wind, and at twilight began our silent watch. A robin sang plaintively
from the hawthorns on the outskirts of the wood; the rooks sailed slowly
above us, and then, gossiping loudly of the day's events, congregated
around their nests in the great elms dimly outlined against the pearly
southern sky; the wood-pigeons dropped one by one into the beech-trees
near us; and a jay, uttering his harsh alarm, hopped in and out of some
young hazels fringing the glade beyond the "set." Presently, a brown
owl, in a group of tall pines near the little rill that made faint music
in the woods, began to mutter and complain, in those low, peculiar notes
that are often heard before she leaves her daytime resting place. Then
no sound disturbed the stillness but the far-off cawing of the rooks,
and the only creatures visible were some rabbits playing in the moonlit
glade, and a glow-worm shining with her soft green light on a bramble
spray within my reach.
Nearly half an hour passed by, and no sign of life came from the
badgers' home. Then the familiar white and black striped head, framed in
the darkness beneath the gnarled tree-root, suddenly appeared, and as
suddenly vanished. Another half-hour went by, and yet another, but no
further sign was given. My companion, unused to such a long vigil,
shifted uneasily, and protested that he was tingling with cramp and
longing for sleep; presently, unable to endure his discomfort, he arose,
and stretched his limbs before settling down again amid the briars.
Our patience was in vain. Once more the badger came in sight, but my
companion did not see what I myself had noticed, for sleep had sealed
his tired eyes, and when I nudged him he awoke with such a start that
the badger instantly withdrew into the burrow.
By the glow-worm's lamp, I found from my watch that midnight had long
passed; and so, since the hour was towards dawn and the moon was not
favourable for close observation of the "earth-pigs," even if they
crossed the open glade, I whispered to my friend that the proceedings,
in which his interest had manifestly waned, were over for the night. His
disappointment was keen, and though to me the night seemed warm, he,
accustomed to a tropical climate, chattered with the cold. He had not
even noticed the first appearance of the "earth-pig," and henceforth
night watching held no charm for him.
My own disappointment, if only for my friend's sake, was also keen; but,
on the evening following those hours of fruitless watching, I discovered
the vixen's lair in the furze-brake, and learned why she resorted
thither with her cubs, before the badger family had awakened from their
day-dreams, or the pale glow-worm's rays had lit up the dew-besprinkled
spider-webs.
Knowing that badgers are, as the country folk say, _pwdu_ (pouty)
creatures, likely to sulk at home for several nights if they consider
it unsafe to roam abroad, I carefully examined the mound of earth and
the beech-trunk near the "set," that I might learn whether the animals
had been out of doors since my previous visit. On the soil, fresh
footprints could be seen, their outlines clearly lit and deeply shadowed
as the sun sank in the west, and, in some of the scratches on the beech,
the pith had barely changed its colour from creamy white to the faintest
tinge of brown. I concluded, therefore, that the badgers had been out,
as usual, some time before the dawn. My eyes, however, were not
sufficiently trained to detect any sure evidence of the recent movements
of the vixen and her cubs.
Walking along the tracks, I chanced to notice that the path by which the
vixen sought the shelter of the furze-brake branched off at a sharp
angle, and led into the thicket at a bend that was hidden from my sight
while I watched near the "set." Picking my way in a line straight
through the tangle and parallel with this path, I came to an opening
where the grass was beaten down for about six square yards--more
particularly for two or three yards in the part nearest the spot at
which the tunnelled run-way entered it. Along the margin of this open
place, I could find no second entrance; everywhere at the foot of the
surrounding gorse-bushes the long grass grew in an unbroken line, except
close to the mouth of the run-way. There I found a shallow depression,
not unlike the "form" of a hare, but longer and broader, and I
determined to keep strict watch evening after evening, till I learned
the reason for the occasional visits of the vixen and her cubs to the
brake. But I little imagined that the secret would quickly be disclosed,
for it was my belief that, should the vixen venture to the mouth of the
"set" before the gloom was deepening into night, she would cross the
line of my scent, and either move away from the direction of the
furze-brake or return to her underground chamber. And yet previous
experiences led me to hope that, if certain atmospherical conditions
should prevail, the scent would probably become so weak that she would
recognise no cause for alarm.
It was the work of a few minutes for me to make couch of grass and twigs
behind a screen of broken furze-branches well in from the grassy
opening. Then, by raising with a prong-shaped stake the grass I had
trodden down, and by thrusting back the bramble-trails and fern-fronds I
had brushed aside, I carefully removed as far as possible all traces of
my visit.
I had scarcely settled down to watch and listen, when the faint snap of
a twig reached my ears, and I saw that the vixen with her cubs had
arrived on the scene. She walked around the enclosure, sniffing now and
again in the grass, while the young foxes frisked and gambolled with
each other, or trotted demurely by her side. She was at first
suspicious, but for some reason she soon gained confidence; then she
squatted in her lair, and surrendered herself, with patient motherhood,
to be the plaything of her healthy, headstrong youngsters.
For more than a half hour I watched the happy family, the little ones
climbing over the mother's back, and licking or biting her ears, her
pads, her brush, or racing over the grassy plot, frolicking with each
other till some little temper was aroused and play degenerated into a
fight. In general, they behaved like wild children without a thought of
care, yet they never went beyond the grass-fringe into the thicket, and
to each low note of warning or encouragement from their dam they gave
immediate attention. Sometimes the vixen bounded gaily about the edge of
the gorse, stooping again and again to snap with pretended rage at one
or another of her offspring. But for most of the time she remained in
her lair, listening intently for the slightest sound of danger, and
guarding the only approach through the bushes.
I longed to discover what she would have done had I suddenly come upon
her and cut off her retreat, but I dared not move for fear of raising
alarm. It is more than likely that, finding me in the path, she,
snarling and hissing, would have dashed without hesitation into any part
of the furze-brake, and her young would have followed with desperate
haste and vanished at her heels within the shadows.
By-and-by she led her little ones back through the run-way, and when, a
few minutes afterwards, I stole to the outer edge of the thicket, I saw
the merry family stooping in a row beside the rill, and lapping the
cool, delicious water, which refreshed them after their rough-and-tumble
sport. From the rill they wandered off into the gloom beneath the
beech-trees, and I, satisfied with having added to my knowledge of the
life of the woods, returned homewards in the light of the rising moon.
II.
THE CRAG OF VORTIGERN.
One of the chief difficulties with which the naturalist has to contend
while watching at night is the frequent invisibility of wild creatures
among the shadows, even when the full moon is high and unclouded. The
contrasts of light and shade are far more marked by night than by day;
by night everything seems severely white where the moonbeams glance
between the trees, or over the fields, or on the river, and the shadows
are colourless, mysterious, profound; whereas by day variety of tone and
colour may be observed in both light and shade, and every hour new and
unexpected charms are unfolded in bewildering succession.
The wild creatures of the night often seem to be aware of their
invisibility in the gloom, and of the risk they run while crossing open
spaces towards trees and hedgerows where an enemy may lurk awaiting
their approach. A fox is so familiar with his immediate surroundings
that, till his keen senses detect signs of danger, he will roam
unconcernedly hither and thither in the dark woods near his "earth,"
frolicking with his mate, or hunting the rabbits and the mice, or
sportively chasing the wind-blown leaves, as if a hound could never
disturb his peace. The fox knows the shape of each tree and bush, and of
each shadow thrown on the grass; he notes the havoc of the tempest and
the work of the forester. When the wind roars loudly in the branches
overhead, or the raindrops patter ceaselessly on the dead herbage
underfoot, or the mists blot out the vistas of the woods, he seldom
wanders far from home, for at such times Nature plays curious tricks
with sound and scent and sight, and danger steals upon him unawares.
The hunted creatures of the night so dislike the rain, that during a
storm Reynard would have difficulty in obtaining sufficient food; but
down in the river-pools below the wood, fearless Lutra, unaffected by
the inclement weather, swims with her cubs from bank to bank, and learns
that frogs and fish are as numerous in the time of tempest as when the
moon is bright and the air is warm and still.
Since my earliest years of friendship with Ianto the fisherman and
Philip the poacher, I have regarded night watching in the woods or by
the riverside as a fascinating sport, in which my knowledge of Nature is
put to its severest test. By close, patient observation alone, can the
naturalist learn the habits of the creatures of the night; and if it
should be his good fortune to become the friend of such men as I have
mentioned he would find their help of inestimable value.
To Ianto and Philip I owe a debt of gratitude, of which I become
increasingly conscious with the passing of the years. I could never make
them an adequate return for their kindness; but I am solaced by my
recollection that I was able to comfort such staunch old friends when
they were passing into the darkness of death--haply to find, beyond,
some fair dawn brighter than any we had together seen from the hills
around my home. Often, as I write, I see them sitting in the evening
sunlight of my little room; often, in my garden, I see them walking up
the path attended by my dogs that now are dead; often, in the river
valley, whether I wander by night or by day, I see them at my side.
Ianto and Philip were always eager to help me by every means in their
power, but Philip, because of the risk to my health, would never invite
me to accompany him when the night was cold and stormy. One afternoon,
as Ianto and I were returning home from the riverside, the old fisherman
remarked: "I met Philip last night, sir, and he wants you and me to come
along with him for a ramble to the woods above the Crag. He's got
something to show you; I think it's an old earth-pig that lives in the
rocks. What do you say to joining me by the church as soon as you've had
something to eat? Then we'll go together as far as the bridge, but I'll
leave you there, for I've got a little job on hand that'll keep me till
sundown, I think. You'll find Philip at the 'castell' (prehistoric
earth-work) above the Crag, and I'll wade the river and be with you
again sometime 'between the lights.' Keep to cover, or to the hedges and
the lanes, and look about you well, most of all afore you cross a gap,
and when you're going out of cover or into it. Nobody must have a chance
of following you to-night to the Crag; so, if you meet a farm labourer
sudden-like, make off to the furze by the river farm, and double back
through the woods. You'll get to Philip early enough. He's going to net
the river after we leave him. It's a game I don't care much for--maybe
because I've given it up myself--but I've promised to do something
aforehand, that, if Philip didn't want you particular, he'd be bound to
do hisself. That's why I'm to leave you at the bridge."
I was tired after a day's hard fishing, but I readily fell in with the
arrangements my two old friends had made. On the way to the bridge,
Ianto gave me further instructions. "If, when you're nigh the Crag, sir,
you happen to come across a farm servant, or even if you think, from
seeing a _corgi_ (sheep-dog), that a farm servant is near, get right
away, and, as soon as you're sure nobody knows where you are, give that
signal I taught you--four quick barks of a terrier with a howl at the
end of 'em. Philip'll understand. But if everything goes well till you
get to the Crag, make that other signal--the noise of young wood-owls
waking up for the night--and Philip's sure to answer with a hoot. Then
let him come up to you; but, mind, don't you go to him."
A little mystified by Ianto's last injunction, I crossed the bridge,
passed through a succession of grassy lanes that for years had fallen
into disuse, picked my footsteps cautiously through the woods, and
arrived without adventure at the top of the Crag.
Getting down into the oak-scrub, I stood within the deep shadows at the
base of the great rock, and gave the signal--a harsh, unmusical cry,
such as a hungry young owl would utter at that time of the evening.
The cry had scarcely gone forth, when I was startled by a voice from
some hollow quite close to my side: "I'm Philip. Don't move--don't
speak. A man's watching you from the blackthorns at the top of the wood.
He hasn't seen me. Don't look his way, but walk along the path below,
and when you reach the end of the wood turn up and hide in the
cross-hedges, so that you can watch him if he comes out anywhere in the
open. And, mind, don't let him see you then. If he goes back to the
farm, give the signal again; or, if I give two hoots, one about ten
seconds after the other, come to me, but don't pass this place. The
fellow isn't of much account, but we must get rid of him before I can
stir. He's kept me here for the last half-hour."
Philip ceased speaking, and I walked carelessly down the wood, pausing
here and there to peep through a patch of undergrowth and to satisfy
myself that the man at the top of the wood had not moved. When outside
the wood, I turned rapidly up the hill and found an excellent hiding
place among some brambles on a thick hedge. From this spot I could
command a view of the meadows above the wood, and could easily retreat
unseen if the farm labourer happened to come towards me.
I watched patiently for twenty minutes or so, then heard Philip's
welcome signal from a fir-spinney on the far side of the Crag, and
hastened to his side. In reply to my question as to what had become of
the man who had watched from the blackthorn thicket, he pointed to the
opposite hillside, where a dim figure could be seen ascending the
ploughland in the direction of a distant farmstead. "I expect to be able
to show you a badger to-night," he said, "but of course I'm not sure
about it. A badger's comings and goings are as uncertain as the weather.
But first we'll climb further up the hill. You were asking me about the
leaping places of the hares: I know of one of these leaping places, and
I think I know of two hares that use them and have lately 'kittled' in
snug little 'forms' not far away. We must hurry, else the does will have
left the leverets and gone to feed in the clover. You go first. Wait for
me in the furze by the pond on the very top of the hill."
When Philip had rejoined me on the hill-top, he rapidly led the way to
the fringe of the covert, where he pointed to a low hedge-bank between
the gorse and a peat-field partly covered with water. "Hide in the hedge
about ten yards from this spot," he said, "so that you can see on
either side of the bank, then watch the path on this side." With a smile
he added: "This isn't a bad locality for a fern-owl. So, if you happen
to hear the rattle of that bird, you'll know the hare has started from
her 'form.'" Then, turning quickly into the furze and taking a bypath
through the thickest part of the tangle, Philip left me, and, soon
afterwards, I moved to my allotted hiding place.
Before I had waited long, the cry of the fern-owl reached me with
astonishing clearness from an adjoining field. Presently, I saw a hare
emerge from the gorse and come along the path towards me. At the exact
spot indicated by the poacher, she paused, and then with a single bound
cleared the wide space between herself and the hedge. With another bound
she landed on the marsh beyond, where she splattered away through the
shallow water till a dry reed-bed was reached on a slight elevation in
the marsh. There she was lost to view; the rank herbage screened her
further line of flight.
A minute afterwards, the fern owl's rattle once more broke on the quiet
evening, now from a few fields away to my right. For some time, I
closely watched the open space around the hedge-bank, but no animal
moved on the path. Suddenly, however, I thought I detected a slight
movement in a bracken frond beside the furze. It was not repeated, and I
had concluded that it signified nothing, when, to my amazement, I caught
sight of a second hare squatting in the middle of the path near the
bracken. How she came there I was unable to understand; for some time my
eyes had been directed towards the spot, and certainly I had not seen
her leave the ferns. She seemed to have risen from the earth--something
intangible that had instantly assumed the shape of a living creature.
She took a few strides towards my hiding place, but, exactly where the
first hare had leaped, she turned sharply at right angles to the path,
and with a long, easy bound sprang to the top of the hedge-bank; then
with another bound she flung herself into the marshy field. Making
straight for the reed-bed, she, too, was soon out of sight.
All that thus happened appeared to be the outcome of long experience;
the adoption by the hares of a more perfect plan to mislead a single
enemy pursuing by scent could hardly be conceived. A pack of hounds,
"checking" on the path, would in all probability have "cast" around,
and, sooner or later, would have struck the line afresh in the marshy
field, but a fox or a polecat would surely have been baffled, either at
the leaping places or where the hares had crossed through the shallow
water.
Man's intelligence, united with the intelligence, the eagerness, the
pace, the endurance, and the marvellous powers of scent possessed by a
score of hounds, and then pitted against a single creature fleeing for
its life, should well nigh inevitably attain its end. Nature has not yet
taught her weaklings how to match that powerful combination. And so a
naturalist, in studying the artifices adopted by hunted animals, should
be interested chiefly as to how such artifices would succeed against
pursuers unassisted by human intelligence. I am inclined to believe that
even a pack of well-trained harriers would have been unable to follow
the doe-hares I have referred to, unless the scent lay unusually well on
the surface of the marsh.
I stayed in the covert awhile, but when the call came for me to rejoin
Philip I hastened to the field in which he was waiting. I told him what
I had seen, and, together, we paid a visit to the doe-hares' "forms."
One of the "forms" lay in a clump of fern and brambles near the corner
of a fallow, the other on a slight elevation where a hedger had thrown
some "trash" beside a ditch in a field of unripe wheat.
While we stood in the wheat-field, Philip remarked: "We mustn't stay
long before going back to the Crag; but I'll call the doe I sent you
from this 'form,' and perhaps you'll see one of her tricks to mislead a
fox as she returns home. She's very careful of her young till they're
about a fortnight old, though soon afterwards she lets them 'fend' for
themselves. We'll hide in the ditch, and I'll imitate a leveret's cry.
But I mustn't imitate it so that she may think her little one is hurt,
else she's as likely as not to come with a rush, and you won't see how
she'd act under ordinary circumstances."
When we were comfortably settled in the fern, the poacher twice uttered
a feeble, wailing cry, and, after being silent for some minutes,
repeated the quavering call. Then, after a long interval, he again,
though in a much lower tone, repeated the cry. No answering cry was
heard, but suddenly, as she had appeared on the path by the furze, the
doe-hare came in sight at the edge of the ditch a little distance away.
She approached for several yards, then disappeared, with two or three
long, graceful bounds, into the corn that waved about her as she leaped.
She appeared once more, and squatted in the ditch on the other side of
the field; hence she jumped high into the air, and alighted on the
hedge; then, by a longer bound than any I had previously seen, she
gained a spot well out into the field, and raced along, till, directly
opposite us, she yet again leaped into the hedge, and from the hedge
into the wheat-field, where she immediately lay down with her little
ones in the "form."
Ianto, Philip, and I at last settled quietly to watch for the badger's
visit to the clearing. Philip told in a whisper of jokes he had played
on the keeper; Ianto capped these stories with reminiscences of younger
days and nights; and I, though hating bitterly the ruffian loiterers of
the village who subsisted on the spoils of the trap, the snare, and the
net, and were guilty of cowardly acts of revenge when checkmated in the
very game they chose to play, felt a certain sympathy with the two old
men by my side, who, as I was convinced, had fairly and squarely entered
into the game, and taken their few reverses without retaliation, only
becoming afterwards keener than ever to avoid all interference.
In the height of my enjoyment of an unusually good story, Philip, with a
slight movement, drew my attention to a faint, crackling noise coming
from the margin of the glade, where moonlight and shadow lay in sharp
contrast at the foot of the trees; he then whispered that the old badger
was standing there. Ianto almost simultaneously drew my attention
thither, but all that I could see at the spot indicated were small,
flickering patches of light and shadow.
I quietly drew close to Philip, and murmured in his ear: "Are you sure
it's the badger?" He nodded; and I continued, "I see a movement in the
leaves, but nothing else." The old man turned his head slightly, and
replied, "What you see is the badger scratching his neck against a tree;
the ticks are evidently tickling him." And he chuckled as he recognised
his unintentional pun.
For some minutes I could hardly believe he was right; then, slowly, I
recognised the shape of the badger's head, and what I had taken to be
flickering lights and shadows on the leaves changed to the black and
white markings of the creature's face. I had never before seen a badger
under similar conditions; and I had often wondered what purpose those
boldly contrasted markings could serve. Now, as their purpose was
revealed, I was startled by the manifestation of Nature's protective
mimicry. Even when, a little later, the animal ventured out from the
oak, and stood alert for the least sight or sound or scent of danger,
the moonlight and the shadow blended so harmoniously with the white and
the black of his face markings, and with the soft blue-grey of his body,
that he seemed completely at one with his surroundings, and likely to
elude the most observant enemy. Fully a half hour went by before he
decided to cross the glade. Then, as if irritated by a sense of his own
timidity, he abandoned his excessive caution, and hastened along his
run-way through the clearing; and, as he passed, I noted his queer,
rolling gait, and heard his squeaks and grunts as if he were angrily
complaining to himself of some recent wrong, and vowing vengeance; I
heard, also, the snapping of leaves and twigs beneath his clumsy feet,
and I smelt the sure and certain smell of a badger.