raised by fastening two empty barges to them at low tide, when the
flood raises all three together, owing to the increased buoyancy. But of
"fishing" proper he has had plenty. He hooked and raised the steamship
_Osprey's_ propeller, which weighed six tons. This was done by
getting first small chains and then large ones round it, and fastening
them to a lighter. Half-ton anchors, casks of zinc, pigs of lead, copper
tubes, ironwork, ship-building apparatus, and the like, are common "game"
in this fishery. Other commodities are casks of pitch, cases of pickles,
boxes of champagne, casks of sardines in tins, bales of wool, and even
cases of machinery.
This form of Thames fishery increases rather than diminishes. Years ago he
picked up under London Bridge a case of watches valued at L1,500. He was
only paid for the "job," as the loss was known and it was not a chance
find. Another and more sportsmanlike incident was an "angling
competition," among himself and others in that line, for some cases of
rings which a Jew, who became suddenly insane, threw into the river off a
steamer. He caught one case, and another man grappled the other. Sometimes
in fishing for one thing he catches another which has been in the water
for months, as, for instance, a whole sack of tobacco, turned rotten. I do
not know who "that young woman who kept company with a fishmonger" was,
though he assumes that I do. But he certainly rescued her, and a gentleman
who jumped off London Bridge, and several upset excursionists on various
parts of the river. Also, as will be guessed, he has caught or picked up a
good many corpses. I hear, though not from him, that on the Surrey side
five shillings is paid for a body rescued, and on the Middlesex side only
half-a-crown; so Surrey gets the credit of the greater number of the
Thames dead. His life-saving services have been very considerable, though
he does not make much account of them. He was instrumental in saving two
women and six men on one occasion, and on another "three men and a
soldier." The distinction is an odd one, but it holds good in the riverine
mind.
[1] At the close of the season 1901-1902 in March, one of the men tells me
that it has been the best year he has known. He caught sixteen eels one
night with the net only. Very fine bream have also appeared as low as
Hammersmith.
BIRDS ON THAMES RESERVOIRS
Now that every large town and many small ones are adding new reservoirs,
often of great size, to hold their water supply, these artificial lakes
play an important and increasing part in the wild life, not only of the
country, but of cities, and even of London itself. Immense reservoirs have
been made near Staines, and others are being added close to the London
river. These quiet sheets of water, carefully protected from intrusion for
fear of any pollution of the water, form artificial sanctuaries which not
only fill with fish, which the water companies encourage, to eat the weeds
and insects bred in the weeds, but attract wild-fowl of very many kinds in
ever-increasing numbers. In Hertfordshire the artificial lakes near Tring
made to supply the Grand Junction Canal are carefully preserved, and have
a large and resident population of wild-fowl (we believe a bittern bred
there recently, and the great crested grebe is common), and some of the
new London reservoirs are rapidly attracting a stock of wild-fowl. Thus
civilisation is in some measure restoring the balance of wild life, and
offers to the most persecuted of our birds a quiet and secure retreat. I
was able at the close of February, 1902, to witness a striking example of
the results of wild-bird protection in increasing some species of
wild-fowl which for half a century had steadily dwindled and disappeared,
and were practically unknown anywhere in the neighbourhood of London. The
scene was on the very large new reservoirs which lie between the grounds
of the Ranelagh Club and the Thames, on what was some seven years ago a
tract of market gardens and meadows. The construction of these lakes was
so ably planned and carried out that in two years from the turning of the
first sod four wide pools, covering in all one hundred acres of ground,
were ready to be filled, and at the end of 1898 the ground was
metamorphosed into the largest area of water in the London district, with
the exception of the Serpentine.
It is so rare for changes of this magnitude to take place in any other way
than by covering what was open ground with bricks and mortar, that the
advent of a kind of reservoir flora and fauna so close to the greatest
city of the world was looked for with some curiosity. All the waste ground
not covered by the water or filtering-beds produced quantities of
brilliant flowers, as waste ground enclosed and left to itself generally
does. The banks and broad walks between the lakes were sown with good
grass, which was regularly made into hay. The reservoirs themselves soon
filled with fish, which came down the mains from Hampton, where the water
is taken in from the river. What these reservoir fish found to live upon
at first is not clear. No weeds are allowed to grow either in the water or
on the banks, which are concreted. But the bottom becomes covered with the
suspended matter deposited from the unfiltered water, and probably a
considerable number of the minute _entomostraca_ beloved of all fish
breed in this. The Barnes reservoirs do contain a growth of weed, which is
carefully removed every year. Whatever their sustenance may be, these
reservoirs are very full of fish, both the old ones at Barnes and the new
lakes near Ranelagh. The supply of fish, and the open and strictly private
extent of water, then attracted a number of wild duck or water birds of
some kind, which the writer was invited to see and identify, as it did not
seem probable that they could be the ordinary wild duck, which are
vegetable feeders, and would need an artificial supply of grain, which is
provided on the Serpentine, but is not given to any of these reservoir
ducks. They have appeared entirely uninvited. The scene over the lakes was
as sub-arctic and lacustrine as on any Finland pool, for the frost-fog
hung over river and reservoirs, only just disclosing the long, flat lines
of embankment, water, and ice; the barges floating down with the tide were
powdered with frost and snow-flakes, and the only colour was the long, red
smear across the ice of the western reservoir, beyond which the winter sun
was setting into a bank of snow clouds. It was four o'clock, and nothing
apparently was moving, either on the ice or the water, not even a gull. In
the centre of the north-eastern reservoir was what was apparently an acre
of heaped-up snow. On approaching nearer this acre of snow changed into a
solid mass of gulls, all preparing to go to sleep. If there was one there
were seven hundred, all packed together for warmth on the ice. It is on or
about these reservoirs that the London gulls now sleep. Sometimes they are
there in thousands; but the sealing of so much of the water with ice had
sent a great proportion of them down the river to the more open water of
the Essex marshes. Beyond the gulls, which rose and circled high above in
the fog with infinite clamour, were a number of black objects, which soon
resolved themselves into the forms of duck and other fowl. Rather more
than seventy were counted, swimming on the water near the bank or sitting
on the ice. These were the self-invited wild duck, so tame that with very
little trouble they were approached near enough for their colour and form
to be distinctly visible. The result of a look through the glasses was
something of a surprise. They were not mallard, teal, or widgeon; but
three-quarters of the number were tufted ducks, a diving-duck species,
which haunts both estuaries and fresh water, but preferably the latter. It
is a very handsome little black-and-white duck, seen in great numbers on
certain large lakes in Nottinghamshire, and has greatly increased of late
years in the county of Norfolk. But so far it has not appeared in any
numbers either on the Surrey ponds or in Middlesex, and its assembling on
this London reservoir is a remarkable proof of the tendency of wild-fowl
to increase in this country.
The cock birds were in brilliant winter plumage, with large crests, white
breasts, and white "clocks" on their wings. Some were sleeping, some
diving, and others swimming quietly. When approached, the whole flock rose
at once, and flew with arrow-like speed round the lakes and twice or
thrice back over the heads of their visitors, of whom they were not at all
shy, being used to the sight of the man who keeps the reservoirs' banks in
order. They swept now overhead, now just above the ice, like a flock of
sea-magpies or ice-duck playing before some North Atlantic gale. As
several birds had not risen, we ventured still nearer, and saw that most
of these were coots, some ten or eleven, which did not fly, but ran out on
to the ice. Two large birds remaining, which had dived, then rose to the
surface, and to our surprise and pleasure proved to be great crested
grebes. These birds, which a few years ago were so scarce even in Norfolk
that Mr. Stevenson despaired of the survival of the species as a native
bird, have bred for three seasons in Richmond Park. But their presence so
close to London shows that we need not despair of seeing wild-crested
grebes appear on the Serpentine. These birds are so wedded to the water
that they rarely fly. But this pair rose and flew, not away from, but
towards us, passing within fifteen yards. With their long necks stretched
out, feet level with the tail, and plumage apparently painted in broad,
longitudinal stripes, they presented a very singular appearance.
The East of London owns a crowded wild-fowl sanctuary at Wanstead Park,
which quite a different class of ducks frequent. It is now the property of
the public, and very carefully administered by trustees. The lake there is
very narrow and winding, which causes it to freeze easily. On the other
hand, it is full of long, densely wooded islands, some almost enclosing
pools of water. These islands shelter the birds, and when the lake is
covered with ice the islands are crowded with wild duck and widgeon.
Wanstead is a curious example of the faith of wild-fowl in a sanctuary,
for the lake is so narrow that you could toss a stone among the fowl from
the bank. Suburban houses are close by on all sides but the meadows by the
little river Roding. Yet the fowl come to the lake as confidently as they
do to great sanctuaries like Holkham. As there is a large heronry and
rookery on the trees on the islands, the variety of life there is very
great. The writer saw in weather like that in the second week of February,
1902, about a hundred and fifty wild duck, thirty or forty widgeon, a few
teal, a pochard, and a great number of water-hens. Mallard, teal,
dabchicks, and moorhens breed there regularly, and in hard weather a
number of rarer birds drop in. Snipe are often seen by one of the
shallower ponds, and occasionally such divers as goosanders appear and
give an exhibition of fish-catching. These, like the tufted ducks and
grebes, are entirely self-supporting. The wild duck are pensioners, being
fed artificially, though they are wild birds, or descended from birds
which were wild, just as are the London wood-pigeons.
THE CARRION CROW
Those familiar with the valley of the Thames and with the wild population
both of the riverside and of the adjacent hills, will set down the carrion
crow as the typical resident bird of the whole district. On the London
Thames as high as Teddington it keeps mainly to the line of the river
itself, on the banks of which and on the market gardens and meadows it
finds abundant food, while the elms of large suburban residences give it
both shelter and a safe nesting place. The bird is also commonly mistaken
for a rook, and so shares the privileges of those popular birds. Higher up
the river it swarms all along the Oxfordshire and Berkshire banks where
not killed down by keepers, and a perfect army of them has for years
invaded and been settled in the elm-bordered meadows of the Vale of White
Horse. Thence it has spread on to the downs, where since the gradual
abandonment of cultivation on the highest ground, and the removal of the
scattered population of carters and keepers from a very large area, it now
has matters all its own way. But it always haunted these heights, as the
name "Crow Down," recurring more than once on the Ordnance maps, shows.
The "Crow Down" with which the writer is less acquainted is on the very
high, wild land north of Lambourn. There they have grown so confident that
a nest was found in a thorn bush not ten feet high, at a place called Worm
Hill, a good old Saxon name denoting that snakes abound there. There is no
doubt that the crows kill and eat the young snakes, one having been seen
carrying a snake in its beak recently.
The habits of the carrion crow are so independent and peculiar, and its
resourcefulness so great, that it is not to be wondered at that it holds
its own well within and around London, while the rook is gradually being
edged out. It is generally regarded as a criminal bird, which it is to
some extent in the spring. From that point of view the following facts may
be cited against the crow. He is keenly on the look-out for all kinds of
eggs about the time that his own nest is building. Consequently he is a
real enemy to pheasants, wild ducks, plovers, moorhens, and other birds
which lay in open places before there is cover. Nothing is more
exasperating than these exploits to people who know where birds are
nesting on their property, and wish to see them hatch safely. A wild
duck's nest in a large copse was found by some persons picking primroses.
In that copse was a crow's nest. The crows found out that the
primrose-pickers had discovered something interesting, and a few hours
later the "Quirk! quirk!" of the crows announced that they were enjoying
life to an unusual degree. It was found that they had removed all seven
eggs from the duck's nest. In an adjacent reclaimed harbour they took the
eggs of ducks, plovers, redshanks, and even larks. In the Vale of White
Horse they seem to take most of the early wild pheasant's eggs, besides
stealing hen's eggs from round the farms. They are particularly fond of
hunting down the sides of streams and canals in the early morning, where
they find three dainties to which they are particularly partial,--moorhen's
eggs, frogs, and fresh-water mussels. They swallow the frogs
_in situ_, and carry the moorhen's eggs and mussels off to some
adjacent post to eat them comfortably. The shells of both eggs and mussels
litter the ground under these dinner-tables. In Holland they are so
mischievous that little "duck-houses" are made by the side of all the
ornamental canals in private grounds for the ducks to nest in, a
convenience of which they, being sensible birds, avail themselves. These
duck-houses, or laying bowers, are still regularly made by the half-moon
canal at Hampton Court, a survival probably of the days of William of
Orange's Dutch gardeners.
[Illustration: THE STEPPING STONES AT BENFLEET. _From a photograph by R.
B. Lodge_.]