The cawing of the rooks in February shows that the time is coming when
their nests will be re-occupied. They resort to the trees, and perch
above the old nests to indicate their rights; for in the rookery
possession is the law, and not nine-tenths of it only. In the slow dull
cold of winter even these noisy birds are quiet, and as the vast flocks
pass over, night and morning, to and from the woods in which they
roost, there is scarcely a sound. Through the mist their black wings
advance in silence, the jackdaws with them are chilled into unwonted
quiet, and unless you chance to look up the crowd may go over
unnoticed. But so soon as the waters begin to make a sound in February,
running in the ditches and splashing over stones, the rooks commence
the speeches and conversations which will continue till late into the
following autumn.
The general idea is that they pair in February, but there are some
reasons for thinking that the rooks, in fact, choose their males at the
end of the preceding summer. They are then in large flocks, and if only
casually glanced at appear mixed together without any order or
arrangement. They move on the ground and fly in the air so close, one
beside the other, that at the first glance or so you cannot distinguish
them apart. Yet if you should be lingering along the by-ways of the
fields as the acorns fall, and the leaves come rustling down in the
warm sunny autumn afternoons, and keep an observant eye upon the rooks
in the trees, or on the fresh-turned furrows, they will be seen to act
in couples. On the ground couples alight near each other, on the trees
they perch near each other, and in the air fly side by side. Like
soldiers each has his comrade. Wedged in the ranks every man looks like
his fellow, and there seems no tie between them but a common
discipline. Intimate acquaintance with barrack or camp life would show
that every one had his friend. There is also the mess, or companionship
of half a dozen, or dozen, or more, and something like this exists part
of the year in the armies of the rooks. After the nest time is over
they flock together, and each family of three or four flies in concert.
Later on they apparently choose their own particular friends, that is
the young birds do so. All through the winter after, say October, these
pairs keep together, though lost in the general mass to the passing
spectator. If you alarm them while feeding on the ground in winter,
supposing you have not got a gun, they merely rise up to the nearest
tree, and it may then be observed that they do this in pairs. One
perches on a branch and a second comes to him. When February arrives,
and they resort to the nests to look after or seize on the property
there, they are in fact already paired, though the almanacs put down
St. Valentine's day as the date of courtship.
There is very often a warm interval in February, sometimes a few days
earlier and sometimes later, but as a rule it happens that a week or so
of mild sunny weather occurs about this time. Released from the grip of
the frost, the streams trickle forth from the fields and pour into the
ditches, so that while walking along the footpath there is a murmur all
around coming from the rush of water. The murmur of the poets is indeed
louder in February than in the more pleasant days of summer, for then
the growth of aquatic grasses checks the flow and stills it, whilst in
February every stone, or flint, or lump of chalk divides the current
and causes a vibration, With this murmur of water, and mild time, the
rooks caw incessantly, and the birds at large essay to utter their
welcome of the sun. The wet furrows reflect the rays so that the dark
earth gleams, and in the slight mist that stays farther away the light
pauses and fills the vapour with radiance. Through this luminous mist
the larks race after each other twittering, and as they turn aside,
swerving in their swift flight, their white breasts appear for a
moment. As while standing by a pool the fishes came into sight,
emerging as they swim round from the shadow of the deeper water, so the
larks dart over the low edge, and through the mist, and pass before
you, and are gone again. All at once one checks his pursuit, forgets
the immediate object, and rises, singing as he soars. The notes fall
from the air over the dark wet earth, over the dank grass, and broken
withered fern of the hedge, and listening to them it seems for a moment
spring. There is sunshine in the song; the lark and the light are one.
He gives us a few minutes of summer in February days. In May he rises
before as yet the dawn is come, and the sunrise flows down to us under
through his notes. On his breast, high above the earth, the first rays
fall as the rim of the sun edges up at the eastward hill. The lark and
the light are as one, and wherever he glides over the wet furrows the
glint of the sun goes with him. Anon alighting he runs between the
lines of the green corn. In hot summer, when the open hillside is
burned with bright light, the larks are then singing and soaring.
Stepping up the hill laboriously, suddenly a lark starts into the light
and pours forth a rain of unwearied notes overhead. With bright light,
and sunshine, and sunrise, and blue skies the bird is so associated in
the mind, that even to see him in the frosty days of wjnter, at least
assures us that summer will certainly return.
Ought not winter, in allegorical designs, the rather to be represented
with such things that might suggest hope than such as convey a cold and
grim despair? The withered leaf, the snowflake, the hedging bill that
cuts and destroys, why these? Why not rather the dear larks for one?
They fly in flocks, and amid the white expanse of snow (in the south)
their pleasant twitter or call is heard as they sweep along seeking
some grassy spot cleared by the wind. The lark, the bird of the light,
is there in the bitter short days. Put the lark then for winter, a sign
of hope, a certainty of summer. Put, too, the sheathed bud, for if you
search the hedge you will find the buds there, on tree and bush,
carefully wrapped around with the case which protects them as a cloak.
Put, too, the sharp needles of the green corn; let the wind clear it of
snow a little way, and show that under cold clod and colder snow the
green thing pushes up, knowing that summer must come. Nothing despairs
but man. Set the sharp curve of the white new moon in the sky: she is
white in true frost, and yellow a little if it is devising change. Set
the new moon as something that symbols an increase. Set the shepherd's
crook in a corner as a token that the flocks are already enlarged in
number. The shepherd is the symbolic man of the hardest winter time.
His work is never more important than then. Those that only roam the
fields when they are pleasant in May, see the lambs at play in the
meadow, and naturally think of lambs and May flowers. But the lamb was
born in the adversity of snow. Or you might set the morning star, for
it burns and burns and glitters in the winter dawn, and throws forth
beams like those of metal consumed in oxygen. There is nought that I
know by comparison with which I might indicate the glory of the morning
star, while yet the dark night hides in the hollows. The lamb is born
in the fold. The morning star glitters in the sky. The bud is alive in
its sheath; the green corn under the snow; the lark twitters as he
passes. Now these to me are the allegory of winter.
These mild hours in February check the hold which winter has been
gaining, and as it were, tear his claws out of the earth, their prey.
If it has not been so bitter previously, when this Gulf stream or
current of warmer air enters the expanse it may bring forth a butterfly
and tenderly woo the first violet into flower. But this depends on its
having been only moderately cold before, and also upon the stratum,
whether it is backward clay, or forward gravel and sand. Spring dates
are quite different according to the locality, and when violets may be
found in one district, in another there is hardly a woodbine-leaf out.
The border line may be traced, and is occasionally so narrow, one may
cross over it almost at a step. It would sometimes seem as if even the
nut-tree bushes bore larger and finer nuts on the warmer soil, and that
they ripened quicker. Any curious in the first of things, whether it be
a leaf, or flower, or a bird, should bear this in mind, and not be
discouraged because he hears some one else has already discovered or
heard something.
A little note taken now at this bare time of the kind of earth may lead
to an understanding of the district. It is plain where the plough has
turned it, where the rabbits have burrowed and thrown it out, where a
tree has been felled by the gales, by the brook where the bank is worn
away, or by the sediment at the shallow places. Before the grass and
weeds, and corn and flowers have hidden it, the character of the soil
is evident at these natural sections without the aid of a spade. Going
slowly along the footpath--indeed you cannot go fast in moist
February--it is a good time to select the places and map them out where
herbs and flowers will most likely come first. All the autumn lies
prone on the ground. Dead dark leaves, some washed to their woody
frames, short grey stalks, some few decayed hulls of hedge fruit, and
among these the mars or stocks of the plants that do not die away, but
lie as it were on the surface waiting. Here the strong teazle will
presently stand high; here the ground-ivy will dot the mound with
bluish-purple. But it will be necessary to walk slowly to find the
ground-ivy flowers under the cover of the briers. These bushes will be
a likely place for a blackbird's nest; this thick close hawthorn for a
bullfinch; these bramble thickets with remnants of old nettle stalks
will be frequented by the whitethroat after a while. The hedge is now
but a lattice-work which will before long be hung with green. Now it
can be seen through, and now is the time to arrange for future
discovery. In May everything will be hidden, and unless the most
promising places are selected beforehand, it will not be easy to search
them out. The broad ditch will be arched over, the plants rising on the
mound will meet the green boughs drooping, and all the vacancy will be
filled. But having observed the spot in winter you can almost make
certain of success in spring.
It is this previous knowledge which invests those who are always on the
spot, those who work much in the fields or have the care of woods, with
their apparent prescience. They lead the new comer to a hedge, or the
corner of a copse, or a bend of the brook, announcing beforehand that
they feel assured something will be found there; and so it is. This,
too, is one reason why a fixed observer usually sees more than one who
rambles a great deal and covers ten times the space. The fixed observer
who hardly goes a mile from home is like the man who sits still by the
edge of a crowd, and by-and-by his lost companion returns to him. To
walk about in search of persons in a crowd is well known to be the
worst way of recovering them. Sit still and they will often come by. In
a far more certain manner this is the case with birds and animals. They
all come back. During a twelvemonth probably every creature would pass
over a given locality: every creature that is not confined to certain
places. The whole army of the woods and hedges marches across a single
farm in twelve months. A single tree--especially an old tree--is
visited by four-fifths of the birds that ever perch in the course of
that period. Every year, too, brings something fresh, and adds new
visitors to the list. Even the wild sea birds are found inland, and
some that scarce seem able to fly at all are cast far ashore by the
gales. It is difficult to believe that one would not see more by
extending the journey, but, in fact, experience proves that the longer
a single locality is studied the more is found in it. But you should
know the places in winter as well as in tempting summer, when song and
shade and colour attract every one to the field. You should face the
mire and slippery path. Nature yields nothing to the sybarite. The
meadow glows with buttercups in spring, the hedges are green, the woods
lovely; but these are not to be enjoyed in their full significance
unless you have traversed the same places when bare, and have watched
the slow fulfilment of the flowers.
The moist leaves that remain upon the mounds do not rustle, and the
thrush moves among them unheard. The sunshine may bring out a rabbit,
feeding along the slope of the mound, following the paths or runs. He
picks his way, he does not like wet. Though out at night in the dewy
grass of summer, in the rain-soaked grass of winter, and living all his
life in the earth, often damp nearly to his burrows, no time, and no
succession of generations can make him like wet. He endures it, but he
picks his way round the dead fern and the decayed leaves. He sits in
the bunches of long grass, but he does not like the drops of dew on it
to touch him. Water lays his fur close, and mats it, instead of running
off and leaving him sleek. As he hops a little way at a time on the
mound he chooses his route almost as we pick ours in the mud and pools
of February. By the shore of the ditch there still stand a few dry,
dead dock stems, with some dry reddish-brown seed adhering. Some dry
brown nettle stalks remain; some grey and broken thistles; some teazles
leaning on the bushes. The power of winter has reached its utmost now,
and can go no farther. These bines which still hang in the bushes are
those of the greater bindweed, and will be used in a month or so by
many birds as conveniently curved to fit about their nests. The stem of
wild clematis, grey and bowed, could scarcely look more dead. Fibres
are peeling from it, they come off at the touch of the fingers. The few
brown feathers that perhaps still adhere where the flowers once were
are stained and discoloured by the beating of the rain. It is not dead:
it will flourish again ere long. It is the sturdiest of creepers,
facing the ferocious winds of the hills, the tremendous rains that blow
up from the sea, and bitter frost, if only it can get its roots into
soil that suits it. In some places it takes the place of the hedge
proper and becomes itself the hedge. Many of the trunks of the elms are
swathed in minute green vegetation which has flourished in the winter,
as the clematis will in in the summer. Of all, the brambles bear the
wild works of winter best. Given only a little shelter, in the corner
of the hedges or under trees and copses they retain green leaves till
the buds burst again. The frosts tint them in autumn with crimson, but
not all turn colour or fall. The brambles are the bowers of the birds;
in these still leafy bowers they do the courting of the spring, and
under the brambles the earliest arum, and cleaver, or avens, push up.
Round about them the first white nettle flowers, not long now; latest
too, in the autumn. The white nettle sometimes blooms so soon (always
according to locality), and again so late, that there seems but a brief
interval between, as if it flowered nearly all the year round. So the
berries on the holly if let alone often stay till summer is in, and new
berries begin to appear shortly afterwards. The ivy, too, bears its
berries far into the summer. Perhaps if the country be taken at large
there is never a time when there is not a flower of some kind out, in
this or that warm southern nook. The sun never sets, nor do the flowers
ever die. There is life always, even in the dry fir-cone that looks so
brown and sapless.
The path crosses the uplands where the lapwings stand on the parallel
ridges of the ploughed field like a drilled company; if they rise they
wheel as one, and in the twilight move across the fields in bands
invisible as they sweep near the ground, but seen against the sky in
rising over the trees and the hedges. There is a plantation of fir and
ash on the slope, and a narrow waggon-way enters it, and seems to lose
itself in the wood. Always approach this spot quietly, for whatever is
in the wood is sure at some time or other to come to the open space of
the track. Wood-pigeons, pheasants, squirrels, magpies, hares,
everything feathered or furred, down to the mole, is sure to seek the
open way. Butterflies flutter through the copse by it in summer, just
as you or I might use the passage between the trees. Towards the
evening the partridges may run through to join their friends before
roost-time on the ground. Or you may see a covey there now and then,
creeping slowly with humped backs, and at a distance not unlike
hedgehogs in their motions. The spot therefore should be approached
with care; if it is only a thrush out it is a pleasure to see him at
his ease and, as he deems, unobserved. If a bird or animal thinks
itself noticed it seldom does much, some will cease singing immediately
they are looked at. The day is perceptibly longer already. As the sun
goes down, the western sky often takes a lovely green tint in this
month, and one stays to look at it, forgetting the dark and miry way
homewards. I think the moments when we forget the mire of the world are
the most precious. After a while the green corn rises higher out of the
rude earth.
Pure colour almost always gives the idea of fire, or rather it is
perhaps as if a light shone through as well as colour itself. The fresh
green blade of corn is like this, so pellucid, so clear and pure in its
green as to seem to shine with colour. It is not brilliant--not a
surface gleam or an enamel,--it is stained through. Beside the moist
clods the slender flags arise filled with the sweetness of the earth.
Out of the darkness under--that darkness which knows no day save when
the ploughshare opens its chinks--they have come to the light. To the
light they have brought a colour which will attract the sunbeams from
now till harvest. They fall more pleasantly on the corn, toned, as if
they mingled with it. Seldom do we realise that the world is
practically no thicker to us than the print of our footsteps on the
path. Upon that surface we walk and act our comedy of life, and what is
beneath is nothing to us. But it is out from that under-world, from the
dead and the unknown, from the cold moist ground, that these green
blades have sprung. Yonder a steam-plough pants up the hill, groaning
with its own strength, yet all that strength and might of wheels, and
piston, and chains, cannot drag from the earth one single blade like
these. Force cannot make it; it must grow--an easy word to speak or
write, in fact full of potency. It is this mystery of growth and life,
of beauty, and sweetness, and colour, starting forth from the clods
that gives the corn its power over me. Somehow I identify myself with
it; I live again as I see it. Year by year it is the same, and when I
see it I feel that I have once more entered on a new life. And I think
the spring, with its green corn, its violets, and hawthorn-leaves, and
increasing song, grows yearly dearer and more dear to this our ancient
earth. So many centuries have flown! Now it is the manner with all
natural things to gather as it were by smallest particles. The merest
grain of sand drifts unseen into a crevice, and by-and-by another;
after a while there is a heap; a century and it is a mound, and then
every one observes and comments on it. Time itself has gone on like
this; the years have accumulated, first in drifts, then in heaps, and
now a vast mound, to which the mountains are knolls, rises up and
overshadows us. Time lies heavy on the world. The old, old earth is
glad to turn from the cark and care of drifted centuries to the first
sweet blades of green.
There is sunshine to-day after rain, and every lark is singing. Across
the vale a broad cloud-shadow descends the hillside, is lost in the
hollow, and presently, without warning, slips over the edge, coming
swiftly along the green tips. The sunshine follows--the warmer for its
momentary absence. Far, far down in a grassy coomb stands a solitary
cornrick, conical roofed, casting a lonely shadow--marked because so
solitary, and beyond it on the rising slope is a brown copse. The
leafless branches take a brown tint in the sunlight; on the summit
above there is furze; then more hill lines drawn against the sky. In
the tops of the dark pines at the corner of the copse, could the glance
sustain itself to see them, there are finches warming themselves in the
sunbeams. The thick needles shelter them, from the current of air, and
the sky is bluer above the pines. Their hearts are full already of the
happy days to come, when the moss yonder by the beech, and the lichen
on the fir-trunk, and the loose fibres caught in the fork of an
unbending bough, shall furnish forth a sufficient mansion for their
young. Another broad cloud-shadow, and another warm embrace of
sunlight. All the serried ranks of the green corn bow at the word of
command as the wind rushes over them.
There is largeness and freedom here. Broad as the down and free as the
wind, the thought can roam high over the narrow roofs in the vale.
Nature has affixed no bounds to thought. All the palings, and walls,
and crooked fences deep down yonder are artificial. The fetters and
traditions, the routine, the dull roundabout which deadens the spirit
like the cold moist earth, are the merest nothings. Here it is easy
with the physical eye to look over the highest roof. The moment the eye
of the mind is filled with the beauty of things natural an equal
freedom and width of view come to it. Step aside from the trodden
footpath of personal experience, throwing away the petty cynicism born
of petty hopes disappointed. Step out upon the broad down beside the
green corn, and let its freshness become part of life.
The wind passes, and it bends--let the wind, too, pass over the spirit.
From the cloud-shadow it emerges to the sunshine--let the heart come
out from the shadow of roofs to the open glow of the sky. High above,
the songs of the larks fall as rain--receive it with open hands. Pure
is the colour of the green flags, the slender-pointed blades--let the
thought be pure as the light that shines through that colour. Broad are
the downs and open the aspect--gather the breadth and largeness of
view. Never can that view be wide enough and large enough, there will
always be room to aim higher. As the air of the hills enriches the
blood, so let the presence of these beautiful things enrich the inner
sense. One memory of the green corn, fresh beneath the sun and wind,
will lift up the heart from the clods.