not disperse for some hours, linger on late in shaded corners, as under
trees, on drooping blades of grass and on the petals of flowers. Wild
bees and wasps may often be noticed on these blades of grass that are
still wet, as if they could suck some sustenance from the dew. Wasps
fight hard for their existence as the nights grow cold. Desperate and
ravenous, they will eat anything, but perish by hundreds as the warmth
declines.
Dragon-flies of the larger size are now very busy rushing to and fro on
their double wings; those who go blackberrying or nutting cannot fail to
see them. Only a very few days since--it does not seem a week--there was
a chiffchaff calling in a copse as merrily as in the spring. This little
bird is the first, or very nearly the first, to come in the spring, and
one of the last to go as autumn approaches. It is curious that, though
singled out as a first sign of spring, the chiffchaff has never entered
into the home life of the people like the robin, the swallow, or even
the sparrow.
There is nothing about it in the nursery rhymes or stories, no one goes
out to listen to it, children are not taught to recognise it, and
grown-up persons are often quite unaware of it. I never once heard a
countryman, a labourer, a farmer, or any one who was always out of
doors, so much as allude to it. They never noticed it, so much is every
one the product of habit.
The first swallow they looked for, and never missed; but they neither
heard nor saw the chiffchaff. To those who make any study at all of
birds it is, of course, perfectly familiar; but to the bulk of people it
is unknown. Yet it is one of the commonest of migratory birds, and sings
in every copse and hedgerow, using loud, unmistakable notes. At last, in
the middle of September, the chiffchaff, too, is silent. The swallow
remains; but for the rest, the birds have flocked together, finches,
starlings, sparrows, and gone forth into the midst of the stubble far
from the place where their nests were built, and where they sang, and
chirped, and whistled so long.
The swallows, too, are not without thought of going. They may be seen
twenty in a row, one above the other, or on the slanting ropes or guys
which hold up the masts of the rickcloths over the still unfinished
corn-ricks. They gather in rows on the ridges of the tiles, and wisely
take counsel of each other. Rooks are up at the acorns; they take them
from the bough, while the pheasants come underneath and pick up those
that have fallen.
The partridge coveys are more numerous and larger than they have been
for several seasons, and though shooting has now been practised for more
than a fortnight, as many as twelve and seventeen are still to be
counted together. They have more cover than usual at this season, not
only because the harvest is still about, but because where cut the
stubble is so full of weeds that when crouching they are hidden. In some
fields the weeds are so thick that even a pheasant can hide.
South of London the harvest commenced in the last week of July. The
stubble that was first cut still remains unploughed; it is difficult to
find a fresh furrow, and I have only once or twice heard the quick
strong puffing of the steam-plough. While the wheat was in shock it was
a sight to see the wood-pigeons at it. Flocks of hundreds came perching
on the sheaves, and visiting the same field day after day. The sparrows
have never had such a feast of grain as this year. Whole corners of
wheatfields--they work more at corners--were cleared out as clean by
them as if the wheat had been threshed as it stood.
The sunshine of the autumn afternoons is faintly tawny, and the long
grass by the wayside takes from it a tawny undertone. Some other colour
than the green of each separate blade, if gathered, lies among the
bunches, a little, perhaps like the hue of the narrow pointed leaves of
the reeds. It is caught only for a moment, and looked at steadily it
goes. Among the grass, the hawkweeds, one or two dandelions, and a stray
buttercup, all yellow, favour the illusion. By the bushes there is a
double row of pale buff bryony leaves; these, too, help to increase the
sense of a secondary colour.
The atmosphere holds the beams, and abstracts from them their white
brilliance. They come slower with a drowsy light, which casts a less
defined shadow of the still oaks. The yellow and brown leaves in the
oaks, in the elms, and the beeches, in their turn affect the rays, and
retouch them with their own hue. An immaterial mist across the fields
looks like a cloud of light hovering on the stubble: the light itself
made visible.
The tawniness is indistinct, it haunts the sunshine, and is not to be
fixed, any more than you can say where it begins and ends in the
complexion of a brunette. Almost too large for their cups, the acorns
have a shade of the same hue now before they become brown. As it
withers, the many-pointed leaf of the white bryony and the bine as it
shrivels, in like manner, do their part. The white thistle-down, which
stays on the bursting thistles because there is no wind to waft it away,
reflects it; the white is pushed aside by the colour that the stained
sunbeams bring.
Pale yellow thatch on the wheat-ricks becomes a deeper yellow; broad
roofs of old red tiles smoulder under it. What can you call it but
tawniness?--the earth sunburnt once more at harvest time. Sunburnt and
brown--for it deepens into brown. Brown partridges, and pheasants, at a
distance brown, their long necks stretched in front and long tails
behind gleaming in the stubble. Brown thrushes just venturing to sing
again. Brown clover hayricks; the bloom on the third crop yonder, which
was recently a bright colour, is fast turning brown, too.
Here and there a thin layer of brown leaves rustles under foot. The
scaling bark on the lower part of the tree trunks is brown. Dry dock
stems, fallen branches, the very shadows, are not black, but brown. With
red hips and haws, red bryony and woodbine berries, these together cause
the sense rather than the actual existence of a tawny tint. It is
pleasant; but sunset comes so soon, and then after the trees are in
shadow beneath, the yellow spots at the tops of the elms still receive
the light from the west a few moments longer.
There is something nutty in the short autumn day--shorter than its
duration as measured by hours, for the enjoyable day is between the
clearing of the mist and the darkening of the shadows. The nuts are
ripe, and with them is associated wine and fruit. They are hard but
tasteful; if you eat one, you want ten, and after ten, twenty. In the
wine there is a glow, a spot like tawny sunlight; it falls on your hand
as you lift the glass.
They are never really nuts unless you gather them yourself. Put down the
gun a minute or two, and pull the boughs this way. One or two may drop
of themselves as the branch is shaken, one among the brambles, another
outwards into the stubble. The leaves rustle against hat and shoulders;
a thistle is crushed under foot, and the down at last released. Bines of
bryony hold the ankles, and hazel boughs are stiff and not ready to bend
to the will. This large brown nut must be cracked at once; the film
slips off the kernel, which is white underneath. It is sweet.
The tinted sunshine comes through between the tall hazel rods; there is
a grasshopper calling in the sward on the other side of the mound. The
bird's nest in the thorn-bush looks as perfect as if just made, instead
of having been left long long since--the young birds have flocked into
the stubbles. On the briar which holds the jacket the canker rose, which
was green in summer, is now rosy. No such nuts as those captured with
cunning search from the bough in the tinted sunlight and under the
changing leaf.
The autumn itself is nutty, brown, hard, frosty, and sweet. Nuts are
hard, frosts are hard; but the one is sweet, and the other braces the
strong. Exercise often wearies in the spring, and in the summer heats is
scarcely to be faced; but in autumn, to those who are well, every step
is bracing and hardens the frame, as the sap is hardening in the trees.
ROUND A LONDON COPSE
In October a party of wood-pigeons took up their residence in the little
copse which has been previously mentioned. It stands in the angle formed
by two suburban roads, and the trees in it overshadow some villa
gardens. This copse has always been a favourite with birds, and it is
not uncommon to see a pheasant about it, sometimes within gunshot of the
gardens, while the call of the partridges in the evening may now and
then be heard from the windows. But though frequently visited by
wood-pigeons, they did not seem to make any stay till now when this
party arrived.
There were eight of them. During the day they made excursions into the
stubble fields, and in the evening returned to roost. They remained
through the winter, which will be remembered as the most severe for many
years. Even in the sharpest frost, if the sun shone out, they called to
each other now and then. On the first day of the year their hollow
cooing came from the copse at midday.
During the deep snow which blocked the roads and covered the fields
almost a foot deep, they were silent, but were constantly observed
flying to and fro. Immediately it became milder they recommenced to coo,
so that at intervals the note of the wood-pigeon was heard in the
adjacent house from October, all through the winter, till the nesting
time in May. Sometimes towards sunset in the early spring they all
perched together before finally retiring on the bare, slender tips of
the tall birch trees, exposed and clearly visible against the sky.
Six once alighted in a row on a long birch branch, bending it down with
their weight like a heavy load of fruit. The stormy sunset flamed up,
tinting the fields with momentary red, and their hollow voices sounded
among the trees. By May they had paired off, and each couple had a part
of the copse to themselves. Instead of avoiding the house, they seemed,
on the contrary, to come much nearer, and two or three couples built
close to the garden.
Just there, the wood being bare of undergrowth, there was nothing to
obstruct the sight but some few dead hanging branches, and the pigeons
or ringdoves could be seen continually flying up and down from the
ground to their nests. They were so near that the darker marking at the
end of the tail, as it was spread open to assist the upward flight to
the branch, was visible. Outside the garden gate, and not more than
twenty yards distant, there stood three young spruce firs, at the edge
of the copse, but without the boundary. To the largest of these one of
the pigeons came now and then; he was half inclined to choose it for his
nest.
The noise of their wings as they rose and threshed their strong feathers
together over the tops of the trees was often heard, and while in the
garden one might be watched approaching from a distance, swift as the
wind, then suddenly half-closing his wings and shooting forwards, he
alighted among the boughs. Their coo is not in any sense tuneful; yet it
has a pleasant association; for the ringdove is pre-eminently the bird
of the woods and forests, and rightly named the wood-pigeon. Yet though
so associated with the deepest and most lonely woods, here they were
close to the house and garden, constantly heard, and almost always
visible; and London, too, so near. They seemed almost as familiar as the
sparrows and starlings.
These pigeons were new inhabitants; but turtle-doves had built in the
copse since I knew it. They were late coming the last spring I watched
them; but, when they did, chose a spot much nearer the house than usual.
The turtle-dove has a way of gurgling the soft vowels "oo" in the
throat. Swallows do not make a summer, but when the turtle-dove coos
summer is certainly come. One afternoon one of the pair flew up into a
hornbeam which stood beside the garden not twenty yards at farthest. At
first he sat upright on the branch watching me below, then turned and
fluttered down to the nest beneath.
While this nesting was going on I could hear five different birds at
once either in the garden or from any of the windows. The doves cooed,
and every now and then their gentle tones were overpowered by the loud
call of the wood-pigeons. A cuckoo called from the top of the tallest
birch, and a nightingale and a brook-sparrow (or sedge-reedling) were
audible together in the common on the opposite side of the road. It is
remarkable that one season there seems more of one kind of bird than the
next. The year alluded to, for instance, in this copse was the
wood-pigeons' year. But one season previously the copse seemed to belong
to the missel-thrushes.
Early in the March mornings I used to wake as the workmen's trains went
rumbling by to the great City, to see on the ceiling by the window a
streak of sunlight, tinted orange by the vapour through which the level
beams had passed. Something in the sense of morning lifts the heart up
to the sun. The light, the air, the waving branches speak; the earth
and life seem boundless at that moment. In this it is the same on the
verge of the artificial City as when the rays come streaming through the
pure atmosphere of the Downs. While thus thinking, suddenly there rang
out three clear, trumpet-like notes from a tree at the edge of the copse
by the garden. A softer song followed, and then again the same three
notes, whose wild sweetness echoed through the wood.
The voice of the missel-thrush sounded not only close at hand and in the
room, but repeated itself as it floated away, as the bugle-call does. He
is the trumpeter of spring: Lord of March, his proud call challenges the
woods; there are none who can answer. Listen for the missel-thrush: when
he sings the snow may fall, the rain drift, but not for long; the
violets are near at hand. The nest was in a birch visible from the
garden, and that season seemed to be the missel-thrush's. Another year
the cuckoos had possession.
There is a detached ash tree in the field by the copse; it stands apart,
and about sixty or seventy yards from the garden. A cuckoo came to this
ash every morning, and called there for an hour at a time, his notes
echoing along the building, one following the other as wavelets roll on
the summer sands. After awhile two more used to appear, and then there
was a chase round the copse, up to the tallest birch, and out to the ash
tree again. This went on day after day, and was repeated every evening.
Flying from the ash to the copse and returning, the birds were
constantly in sight; they sometimes passed over the house, and the call
became so familiar that it was not regarded any more than the chirp of a
sparrow. Till the very last the cuckoos remained there, and never ceased
to be heard till they left to cross the seas.
That was the cuckoos' season; next spring, they returned again, but much
later than usual, and did not call so much, nor were they seen so often
while they were there. One was calling in the copse on the evening of
the 6th of May as late as half-past eight, while the moon was shining.
But they were not so prominent; and as for the missel-thrushes, I did
not hear them at all in the copse. It was the wood-pigeons' year. Thus
the birds come in succession and reign by turns.
Even the starlings vary, regular as they are by habit. This season
(1881) none have whistled on the house-top. In previous years they have
always come, and only the preceding spring a pair filled the gutter with
the materials of their nest. Long after they had finished a storm
descended, and the rain, thus dammed up and unable to escape, flooded
the corner. It cost half a sovereign to repair the damage, but it did
not matter; the starlings had been happy. It has been a disappointment
this year not to listen to their eager whistling and the flutter of
their wings as they vibrate them rapidly while hovering a moment before
entering their cavern. A pair of house-martins, too, built under the
eaves close to the starlings' nest, and they also disappointed me by not
returning this season, though the nest was not touched. Some fate, I
fear, overtook both starlings and house-martins.
Another time it was the season of the lapwings. Towards the end of
November (1881), there appeared a large flock of peewits, or green
plovers, which flock passed most of the day in a broad, level ploughed
field of great extent. At this time I estimated their number as about
four hundred; far exceeding any flock I had previously seen in the
neighbourhood. Fresh parties joined the main body continually, until by
December there could not have been less than a thousand. Still more and
more arrived, and by the first of January (1882) even this number was
doubled, and there were certainly fully two thousand there. It is the
habit of green plovers to all move at once, to rise from the ground
simultaneously, to turn in the air, or to descend--and all so regular
that their very wings seem to flap together. The effect of such a vast
body of white-breasted birds uprising as one from the dark ploughed
earth was very remarkable.
When they passed overhead the air sang like the midsummer hum with the
shrill noise of beating wings. When they wheeled a light shot down
reflected from their white breasts, so that people involuntarily looked
up to see what it could be. The sun shone on them, so that at a distance
the flock resembled a cloud brilliantly illuminated. In an instant they
turned and the cloud was darkened. Such a great flock had not been seen
in that district in the memory of man.
There did not seem any reason for their congregating in this manner,
unless it was the mildness of the winter, but winters had been mild
before without such a display. The birds as a mass rarely left this one
particular field--they voyaged round in the air and settled again in the
same place. Some few used to spend hours with the sheep in a meadow,
remaining there till dusk, till the mist hid them, and their cry sounded
afar in the gloom. They stayed all through the winter, breaking up as
the spring approached. By March the great flock had dispersed.
The winter was very mild. There were buttercups, avens, and white
nettles in flower on December 31st. On January 7th, there were briar
buds opening into young leaf; on the 9th a dandelion in flower, and an
arum up. A grey veronica was trying to open flower on the 11th, and
hawthorn buds were so far open that the green was visible on the 16th.
On February 14th a yellow-hammer sang, and brambles had put forth green
buds. Two wasps went by in the sunshine. The 14th is old Candlemas,
supposed to rule the weather for some time after. Old Candlemas was very
fine and sunny till night, when a little rain fell. The summer that
followed was cold and ungenial, with easterly winds, though fortunately
it brightened up somewhat for the harvest. A chaffinch sang on the 20th
of February: all these are very early dates.
One morning while I was watching these plovers, a man with a gun got
over a gate into the road. Another followed, apparently without a
weapon, but as the first proceeded to take his gun to pieces, and put
the barrel in one pocket at the back of his coat, and the stock in a
second, it is possible that there was another gun concealed. The
coolness with which the fellow did this on the highway was astounding,
but his impudence was surpassed by his stupidity, for at the very moment
he hid the gun there was a rabbit out feeding within easy range, which
neither of these men observed.
The boughs of a Scotch fir nearly reached to one window. If I recollect
rightly, the snow was on the ground in the early part of the year, when
a golden-crested wren came to it. He visited it two or three times a
week for some time; his golden crest distinctly seen among the dark
green needles of the fir.
There are squirrels in the copse, and now and then one comes within
sight. In the summer there was one in the boughs of an oak close to the
garden. Once, and once only, a pair of them ventured into the garden
itself, deftly passing along the wooden palings and exploring a guelder
rose-bush. The pheasants which roost in the copse wander to it from
distant preserves. One morning in spring, before the corn was up, there
was one in a field by the copse calmly walking along the ridge of a
furrow so near that the ring round his neck was visible from the road.
In the early part of last autumn, while the acorns were dropping from
the oaks and the berries ripe, I twice disturbed a pheasant from the
garden of a villa not far distant. There were some oaks hard by, and
from under these the bird had wandered into the quiet sequestered
garden. The oak in the copse on which the squirrel was last seen is
peculiar for bearing oak-apples earlier than any other of the
neighbourhood, and there are often half-a-dozen of them on the twigs on
the trunk before there is one anywhere else. The famous snowstorm of
October 1880 snapped off the leader or top of this oak.
Jays often come, magpies more rarely, to the copse; as for the lesser
birds they all visit it. In the hornbeams at the verge blackcaps sing in
spring a sweet and cultured song, which does not last many seconds. They
visit a thick bunch of ivy in the garden. By these hornbeam trees a
streamlet flows out of the copse, crossed at the hedge by a pole, to
prevent cattle straying in. The pole is a robin's perch. He is always
there, or near; he was there all through the terrible winter, all the
summer, and he is there now.
There are a few inches, a narrow strip of sand, beside the streamlet
under this pole. Whenever a wagtail dares to come to this sand the robin
immediately appears and drives him away. He will bear no intrusion. A
pair of butcher-birds built very near this spot one spring, but
afterwards appeared to remove to a place where there is more furze, but
beside the same hedge. The determination and fierce resolution of the
shrike, or butcherbird, despite his small size, is most marked. One day
a shrike darted down from a hedge just before me, not a yard in front,
and dashed a dandelion to the ground.
His claws clasped the stalk, and the flower was crushed in a moment; he
came with such force as to partly lose his balance. His prey was
probably a humble-bee which had settled on the dandelion. The shrike's
head resembles that of the eagle in miniature. From his favourite branch
he surveys the grass, and in an instant pounces on his victim.
There is a quiet lane leading out of one of the roads which have been
mentioned down into a wooded hollow, where there are two ponds, one on
each side of the lane. Standing here one morning in the early summer,
suddenly a kingfisher came shooting straight towards me, and swerving a
little passed within three yards; his blue wings, his ruddy front, the
white streak beside his neck, and long bill were visible for a moment;
then he was away, straight over the meadows, till he cleared a distant
hedge and disappeared. He was probably on his way to visit his nest, for
though living by the streams kingfishers often have their nest a
considerable way from water.
Two years had gone by since I saw one here before, perched then on the
trunk of a willow which overhangs one of the ponds. After that came the
severe winters, and it seemed as if the kingfishers were killed off, for
they are often destroyed by frost, so that the bird came unexpectedly
from the shadow of the trees, across the lane, and out into the sunshine
over the field. It was a great pleasure to see a kingfisher again.
This hollow is the very place of singing birds in June. Up in the oaks
blackbirds whistle--you do not often see them, for they seek the leafy
top branches, but once now and then while fluttering across to another
perch. The blackbird's whistle is very human, like some one playing the
flute; an uncertain player now drawing forth a bar of a beautiful melody
and then losing it again. He does not know what quiver or what turn his
note will take before it ends; the note leads him and completes itself.
His music strives to express his keen appreciation of the loveliness of
the days, the golden glory of the meadow, the light, and the luxurious
shadows.