mind of the naturalist. I am learning, or should I say, unlearning?
A BIRD MYSTIC
Every year the ragtailed swallows are fewer, for many are destroyed as
the hosts sweep southward in autumn, killed by electric wires on the
Continent “for food” (I have seen them, with thrushes and blackbirds,
laid out, pitifully small and gentle, in the Italian shop-windows--Nero
in hell must be awfully pleased with this sure sign of degeneracy among
the descendants of that race of which he declared himself to be “a
genius.”)
In all the tallats[1] of my Devon village there were but four swallows’
nests during the summer of 1921. There are over fifty tallats. Under
the rafters are the ruins of nearly two hundred mud mansions--belonging
to past summers. Some, indeed, are intact, others utilised by
flycatchers, others have been selected by wrens for foundations of
their domed nests. But only four are being used this year.
Although the swallows are becoming extinct the swifts are increasing. I
have met many people who do not know one bird from the other. Yet it is
easy to tell.
The swift is the mystic among birds. He is aloof from other
birds--apart from life. He is never seen to perch unless it be on the
rigging of a ship during migration. The swift is black, he screams
shrilly as he darts through the air, his wings are curved like a
boomerang. During June I have seen and heard them long after midnight,
whole cohorts of them wheeling in the sky, their cries sounding like
the thin jingle of a frail chain. I verily believe that some remain
on the wing (not the brooding females, of course) from dawn till
dawn. They pass my cottage door a foot away from my head, their wings
hissing. Under the ancient thatch they nest, plunging, it seems,
straight into the holes. This is necessary, because a swift clings
with difficulty; for some reason all its four toes are in front of the
foot. Through the dark holes they creep, to reach the nests of saliva,
cobwebs, and straw-speck laid like a mouldered saucer on the lath and
plaster.
One midsummer eve a great commotion brought me to my doorway. I looked
out and saw about half a hundred swifts pursuing a great barn owl,
white and slow-fanning, holding in one dropped foot a limp rat. The
owls are nesting on the lath and plaster of my cottage, but they do not
interfere with the swifts.
When the wheat is nearly ready for the reaping, the swifts begin to
think of the journey to Africa. They are among the last birds to arrive
here in the spring, but the first to depart (excepting the cuckoo).
When the Voice speaks in the night they mount many miles, flying up to
the stars, and rush to the south. It is a sad time for some birds, as
the instinct for migration is so intense that if any young are unable
to fly they are left. What caused this remorseless migration in the
first place, and why does it happen? Nobody knows. It is one of the
problems insoluble by research or reasoning; insoluble as the mystery
of life itself.
SAMARITANS
Towards the end of August a pair of house-martins (or eave-swallows--I
prefer the name given them by Richard Jefferies) came to my cottage
wall, and clung, two slim, black-and-white fairies, to the rough cob
surface. Excited twitterings and peckings for a minute, then they flew
away. Almost immediately one returned with a beakful of mud, taken from
the verge of a ruddle-red pool in the roadway. This was tacked to the
wall, close under the ragged fringe of thatch, and away sped the bird
as her mate came with his burden. All day they worked, seeming never to
feed.
But the nest grew slowly. Perhaps their other muddied cup had been
knocked down by boys, or sparrows had seized it; by their intense
eagerness it appeared to me that their first brood had failed
altogether; there was something of the frenzy of April in their labour.
In the evening I was amazed by what I saw. The toiling pair had been
joined by about a dozen other martins, all bearing beakfuls of mud
and grass to the precipitous site. In regular order came mud, quickly
moulded and kneaded into place, then came a broken straw, a rootlet,
or a twitch of grass. There was just time to place this in position
before another bird would arrive. A sweet soft trickle of eagerness
fell continually from just above my window. The next morning succour
was still availing, and quickly the nest grew. We discussed this in
the village, but even the oldest granfer had never heard tell of such
a thing before. Toilers in the harvest fields (the “unimaginative
labourers”) paused and regarded. They were interested, and many
pondered the problem with me.
“League o’ Nations,” grinned one. “There is much friendship among
birds,” I said. “Aiy, aiy!” agreed another, and told me in the soft
melodious burr of the west country how, in his garden that spring, a
robin had fed a nest of hedge-sparrows.
The nest was finished in three days. The lining of feathers was a
speedy business, for I scattered a handful on the ground beneath,
wishing to give my small aid. I am sure the pair were grateful, for on
the fourth day, when I inspected from a ladder, the first egg was laid
and the mother was not alarmed by my intrusion.
This intensive construction is not usual. It is not instinctive. It
is the result of reason and decency of life in their colonies. Rooks,
being amoral, would not help one another. Martins live together in
trust and decency. Who, hearing their song (jumbled though it may be),
can doubt this.
“League of Nations,” a simple man had said to me. I wondered if
the hopes of Richard Jefferies will ever be fulfilled. Are not the
eave-swallows wiser than us? Sometimes I think so.
SPORTSMEN OF THE RUBBISH-HEAPS
An old, faded notice board, bearing the legend that trespassers will be
prosecuted, leans at a low angle in the hedge; newer and larger boards
announce that the land is “admirable for building purposes” and for
sale. A gate guards a gap in the hedge, over which bold boys swarm on
Saturdays and Sundays when no policeman is in sight.
This preserve, as the crow flies, is about eight miles from London
Bridge in a south-easterly direction. It is known to dustmen, who dump
their loads upon its once-green fields, and it is also known to certain
cockney sportsmen.
Trams and omnibuses pass near its violated woodlands (soon to fall),
and yet its possibilities are immense. One Sunday after the war I
walked there. Four shooting parties, complete with dogs, were out
after its game. Now, it is not lawful to pursue game on Sundays; nor
is it lawful to carry a gun without a licence. But the sportsmen do
not mind that. Their guns have sawn-off barrels, and take apart in
less than ten seconds. An inside pocket conceals both. As for their
dogs--well, although I am a dog-lover and like rough shooting, I would
not care to be seen in my own village with such dogs. Every man I met
would grin and wink--long, swift dogs they are, a mixture of greyhound
and bulldog, chiefly, with various other strains, in order to make them
that rare breed--the true lurcher. They never bark. They look slyly at
you. Often they grin in dog-fashion, suspiciously, almost a leer.
The sportsmen shoot anything. The last hare has been gone for years,
even a rabbit is an unusual sight, almost as rare as a partridge.
Generations ago gravel was taken from this estate, leaving shallow pits
that in winter are filled with water. Snipe haunt the pools even now,
but they fly up so quickly and then zigzag that it is impossible to hit
them.
When a shot is fired guns are hidden, and heads look round for
policemen. Sparrows are common game, thrushes and blackbirds are
considered the equivalent of pheasants, and the large missel-thrush
causes as much excitement and admiration as a first woodcock. A pigeon
is as rare as a golden plover, and talked of for weeks.
Sport is not confined to turning-up birds and snap-shooting. The
superior ones carry guns; the lowlier fraternity hunt the humble rat,
who loves the rubbish-heaps. Their holes are everywhere, by broken
umbrellas, decrepit straw hats, burst boots, papers, straw, tins,
novels, bottles, and old torn shirts. Little terriers quiver with
excitement as their masters from Deptford and Shoreditch dig with the
crowbars--great excitement this.
Of course the boys must have their shooting parties. Some of them are
very skilful with the catapult, and when bored with life they are quite
equal to shooting at their elders. Others frequent the pools, wading
after efts and sticklebacks. Once I saw a systematic dragging of the
ponds with the aid of an old army blanket.
At another end of the preserve bird-catchers are busy with clap-nets
and call-birds. Perhaps, if you go near, surly looks will greet you,
and you may hear the sound of frail wings ceaselessly fluttering
against the bars of tragically overcrowded and small cages. Sometimes
goldfinches flit over, their sweet sipping notes rising and falling as
they pass to the thistle-heads of last autumn; and wistfully comes the
answer from the cages as beaks covered with blood are thrust again and
again through the bars.
I knew this place years ago, when it was the country. The land is for
sale; they are going to build; and the house-squares of civilisation
will be better than the green fields so foully ravaged. But it is
nothing to do with me. The happy, happy days of boyhood are gone for
ever, with their hopes and their friendships: I shall never go there
again, nor shall I hear the wood-larks singing there on a morning of
May, nor watch the kingfisher as he draws a sapphire line to the pit
where every spring we found his nest. All these are dead: let the
houses and the streets obliterate the place for ever.
RUNAWAYS
Many pet birds escape from captivity every year, and their distressed
owners wonder how they fare. For it is generally understood that the
wild creatures resent one who has had long association with man, and
usually do their best to kill it. But this, I think, is merely a
fiction. It is said that should a canary join a flock of goldfinches,
they will taboo it, and even fall upon it and eventually kill it with
their beaks. Cases that I have known prove exactly the reverse. I know
that a canary among sparrows meets with kindly treatment, perhaps
because its appearance is so much more striking than their own dull
plumage that like primitive savages seeing a white man for the first
time, they are inclined to fall down and worship it.
In Hyde Park one summer I saw a little green love-bird feeding on
seeds of the grass. Now lovebirds are often born in captivity, and
their wings are feeble. But in this case the bird had the full power of
its wings, and when a boy tried to capture it, it flew away with the
speed and agility of a mothflitsie, or jack-snipe.
Even such a bird as the parrot can support itself. There is a rookery
in the Lewisham Infirmary Gardens, and for some years past a gray
and red African parrot has been flying about with rooks, who seem to
welcome its presence.
In flight it resembles a pigeon and a hawk, and its presence among them
is all the more mystifying, because the antipathy of rooks to a hawk is
well known; they mob one and drive it away whenever seen. The Lewisham
parrot escaped before the war, and survived many winters, for I saw it
feeding with them in the Recreation Grounds during 1919.
Its curved beak prevents it from digging in the ground, and in the
spring and summer seasons there are few seeds for it to feed on,
especially in a crowded suburb like Lewisham. I have watched to see if
the rooks feed it, but have never been able to discover.
It would be interesting to know how the spirit of fraternity is born
between birds of such widely divergent characteristics. The parrot,
however, cannot change its plumage, although it squawks like a young
rook and caws like an old one. This may be the explanation of the
phenomenon--it can speak the language like a native!
LONDON CHILDREN AND WILD FLOWERS
(_To W. de la M._)
The sphere-blooms of the dandelion have left their anchorage and are
floating away in the warm wind. That same wind bears with it a vague
scent, for the wild flowers are open to the sun, while the white buds
of the may-tree and the lilac-blossom of the keeper’s cottage yonder
have come before their time. The yellow celandine petals have gone from
the meadow, already their little heart-shaped leaves are tinged at the
edge with the rust of decay; the brighter buttercups drink deeply of
the poured sun-wine, and the red sorrel and pale cuckoo flowers move as
the wind comes more strongly. No form of flower life remains for long.
When I came here but a few weeks since the celandine was everywhere;
a brave flower, for it rises so early, and is one of the first signs
of life stirring again in the cold earth. Then the wood-anemones
shone like stars among the brown leaves under the hazel wands and
ashpoles of the covert, and on the raised bank near the vermin tree
where the marauder stoats and pirate crows hang, the sweet violets
drooped their heads, shy in their loveliness. I passed by that bank
to-day, but the sweet violets have gone, even as the wood-anemones are
withering. Nothing remains for long. But the first swift screams high
in the azure, his black curved wings bearing him in fast circles, less
graceful than the swallow, who floats on the bosom of the wind, then
falls and turns sharply rather than sweeps through the air with the
effortless thrusts of the swift. So in the place of the violet’s scent
I have the scream of the swift, and the cuckoo calls above the dying
wind-flowers.
I leant against a wooden fence, placed to keep the cattle in the
meadow from straying into the covert behind, and to guard them from
the brook that ran at the edge of the hazels. High nettles hid the
lower rails of the fence, growing straight and green, and giving off
a heavy odour from their flowers. From afar a cuckoo was calling, but
near me the only sounds were the burring of the dusky humble bees at
the nettle flowers, and the soft voice of the brook. A great cloud
shadow came rushing over the meadow, the wind lost its warmth, and a
few drops pattered on the hawthorn. Immediately a blackbird sang on the
topmost bough of an oak tree in the wood, and a wren trilled from some
hidden bush. Gently the rain fell, plashing on the veined leaves of the
hazels; a yellow-green wave of light descended the distant hills and
followed the black shadow over cornfield, meadow, and webbed pattern
of hop field, washing the red oast-houses with instant colour. The
swift sunlight swept down to the meadow, the shadow passed onwards,
and again the sun gave its vitalising rays to the grass and the wild
flowers.
The blackbird left the oak tree and dropped down to continue his
search among the moist leaf-mould; the wren was silent. Just behind,
and dividing the field from the pheasant wood, the brook, its waters
swelling with light, brimmed smoothly round a curve. A sweet little
whispering call, oft repeated and so gentle that it might have been
the voice of the brook, came from the ashpoles beyond. A long-tailed
tit was gathering the down from the hazel catkins, calling, or
rather murmuring, in shy ecstatic love to her mate as she did so.
The sunlight--rendered whiter and purer by the wind from the far
hills--streamed down through the nut trees and the opening buds of
ash; as the leaves rustled they caught the sunbeams, and were turned a
lucent green. Mingling with the tender notes of my little bottle-bird
gathering her material was the voice of the brook, almost inaudible,
but lifting the heart with sudden joy for its poem.
I watched the two birds, so happy with each other, and heedless of
anything but the immediate joyful moment, carry the down to a quick-set
hedge, snowy with blossom, dividing the meadow from the wheatfield.
They disappeared for a moment among its greeneries and spiky thorns,
and then flew back to the covert, still murmuring to each other
in their wheezy, subdued tones. In the hedge the house was nearly
completed, and had been fashioned with wondrous skill. Outside the
birds had woven gray lichen from the apple trees with the green moss
found under the oaks, and gradually a long, bottle-shaped nest had
grown among the thorns. Several hundreds of feathers had been borne
from the farmyard--distant over a mile--each journey made with the
feeble jerky flight. Think of the infinite labour and searching before
the cradle is ready for the dozen minute eggs that will nestle in its
soft cup! The little chap and his adoring wife were not alarmed at my
presence: I stood within two yards of their nest, but they flew into
the hedge and out again without fear or distress.
A wild bee hummed among the nettles, content and self-sufficient; a
crow slanted overhead, veering as he saw me, for crows and gamekeepers
hate each other equally; a dead leaf fluttered into the water and was
carried in a foam-capped whirlpool under the roots of the hawthorn.
Three willow-wrens came to the tree, and sought the insects that walked
over the broad platform of the leaves; one flew to the surface of
the brook and seized a horse-fly struggling in the water. The stream
sang and sang, carrying the leaf that had left the tree for ever; the
sunlight flashed a burnished ripple, was gone again, and the bees
brushed against the nettles, wondering if they should stay there or
gather their harvest from the bluebells, lit by the shuffling shadow
mazes, whose honey lay ready for loading. All the morning the bells on
the green towers of stalk had been pealing their chimes of fragrance
to the bees; the busy harvesters went heavily past, drawing their
song-inspiration from the infinite flame of the sun, passing from
bell to bell with an eagerness that must cause the wild hyacinths to
rejoice--for would they not shortly vanish like the celandines and the
wind-flowers? Nothing remains for long. A brief life, and they have
gone whither all things that draw upon the earth-energy must go. Though
the blackbird sing so leisurely, the flowers stand gently timorous in
their fragility, the veined leaf stain itself with the sunbeams, and
I am exalted in the “light and fire of summer,” yet for all there is
only so little of time. Therefore, it seemed to me, by the brimming
water, so pitiable that millions were confined in factory and office,
breathing the air fouled by exhaust of petrol engine and chimney, while
the brook rippled so sweetly, and the living air formed a passionate
stream with the energy of the sunbeams.
Dreaming by the brook, I thought of other woods nearer London, which
are so dear because of old association with the friend of my boyhood.
There still the nightingale returns, the jay lurks, and the mysterious
nightjar wheels when the chafer-beetles flit against the oak leaves at
twilight. And yet, less than half a mile away, is a busy tram terminus.
The wild things in freedom love their haunts and are not easily driven
away, but in the higher wood--beautiful in spring with apple blossom,
uncurling brakefern, silver birch and sheen of bluebell--no birds sang
as alone I walked among its violated sanctities. It was the hour of
solitude, when the sun almost was quenched and the moon had not yet
come above the dim hills. The paths were beaten into mire by the
passing and re-passing of a thousand feet, acres of bluebells had
been uprooted and taken away, many trampled and crushed, or gathered
and cast carelessly on the paths. The apple blossom was stripped
from the trees. In his instinctive effort to possess beauty, man
invariably destroys it--for is not all beauty ever elusive? It is
the subconscious, or deeper than subconscious, realisation of this
elusiveness of beauty that causes the sadness of its contemplation--the
blossoms were gone, a whole spring-life of them, carried away by the
people who had come from Walworth, Shoreditch, and Woolwich. Branches
of those graceful trees, the silver birches, had been torn and wrenched
off; not content with decimating the flowers, grasping hands had broken
the smaller trees. A week ago, before the fatal beauty of the apple
bloom had drawn the hordes from their strongholds, I found dozens
of thrushes’ and blackbirds’ nests--some with eggs, others with
fledgelings--all these disappeared on that Sunday. No beauty remains
inviolate for long.
I walked slowly to the tram terminus, where the crowded cars waited
to bear the many people back to London, thinking that soon the woods
would be down, and houses with their inevitable laurel and rhododendron
bushes crowd together in regular patches; the sooner, perhaps, the
better. Memory of former days was only too poignantly present.
In the cars sat the women and the men, each one clasping a flower or a
fragment of blossom--of hawthorn, apple, or chestnut tree; the little
children wriggled and chattered, holding in their arms great bunches
of bluebells with their sappy stalks gleaming white where the sun had
not stained them; boys with purple-dusty grass bennets and girls with
lilac-coloured cuckoo flowers and drooping buttercups. A phantom
carillon still chimed from the wild hyacinths, though their towers were
fallen and the belfries wrecked. I looked at the transfigured faces of
the children--old or young, they were all children--who breathed in the
smoke and worked in the shadow, and saw that the beauty of the wild
flowers had passed into their eyes; although the woods were ravaged,
the spoiling and pillaging had not been in vain. For two or three days
wilting flowers and stolen blossom would remind them of the sunlight
and the fresh air, of the cloud shadow that swept up and the warmth
that followed when the beams of light lacquered the branches of the
trees.
I was filled with an ecstasy; the car, ordinarily so drab with its
burden of artisans and factory workers, seemed illumined and vitalised
with yellow, the colour of happiness; a radiance hovered about the
children, as though the buttercups had dislustred their gold upon the
air. I wanted to shout my joy aloud. Here was a manifestation of
my hopes for mankind, the thoughts ever with me; at night when only
the stars are in the sky, or when the moon is old and like a scarred
shield nailed under the rafters of heaven; at dawn, when the light
flows over the eastern bar of the world till it drains into the western
sunset. One thought by night and one thought by day--my hope is for the
happiness of mankind. Could words of mine but tell you of the dream
that lurks by the brook in summer, or with the clouds floating with
snowy sails in cerulean waters! There the Immortals are waiting. See
the joy and happiness that is with every swallow flying low over a
lake, his liquid image gliding under him. What is all the philosophy in
the world to the joy of the beautiful swallow? Civilisations have risen
and crumbled, faded into nothingness, like footprints in the desert
obliterated by sand. The sweet little whispering call of my long-tailed
titmice fashioning their bottle nest, so happy in the sunshine, is a
wiser and more profound utterance than all the philosophy collected
from the books of the world....
The tram drew nearer London with its ragged children; had I doubted it
before, no longer was the ideal of the artist obscured from me--you
must hear it. It must be the ideal of man to beautify the lives of
those who pass nearly all their days in the places whence the wild
birds and the flowers have gone for evermore.
I thought of these things as the voice of the brook mingled with the
love-whisper of my little bottle-birds, and the bees droned their
anthem to the pealing chimes of the bluebells. For every year the
flowers come, the migrants travel across the great dim sea, the wheat
sways and bends as the wind rushes over, and the silver-burning sun
swings across the sky; but never enough of these do the little ones in
the city see; life does not remain for long. And I saw the children of
the trams reflected in the light-burthened brook, and was glad, even
though the buttercups had gone from the meadow, and the wandering bees
sought in vain in those other woods for the loveliness of the stained
apple blossom.
MEADOW GRASSES
(_To B. E. H. T._)
_i_