few, and she did not live the life of the hunted that fear each footfall
on the grass; but, as if to balance all deficiencies, her sense of smell
was singularly acute, so that she could follow with ease the trail of a
beetle or of an earthworm in its windings over the soil. The eggs and
young of the lark, the corncrake, the partridge, or of any other bird
that built on the ground, were never safe once the hedgehog had crossed
the lines of scent left by the parents around their nest. Even the robin
and the wren, nesting in holes along the hedge, and the field-mouse in
its chamber sheltered by the moss, were at any time likely to have their
family affairs most cruelly upset. The wild-bee's sting could not save
her honeyed cells and helpless grubs, and the sharp-fanged adder,
writhing from the hedgehog's sudden bite, would hurl itself in vain
against the prickly ball that instantly confronted each counter attack.
The hedgehog's first experience of snake-killing occurred late one
evening, when she discovered a viper, some distance from its hole,
coiled asleep on a bare patch of soil where the sunlight had lingered at
the close of day. Her manner instantly changed; she became eager and
alert. Pausing only a second to make sure of her attack, she bit the
snake sharply near the neck, then, withdrawing her head and limbs into
the shelter of her spines, rolled over, an inanimate ball. The viper,
mad with pain, thrust back its head from its sinuous coils, rose, and
struck with open jaws at its assailant. Its fangs closed strongly, but
failed to get a grip, and the smooth underside of its throat glanced
past the hedgehog's slanting prickles with such force that the whole
body of the snake was lifted from the ground, and fell, like a bent
arrow, about a yard behind its foe. Again the snake rose, and struck
with no effect; but this time the stroke, coming from the rear, was met
by the sharp points of the spines, and the adder's mouth dropped blood
from a clean-cut wound on the upper edge of the palate. Repeatedly, the
snake, hissing loudly and fighting for its life, attacked its armoured
enemy--at first dashing itself senselessly against the sharp points of
the hedgehog's spines, then, with caution, swaying to and fro its
bleeding head and snapping harmlessly at an apparently unguarded spot,
till, from sheer exhaustion and pain, and with its store of poison
almost exhausted, it retired from the unequal combat and slowly wriggled
into the grass. Presently, the "urchin" uncoiled, and, as soon as the
inquisitive little snout discovered the whereabouts of the snake,
started in pursuit. With a hard, firm bite, she luckily managed to break
the backbone of the viper; then, at once, she again assumed the shape of
a ball. Desperate now, the snake expended all its remaining strength in
wild attacks, till, limp and helpless, and utterly at the mercy of the
hedgehog, it lay outstretched. Then the relentless hedgehog, assured
that her prey was quite defenceless, severed almost every bone in its
body, tore the scales from the flesh, and fed to repletion.
Such a struggle often happens in the fields and the woodlands. During
the first few weeks of life, the hedgehog, if its parents are absent,
may be at the adder's mercy; but, later, the tables are completely
turned, the once helpless creature becomes the strong aggressor, and is
revenged by removing, not only an enemy, but a rival subsisting on food
often similar to that which is its own.
For a while after her awakening, the hedgehog fed chiefly on the big
earthworms which, induced by the increasing warmth, forsook the deep
recesses of their burrows, and tunnelled immediately beneath the
grass-roots, coming forth at night to lie outstretched amid the
undergrowth. She had, of necessity, to match their fear by her excessive
cunning. They frequently detected her presence by the slight vibrations
of the soil beneath her soft, slow-moving feet, and hurriedly withdrew
from her path, but more often she surprised and captured them by the
simple artifice of waiting and watching beside the burrows where scent
was fresh, and where, notwithstanding the noises reaching her from
above, she could readily distinguish the sounds of stretching, gliding
bodies moving to the surface through the tortuous passages below.
She soon became a wanderer, deserting her winter nest, and roaming
nightly further and yet further from the valley meadows, till she
reached a rough pasture at the end of the glen. In a thick hedgerow
skirting a secluded pond among alders and willows, she found food
unexpectedly varied and plentiful. Luscious snails, with striped yellow
and brown shells, were so common in the ditch beyond a certain
cattle-path, that, even after a whole day's fast, her hunger was quickly
appeased.
April drew near, the leaves of the trees expanded, and the voice of the
night wind in the branches changed from a moan to a whisper. At noon,
flies came forth to bask on the stones; the furze, decked with yellow
flowers, was visited by countless bees; and bronze-winged beetles crept
among the thorny branches of the hawthorn and the sloe. The hedgehog
knew little of the pulsing life of mid-day, but at dusk she sometimes
found a tired fly, or bee, or beetle, hiding in the matted grass
beneath the gorse, and so was made aware of summer's near approach.
Among the flags and the rushes of the pond, a pair of fussy moorhens
built their nest on an islet of decayed vegetation clustered round a
stone. At all hours of the day, the birds sailed gaily hither and
thither, or wandered, happy and impulsive, along the margin of the pool.
No care had they, and the solitude of their retreat seemed likely never
to be disturbed, till, one moonlit night, the fox, that last year had
killed the baby hedgehog in the glen, stole through the shadows of the
alders, caught the scent of the moorhens, and approached the nest where
the female was brooding over her eggs. The bird had watched the fox's
movements since first he appeared on the bank beyond the trees. Quietly
she dropped into the pond beside the nest, dived, came up on the far
side of the islet, and stayed there, with only her head above the
surface of the water. She saw, with fear, the fox approach her nest, and
recognised that it was hardly possible for her treasures to be saved,
when, suddenly, her mate, having doubtless watched the marauder as
closely as she herself had done, walked out of a reed-clump two or three
yards from her hiding place, and, in full view of the fox, swam slowly
to and fro, beating his wings as if in mortal pain. Without the
slightest hesitation, Reynard, thinking to obtain an easy prize, plunged
into the pond, but the bird just managed to elude him, and to flutter
into another reed-clump a short distance away. Completely deceived by
the ruse, the fox was drawn further and further from the nest, till he
reached a distant corner of the pond, when, to his astonishment, the
moorhen vanished, leaving him to a vain search which at last so much
annoyed him that, instead of returning along the bank towards the nest,
he crossed the glen, trotted up the cattle-path, and entered the dense
thicket on the slope.
With most wild creatures, fear seems to be a feeling that quickly comes
and quickly goes. But over some of Nature's weaklings, fear seems to
throw a spell that remains long after the danger has passed; as, for
instance, in the case of a rabbit hunted by a stoat, or of a vole
pursued by a weasel. The animal trembles with fright, cries as if in
pain, and limps, half-paralysed, towards its home, some time after its
pursuer may have turned aside to follow a line of scent leading in a
quite opposite direction. Now and then, a young rabbit is so overcome by
fright, that the sly, watchful carrion crow obtains, with little
trouble, an unexpected meal. The birds of the hedgerow--finches, robins,
and the like--are also subject to the distressing influence of fear,
directly they catch sight of a hungry weasel "performing" in the ditch.
When the weasel sets itself to lure any such creatures, its movements
are remarkably similar to the contortions of a snake; and the birds,
fascinated as their enemy's strange actions are rapidly repeated,
flutter helplessly from spray to spray, till one or other becomes a
victim and the weasel ambles off with its prey. Then, released from the
spell, the birds proceed to mob the bloodthirsty tyrant, and, at times,
with such effect that he is compelled, before making good his escape, to
resort to stratagems similar to those that previously held the birds
enthralled. Reynard seems to have learned from the weasel's manoeuvres,
for he, too, is wont to entice the rabbits towards him by extraordinary
methods, twirling round, like a cat, in pursuit of his tail, and
affording such a spectacle to any onlookers that they must needs, from
sheer curiosity, find out the meaning of a woodland farce, which, alas!
is often followed by a tragedy. It is not known that the fox ever
succeeds in fascinating the moorhen; the bird, directly she caught sight
of his circling form, would probably dive, and in the cool refuge of the
water, her sharp eyes peeping from between the flags, would wisely
conclude that such an unaccountable display meant danger. It is,
however, tolerably certain that the influence of fear seldom causes a
nesting bird, or a breeding mammal, to become helpless in the presence
of an enemy, though when family cares are over the conditions might be
entirely reversed. Even such timid creatures as rabbits and hares
sometimes strenuously defend their young from the attacks of weasels and
stoats.
As the fox trotted up the hillside path, the moorhen joined her mate in
the tangle of the reeds, and, without fear, wandered over the marshy
ground in the neighbourhood of her nest. Then she swam out across the
narrow channel, and settled down, in fancied security, to brood once
more over her speckled eggs. She had just taken her accustomed position,
when the hedgehog, pushing the reeds aside, became aware of the strong
scent on the margin of the pond. The hungry "urchin's" intelligence,
though limited, at once suggested that the scent of a mothering bird
might lead to a clutch of delicious eggs, or to a brood of plump and
juicy nestlings. Following the trail, the hedgehog came to the marshy
ground at the margin of the narrow passage where the bird had crossed,
and, with head erect, sniffed the tainted wind blowing gently shorewards
from the brooding moorhen. In her eagerness, she lifted herself slightly
at the edge of the bank, missed her footing, and fell into the pond, not
more than two or three feet from the moorhen. The bird, hearing the
splash, dived instantly; her mate again came quickly to the scene and
tried to lead the enemy away, but the hedgehog, heedless of every
artifice, paddled slowly to the platform of dry flags, and helped
herself to a repast more appetising than any she had recently enjoyed,
while the birds, flapping their wings, circled angrily about the pond,
and pecked vigorously, but vainly, at the marauder's prickly coat.
Late the next evening, the hedgehog discovered a fledgling thrush hidden
in the grass beyond the alders. In response to the cry of the young
bird, the mother thrush flew straight to the spot, and, with a lucky
blow struck full at the hedgehog's snout, so intimidated her enemy that
she curled up immediately and allowed the fledgling to escape unharmed.
The tender grass was reaching up to seed, the may blossom was burdening
the air with rich perfume, and summer had almost come, when, late one
night, the hedgehog, hunting among the shadows of the trees, chanced to
hear a low, bleating sound, like the voice of a leveret calling to the
mother hare out feeding in the clover. She had never heard that sound
before, but its meaning, nevertheless, was plain, and without hesitation
she replied. Again the sound broke the stillness, as a dim form lifted
itself clumsily from the ditch and came towards her. Presently she felt
an inquiring touch, and, turning, found herself face to face with a male
hedgehog that had followed her path through the undergrowth. Nature had
not been lavish in his adornment; like the female, he was a plain little
creature, brown and grey, fitted to sleep unnoticed among the wind-blown
leaves and twigs beside a sheltering mound.
Theirs was an odd and awkward courtship--its language a medley of
unmusical squeals and grunts; and if a difference arose it was settled
by one curling up into a ball till the other had forgotten the quarrel.
But soon they became good friends, hunted together all night and slept
together all day, while the year drew on to summer and then, almost
imperceptibly, declined. Devoting much of their attention to domestic
affairs, they built a large, dry nest among the foxgloves near the
stream; where, towards the end of hay harvest, three naked little
"urchins" came into the world, to be reared, just as the mother hedgehog
herself had been reared, till autumn merged into winter, and winter's
cold induced each to go in loneliness and build a snuggery for sleep.
NIGHT IN THE WOODS.
I.
HAUNTS OF THE BADGER AND THE FOX.
Comparatively little seems to be known of the night side of wild life in
this country. Night watching involves prolonged exposure, unremitting
vigilance, absolute quietness; and yet, to the most alert observer, it
often results in nothing but disappointment and vexation.
Some time ago, during the moonlit nights of several months, I kept
watch, near a "set" inhabited by half-a-dozen badgers, a vixen and her
cubs, a rabbit and her numerous progeny, and a solitary little buck
wood-mouse, whose close acquaintanceship I made after I had captured him
in a butterfly-net placed as a spring-trap above his narrow run-way in
the grass. This "set"--which I have already partly described, in writing
of Brock, the badger--seemed to be the common lodging house of the
wood. Its numerous inhabitants, though not on terms of friendship, were,
apparently, not at enmity. The wood-mouse and the rabbits, while
entering or leaving the underground passages, and wandering through the
paths in the wood, took care to avoid their powerful neighbours; the
foxes, believing that out of sight is out of mind, avoided with equal
care all chances of encountering the badgers; and the badgers, sluggish
in movement and tolerant in disposition, refrained from evicting the
foxes or digging out the rabbits.
In the undergrowth, but away from the well worn tracks used by the
creatures as they stole out to feed, I had chosen three hiding places,
representing in their relative positions the corners of a triangle the
centre of which was the main entrance to the "set." I was thus able,
whatever might be the direction of the wind, to lie to leeward and
obtain a clear view of the principal opening, while I incurred but
slight risk of detection, unless the rabbits or the wood-mouse crept
into the brambles.
It was during the last week of watching that my patience received its
best rewards. Almost regularly then, as the shadows deepened before
moonrise, the rabbits stole out, and, sometimes with no hesitation,
sometimes after much cautious reconnoitring and sniffing the air and
"drumming" alarm signals on the mound before their door, hopped along
the paths towards the clover-fields outside the wood. Soon after the
rabbits appeared, the wood-mouse timidly peeped around the corner of the
entrance, and, seeing nothing of his enemy, the brown owl, disappeared,
with a rustle, among the dead leaves that filled a hollow where the old,
disused workings of the "set" had "shrunk."
On several occasions, the vixen led forth her cubs long before the
badgers came in view, and while the light yet lingered on the crests of
the neighbouring hills. The little family went away silently to a dense
furze-brake about a hundred yards distant on the lower edge of the wood,
and, till the sun had gone down, remained close-hidden in a lair that I
afterwards discovered amid the long grass in the heart of the thicket.
More frequently, however, I saw nothing of the vixen till nightfall,
though the cubs, impatient of confinement, now and again visited the
mound outside the "set," and for a few moments played together on the
bare soil thrown up by the hard-working badgers, as, in spring, they
enlarged their breeding chamber. But, in the first calm hour of night,
when the red afterglow had faded from the hills, and the moon, ascending
cloudless in the southern sky, cast long, mysterious shadows down the
aisles of the wood, the fox-cubs and their dam came boldly out, and,
instead of moving off towards the furze, adjourned to a rill close by,
whence, after quenching their thirst, they repaired to a glade above the
"set," and in this favourite playground frisked and romped,
unremittingly guarded from danger by their devoted mother. My presence
unsuspected, I watched them, little dim figures, flitting to and fro.
When they had gone far up the winding pathway to the cornfields, and the
silence was no longer broken by their low cries of dissembled rage and
fear, I sometimes lingered in my hiding place; and as on the grass I
lay, looking towards the stars that twinkled between the motionless
leaves of the trees above me, my thoughts went back to a time long
before our village had been built beside the river; before Giraldus
Cambrensis had journeyed hence with the pilgrim band towards Sant Dewi's
shrine; before the great Crag of Vortigern, across the near dingle, had
resounded with the blare of the trumpets of war; before even, in the
primitive hut-circle on the opposite hill, wild little children had
played about the twilight fires kindled in readiness for the home-coming
of the weary hunters--a time when the fox, the badger, and the tiny
mouse had nightly journeyed through the woods, and the call of the gaunt
wolf to his mate had weirdly echoed and re-echoed in the valley,
startling the innocent hare in the open waste above the slope, and the
busy beaver on the dam below in the pool at the bend of the river.
The badgers--or "earth-pigs" as the country folk have named them--were
the original occupants of the "set," unless, however, the earliest
excavations had been made by the ancestors of the old doe-rabbit now
inhabiting a side apartment. The foxes and the wood-mouse might have
been looked upon as interlopers, but they often played the part of
scouts and sentinels, quick to give alarm to the tolerant, easy-going
badgers, in case of imminent danger from the visit of a dog or a man to
the neighbourhood of their retreat.
The badgers were more irregular as to the time when they left the "set"
than were any of the other inhabitants. Perhaps they suspected a human
presence, because of some peculiar vibration in the earth through a
false step of mine. Perhaps, during certain conditions of the
atmosphere, a taint--borne from me, on a wave rather than a current of
air, to the wide archway beneath the tree-roots in front of the main
entrance, and then drawn down into the draughty passages--was detected
by them immediately they passed beyond the stagnant atmosphere of the
blind-alley where they slept. Evening after evening, one of the old
badgers would appear at the mouth of the "set," and, with snout uplifted
in the archway of the tree-roots, would stay as motionless, but for the
restless twitching of the alert nostrils, as were the trees and the
stones around his home, while I, not even daring to flick an irritating
gnat from my forehead or neck, would wait and long for the philosopher
in grey to make up his slow-moving mind.
With regard to the badger's habit of staying for some time in the
doorway of his home, it may be mentioned that years afterwards, when one
night I compared my notes with those of a companion who had hidden near
the main opening of the "set" while I had watched by a hole higher in
the wood, I found that each entrance had, simultaneously and for long,
been occupied by a vigilant badger; and, as both animals were full-grown
"greys," I concluded that parent badgers not unusually took ample
precautions against surprise before allowing their cubs to venture out
into the night.
Once away from the "set," the old male badger seemed to lose suspicion
of any obnoxious presence. Then, lumbering after him, every member of
his family would appear in full view on the mound, and, with little fits
and starts of pretended rage and fright, would roll over and over each
other, rush helter-skelter back to the underground dwelling and out
again, and round and round the tree-trunks. A favourite trick, indulged
in by young and old alike, was that of raising themselves on their
hind-legs close beside a broad beech-trunk near the "set," and then, on
tiptoe, stretching out their fore-claws to the fullest extent and
scratching vigorously at the bark.
This trick irresistibly reminded me of an incident connected with a
shooting expedition to the moors, when, one evening, after much gossip
in the ingle-nook, I accompanied my jolly host to the barn, and there,
much to the merriment of all concerned, acted as judge, while, by the
light of a lantern, the farmer measured and recorded the height of his
wife, as well as of each of his six children and his servants, against
the oaken door-post, and finally insisted that he himself, a veritable
giant, should submit to the test, and gave orders for a chair to be
fetched that "mother," a stout little woman of some sixty inches in
height and, also, in circumference, might mount to the level necessary
for "chalking his mark."
One day a keen naturalist and sportsman, whose acquaintance I had
recently formed, proposed to join me in my vigil near the badger's home.
In the declining afternoon, we left the village, crossed the bridge, and
made a detour of the river path. As we passed along, I showed him an
otter's "holt" under a shelving bank, where, on the fine, wet sand, the
prints of the creature's pads were fresh and clearly outlined. We then
visited an "earth" within the wood, in which dwelt a lonely old fox I
had often watched as he stole along the rabbit-tracks towards the Crag
of Vortigern; and there I pointed out how crafty Reynard, having
selected a convenient rabbit burrow, had blocked up every hole--but one,
in a thick clump of brambles--with soil thrown out in digging, and how
the grass and the ground-ivy had luxuriantly covered the bare mounds,
and so encroached on the fox's winding track through the wood and about
the bramble clump, that even to an experienced visitor the only fox-sign
likely to be detected was in the loose arrangement of the bents and the
twigs by the arch of the run-way as it entered the thicket.
Rabbits, as well as water-voles and field-voles, are particularly
careful to nibble off wind-blown or sprouting twigs that encroach on
their tracks through the undergrowth; but foxes, otters, and badgers
simply brush them aside as they pass.
The sun had not yet gone down when we arrived at the "set." I had
planned an early visit, so that my friend might have an opportunity of
examining the much frequented track-ways, the footprints of the badgers
on the soft earth of the mound, and the scratches on the tree-trunk
where the badgers had sharpened their claws and incidentally measured
themselves. These numerous claw-marks were especially interesting, and,
on a certain tree by the "set," they formed irregular lines extending
from a foot above the ground to a height of three feet or rather more.
The lowest scratches had been made by the cubs seated on their haunches
and facing the tree; a little higher, the marks were those of the parent
animals while in a similar position; after a space in which a few
abrasions occurred, the marks showed how the cubs had gradually grown
till they could reach within a few inches of the clear, deep furrows
scratched by the old male badger as he measured his full length against
the tree.
[Illustration: "AS HE MEASURED HIS FULL LENGTH AGAINST THE TREE." (_See_
p. 419).]
After making observations with the utmost wariness, we hurried away, so
that, before dusk, our scent might evaporate, and become almost
imperceptible in the vicinity of the principal entrance to the lonely
burrow.