most part, save for a few buds of hawthorn just breaking into
leaf, or an elder bush already tinged with green. But on the banks
of the tiny stream that wanders leisurely along the lane below,
celandine and sweet violet are in bloom; and primroses, no longer
pale and stunted, as in the rougher days of March, lend their rare
perfume to the air. Meadowsweet and brooklime are springing by the
oozy shore, and on the dark boughs of the alders that lean over it
the catkins cluster thick.
In a blackthorn bush, whose armed sprays are lightly touched with
blossom as with new fallen snow, two wrens alight; two tiny
figures, mere balls of brown feather, so near that every line of
the wavy, shell-like marking on their backs is plain to see. Now
one of them, poised on a briar stem, breaks suddenly into song,
turning from side to side, his wings parted, his atom of a tail
expanded to the full. The brief lyric ended, he flies down to join
his mate, who waits demurely in the bush below, and for a minute
or two they flutter and play, and whisper to each other soft notes
of fond endearment--the sweetest bit of love-making imaginable.
Farther on, in a young oak tree in the hedge-row, two blackbirds
have alighted. Not lovers, nothing like it, paying no manner of
heed to each other's presence. One of them flies down--a splendid
figure, with his new black coat, with the bright golden orange of
his bill. Instantly the other is down too, in front of him. A
moment they stand thus, motionless. Then, with loud notes of
challenge, they tilt headlong at each other, beaks down, wings and
tail spread wide, their whole dark plumage rough with rage. Again
and again they meet in the shock of battle, rushing each on the
other's weapon, rising at last into the air, fluttering and
fighting, the snapping of their bills heard plainly fifty yards
away. Five minutes only the conflict lasts. More than one
historic field has been lost and won in time as brief. It is all
over. The victor stands alone upon the grass. His beaten rival is
in full flight far down the hedge-row. A moment later the queen of
beauty, who from her perch among the blackthorns has watched the
tournament unseen, flies down to the hero of her choice. It is the
old story; a tale far older than the days of Thais--"None but the
brave, none but the brave, none but the brave deserves the fair."
Here in this happy valley there has not been, for weeks past, one
clouded hour. March has shown, all through, the temper of the
lamb; nor now, in his last hours, does he show signs of changing
mood. To seaward it is true the haze deepens to a cold grey fog,
and the sullen booming of the distant fog guns is sounding
faintly, at intervals, even now. On the hill the lapwings are
calling, their plaintive voices softened by the distance, and at
times their dark figures show against the pale blue sky, as they
rise and fall above the limestone cliffs that skirt the hill.
Yonder crow, drifting up the slope, keeping low down, as if
fearing to be seen, is making for his fastness among the
fir-trees on the hill-crest higher up. He may well keep out of
sight. Only last week two lambs were found in a field near the
crow's nest, dying, with their eyes torn out. And the magpie,
chuckling now and then in doubtful tone, somewhere at the foot of
the orchard, has here a reputation almost as much blown upon.
Terrible fellows, both of them, in lambing time or in the poultry
yard. But they have been working hard and honestly enough all the
rest of the year. Some people seem to think that the destruction
of a chicken or two, or the theft of a few eggs, far outweighs a
whole year of good deeds--the slaughter of unnumbered grubs,
wire-worms, mice, and beetles.
At regular intervals, a few seconds apart, there sounds from a
tall ash tree in the hollow the drone of a greenfinch, monotonous
and unmusical. Was there ever such a drowsy sound? And yet when he
breaks off presently in a stave of his own wild song, his voice is
one of the sweetest of sweet sounds, a light and breezy ripple of
love and sun and happiness. Pleasant, too, are the notes of the
chaffinches that flit in and out of the hedgerow. And never surely
was there sweeter blackbird's song than that wild lyric sounding
now among the trees that overhang the well. In the top of the
great elm that leans over the orchard stile there is such a chorus
of tongues, such a babel of linnet and blackbird, of sparrow and
jackdaw, with intervals of untuneful chattering, whistling,
piping, that you fancy twenty performers at the least. But it is
only a starling telling all the world in his quaint way of his joy
in this unwonted sunshine. Now he breaks off into the song of a
swallow, copied from the life. He may have heard it this very
morning. Or it may be merely that the impulse of the spring time
rouses in his heart a memory of the long absent wanderer, just as
on rough days of autumn you may hear him mock the curlew's cry
because the wind is roaring like the sea.
A very real note of spring is the hum of that burly bumble-bee
sailing along the hedge-row in search of some convenient hollow,
some abandoned mouse-hole it may be, in which to build her nest.
Her nest, not his, or theirs. She has no mate. He died in the
autumn, and on her alone devolves the labour of rearing the new
generation.
Among the stones that years of patient toil have heaped under this
straggling hedge-row, the long-hidden slaves of Nature are broad
awake and busy, revelling in the brightness of these delightful
days. A crowd of insects, flies, and bees, and beetles are coming
out of their long hiding to sun their stiffened limbs. Butterflies
flit lightly down the hedge-row, some newly waked from sleep, and
some that have but just broken the dry husk of their chrysalis
condition, and are spreading for the first time their beautiful
wings.
To the lover of the sights and sounds of Nature, life has few
better things to offer than a quiet hour, some bright spring
morning, under the shadow of a green arch of blossomed boughs, in
company with gentle, beautiful, sweet-voiced poets of the air,
glad, like him, in the sunshine and the fragrance. Is it a mere
flight of fancy that the feathered architects, no less than the
ballad singers, of this out-of-the-way corner of the world are
masters of their art above the birds of less favoured regions?
Look at this chaffinch's nest, cradled in the end of an
apple-bough, so dexterously woven in among the twigs in which it
rests, so daintily touched with silvery points of lichen, so
perfect a harmony with its surroundings that one might well fancy
it had grown there, some strange product of the tree. While just
above it, an apple bough in bloom, the rich gold of clustered
stamens just showing through the white and pink of still half-open
flowers, lends the crowning touch of beauty.
Few birds, perhaps, have employed more curious decoration than a
pair of hedge sparrows, who, this spring, attached to their nest
with strands of bass a label, bearing in large letters the legend,
"Early English." In a crevice of the old wall, just outside the
orchard, is the work of another master-builder, a wren. The dry
grass and skeleton leaves of its framework match exactly with the
weather-worn and lichen-stained masonry about it. And slender
sprays of ivy, clinging to the rough surface of the stone, spread
round it their beautiful young leaves. Another wren's nest, in an
old stump, just filling a space among great grey ivy stems, is
built wholly of moss, so fresh and green, so true a copy of the
natural growths on the dead wood, that the eye would hardly have
discovered it, had not the little architect itself betrayed it.
But there is a third wren's nest, in the old cart-shed in the
corner of the orchard, that surpasses even these. It is built of
dry grass, in the straw of the thatch, framed by the rough
rafters, and around it, and over it, there hang down as if to hide
it the threshed-out ears that have been left upon the straw. And
within the small round entrance is the builder's tiny head, her
bright eyes showing plainly in the ring of shadow. Wrens are among
the shyest and most fastidious of birds. Many a one has abandoned
her nest, and all the eggs in it, because some curious passer-by
has touched it in her absence, never so gently. But this one, as
if confiding in the honour of her visitors, sits on unmoved. There
is a ringdove's nest quite low down in a holly tree in the orchard
hedge, and not only will the bird allow you to stand beneath and
watch her, but when, a few days since, a ladder was placed against
the tree, she waited until she was within arm's reach before she
left her nest. She made a fine picture as she sat there, proudly
unconscious of the intruders, not even deigning to turn her head
to look at them, the soft lavender of her beautiful plumage
relieved by the clouding of white feathers on her neck. At length
she could bear it no longer. She went crashing off through the
holly twigs, her great wings clattering as she flew. So shallow
and insecure was the frail platform on which she had been
sitting, that her sudden start threw one of her two nestlings over
the side. It was handed up again, apparently none the worse for
its adventure; and the two youngsters crouched trembling in the
slight hollow; two blind, helpless, hideous, evil-looking little
creatures; a whole world of difference between them and the
stately, fearless bird who, a minute before, had covered them with
the shadow of her wings.
More fearless still is a blue-tit that has her dwelling in a
crevice in the wall some fifty yards further on. It is a tiny
hole, and the nest is far in, but you can see her sitting there,
her pretty head and one of her bright eyes just showing over the
mossy rim. She is not in the least shy of being looked at. Indeed,
if you touch her nest with a straw she will spar at it and hiss,
making a noise for all the world like the spitting of an angry
kitten, even coming to the door to storm at the intruder, but
without the least idea of leaving her unprotected offspring to his
mercy.
But other tenants of the hollow revel in the sunshine besides the
birds and the bees and the butterflies. These straggling
hedge-rows are the haunt of finch and blackbird. Crow and magpie
and squirrel hide their homes among the thick foliage of the firs.
Nightjars love this quiet corner, and the nuthatch and the wryneck
find sanctuary in the hollows of the trees. But the stony bank
along the hedge, sweet now with violets, and strewn with stars of
celandine spreading wide their golden petals to the sun, is of all
spots the viper's favourite haunt.
All along the bank and far in among the thickets are heaped
fragments of red sandstone that by slow degrees have been cleared
from these sterile pastures. The sun is on them from dawn till
sunset. They are quite hot to the touch. Here, then, the viper
loves to lie, warming his cold heart upon the heated stone. On a
day like this he is wide awake, quick in his movements, and off
like a flash, especially if once alarmed. Slowly, silently, with
stealthy steps must you approach his haunt.
There he is, loosely coiled against a flat slab of sandstone, his
cold, unwinking eye set in a fixed stare, looking straight this
way. The broad zigzag stripe along his back is boldly drawn on the
pale brown of his coat. Plain even at this distance is the V-like
mark upon his head. But he has begun to move. Before you can reach
him he has vanished among the stones. There is nothing for it but
to sit down a few yards away, hidden by a dwarf blackthorn bush,
and wait patiently for his re-appearing. How quiet it all is. The
hamlet on the hill-slope yonder--
"One of those little places that have run
Half up the hill beneath a burning sun,
And then sat down to rest, as if to say,
'I climb no further upward, come what may'"--
looms faintly through the haze. The white houses scattered through
the valley melt away into the mist. But the sun is still warm. The
cones of the old firs crackle in the sunshine. Still sweeter grows
the faint perfume of the gorse, still more beautiful its radiant
gold. A bullfinch settles in a tree hard by. There is no colour in
Nature more beautiful than the exquisite flush of crimson on his
breast. Quite in keeping with his beauty is the soft sweetness of
the tender love note that now and then he whispers to his mate,
who, in colours far less bright than his, sits just below him on a
lichened apple bough. Hark! a faint sound among the dry brambles
on the bank, a long rustle, and then through the blackthorn stems
the slender shape of the viper glides softly down to the warm
stones.
Here he comes, gliding boldly from his harbour in the bank. His
brown mail glistens in the sun, his red eyes glance swiftly right
and left, his long tongue flickers through his fast shut lips. He
coils his long body round between two stones, whose warm red seems
warmer still to-day, fitting himself comfortably in the angle of
the stones, there he lies motionless. Small beetles creep over him
unseen and unregarded. He pays no heed when a butterfly settles
close by him to sun its splendid wings. But he is broad awake.
Now move slowly towards the spot. Some sound startles him. He
lifts his head and gives a swift glance this way. He is going.
Twitch him out on the grass with your stick, hold him down a
moment, and then, watching your opportunity, take him up by the
tail. An angry beast he is, hissing and struggling, making vain
attempts to reach his captor's hand. He can only lift his head a
few inches, and there is no fear at all of his doing any harm.
There is no doubt about the harm he can do. A viper's bite,
especially in hot weather, is painful enough, though seldom
dangerous. But the farmer who comes up at this moment eyes the
captive with grim satisfaction. Heifers, he says, are often
bitten, even horses. "Doän't 'ee let un go," he adds anxiously; "I
doän't like none o' they beasts about."
[Illustration: THE GREENWOOD TREE.]
THE GREENWOOD TREE.
It is a very blaze of sunshine that fills the open spaces of the
wood. The tall ash saplings that join hands across the path, now
almost lost among the briar sprays, the trailing woodbine, and the
long arms of wandering bryony, sway slowly in the hot and heavy
air. But the stir of the leaves that flutter lightly overhead,
their green lacework all dark against the summer sky, is a
restful, soothing sound.
It is a pleasant relief to turn aside a little from the pathway,
to wade breast high through the green jungle of the underwood to a
little place out of the sunshine, a hollow walled half way round
by a line of low grey rocks, almost hidden by thick tapestries of
ivy. Two noble trees that stand on either side, two stately
Spanish chestnuts, spread their arms over it, as if in
benediction. Overhead, their
"... dark foliage interweaves
In one unbroken roof of leaves.
Underneath whose sloping eaves
The shadows hardly move."
A cool and quiet spot. Like the poet who found it pleasant,
through the loopholes of retreat, "To see the tumult and not feel
the stir," we too, from the kindly shadow of these great chestnut
trees, can look out on the woodland in its pride of summer glory,
with its flowers and its fragrance and its greenness, nor feel the
heat and glare and the pitiless weight of the sunshine.
Day after day, week after week, there has been
"... that nameless splendour everywhere
That makes the passers in the city street
Congratulate each other as they meet."
Yet perhaps the full beauty of such weather, its wealth of
flowers and foliage, its abundance of bird and insect life, above
all its half-tropic heat, is for the country rather than the town.
Among stone walls and pavements summer days are too often
weariness, and summer nights but stifling. In the country the
glare of noon is tempered by cool winds, softened by grass and
foliage. There, too, the hot air of night is sweetened with the
breath of honeysuckle and jasmine; and through wide open windows
the scent of the roses floats up to us
"Like sweet thoughts in a dream."
If the town is close and sultry, woodland and green lane are at
their best and sweetest. In the country at any rate--
"There is no price set on the lavish summer,
And June may be had by the poorest comer."
Though the flowers of May have passed into a proverb, it is June
after all that gives to the fields and by ways their crowning
grace and beauty. May draped all the trees with fresh young
foliage, deepened April's mist of bluebells, and whitened the
hedge-rows with blossoming hawthorn. May was a month of broad
effects and lavish colouring. Here she silvered a whole field with
daisies, as with a light fall of snow. And here, like a cunning
alchemist, she changed with her buttercups the green of a rich
pasture-land to a blaze of living gold. But there is yet more of
beauty in the fields of June. Even in the Tropics, travellers tell
us, there is nothing so superbly beautiful as an English midsummer
meadow--whether an upland pasture, with its hawkweed and lotus,
its scented grasses and sweet clover blooms; or a low-lying field
along some loitering stream, where, in the swampy soil, among the
tasselled sedges, spring fiery spikes of orchis, foamy
meadow-sweet, and tall flower-de-luce.
If June is the most flowery of months, May is certainly the most
musical. The days are drawing near when there will settle on the
green world of woods and lanes and meadows the silence of the
summer. The grey dawn is still almost as full as ever of sweet
sounds. The songs of thrush and blackbird are still glorious in
the evening twilight. Wren and robin still sing to us at intervals
from dawn to sunset. But through the long hours of daylight we
miss already the notes of many a wandering singer, for whom June
is the limit of the season. Already the cuckoo's voice is
breaking. We have but another week, at the farthest, of the
nightingale's song. His is a superb and matchless melody. Many a
time, it is true, have the notes of thrush or blackcap, or even of
sedge-warbler, been mistaken for it. Sweet singers, all of them.
Yet it is strange that anyone who has ever fairly listened to the
chief of song could confuse with his magnificent strains the note
of the most musical of thrushes.
But it is to singers less skilled and less famous than the
nightingale that the woodland owes its greatest charm: light
wingèd dryads of the trees, without whose songs and call notes,
and mere life and movement, the lover of Nature thinks that
"summer is not summer, nor can be." The willow-warbler's song, a
little careless cadence of soft notes that at intervals seems to
filter lightly down among the branches, is the very soul of
sunshine and sweet air. The wood wren's call is like no other
sylvan sound. Its plaintive, long-drawn, monotonous notes, often
growing louder towards the close, are sometimes so sonorous and
far-reaching that it is hard to credit they can come from so
diminutive a singer. His actual song is a little gush of simple
notes again and again repeated, from his perch on the end of some
leafless bough high up among the trees. It is not remarkable for
melody, though now and then there is a very real touch of
sweetness in it, and after the first rather deliberate beginning
it is so hurried as to give the listener the impression that the
bird is trying to crowd twenty notes into a single beat.
The whitethroat is another hasty singer, but he has a greater gift
of music, and his manner of singing--sometimes taking short
flights into the air the while, and then diving back into the
thicket--his quick movements, the almost luminous whiteness of his
swelling throat, rank him among the most charming of woodlanders.
Yet his haunt is rather on the skirts of the wood than in the
heart of it. He is still more a roadside singer, and greatly given
to building his frail nest of grass in the thorny depths of some
old hedge-row, or even among the nettles on the bank.
But of all the sylvan minstrels the blackcap has, after the
nightingale, the most silvery tongue, and we hear so much more of
him in the country generally--not only is he more widely
distributed, but he sings again when his brood are fledged and
flown, which the nightingale never does--that to most of us he is
much the more familiar, perhaps we might even say he is more
highly prized than the acknowledged chief of song himself. Watch
him now, before household cares have for the time taken up all his
care and attention. See him balanced, with his breast of tender
grey, his black crest slightly lifted, on a spray of briar that,
swaying underneath his weight, trembles with the energy of his
wild and mellow notes--now clear and loud, and reaching, it may
be, far beyond the limits of the wood; now tender and soft and
low, and low and lower yet, until at a yard's distance hardly
heard. A beautiful song. A song that to White of Selborne, as
doubtless to many a Nature lover since his day, always brought
back with its wild sweetness the lines of Amien's song:
"Under the greenwood tree,
Who loves to lie with me
And turn his merry note
Unto the sweet bird's throat:
Come hither, come hither, come hither."
A bird flies into the tree near by. A blue-tit, smartest of his
race. He stands a moment on the edge of a hole in the level bough,
looks round twice, then dives in and disappears. And out of that
stronghold of his, snugly lined with moss, and hair, and
feathers, he will not stir for you or any man. But yonder is a
figure, in a tree some twenty yards away, from which perhaps even
the bold blue-tit would fly in terror. A lithe brown creature is
climbing leisurely out of a hole high up in the trunk--a weasel,
searching for eggs, no doubt. Up the tree he goes, more lightly
even than a squirrel, right to the very topmost branches. Now down
he comes again, head first, and makes his way to another tree. As
he canters lightly through the long grass he pauses now and then
to rear on his hind legs and peer sharply round over the green
jungle, looking for the moment, quite bird-like. Two more trees he
climbs, searching every likely spot among the boughs, prying into
every hole and cranny--clearly a birds'-nester born. A master of
woodcraft, too, for when you move nearer for a better view, he
vanishes. He is there all right, lying close behind some branch,
no doubt; but he is as completely screened from sight as if he
wore the magic cap of Perseus. He is a tiny figure at the most.
The birds take no notice of him. The yellow-hammer goes on with
his sleepy tune, and the greenfinch in the elm above him with his
yet sleepier drawl, while a linnet in the tree near by sings
undisturbed his sweet and dainty song, that in itself is like a
gleam of sunshine.
The whole woodland is astir with life and movement and sweet
sounds of song. Look at that bullfinch yonder, balanced on a spray
of woodbine, that swings lightly beneath his weight. Leaning
forward a little, with his black head turned slightly on one side,
he picks off, as if in pure mischief, the dainty tufts that
cluster on the branches near him, while the ruined leaves fall in
a very shower. A beautiful figure. There is not in Nature a hue
more lovely than the exquisite flush of crimson on his breast.
Close by him, as if by way of foil to his perfect beauty, sit two
sober-clad companions, dull and grey and colourless, yet to the
full as mischievous as he.
Sunny spaces in the wood are filled with hovering insects, whose
tiny figures rise and fall like motes in the warm air; beetles for
the most part, not flies; small, black, long-bodied beetles, the
very same that give us such annoyance by getting in our eyes in
the twilight.