village below, where all was peace and quiet. The wind sighed through
the hedge: a dead leaf moved listlessly, twirling as the wind spun
it. The tissues of the tree’s dead lung had decayed and sunk into the
earth; the winter had been mild, and the invisible hand, composing and
decomposing, had not yet touched the filigree web of its brittle frame.
On its parent ash tree it hung and quivered, never more to respond to
the fire of summer.
Gradually the children reached their homes, and no more cries came
from the meadow. The little spider paused half-way between the leaves,
and hung quiescent. Perhaps some flaw in his architectural scheme was
apparent to him, or he feared that the wind of the summer night would
destroy his foundation threads. Born only a few weeks before, without
tuition or practice, he knew the angles of his pillars, the proportions
of his stanchions, the symmetry and balance of his walls. He had
watched no honey-coloured parent at work, yet within his minute brain
were the plans of a perfect system to entangle the smallest flying
insects, feeble of wing, that would fall against his web.
The pools of gold about the oaks slowly drained away, and the sky above
became a more profound blue. Three swifts passed above, wheeling in
final flight before creeping to their nests of straw-speck and saliva
under the tiles of the church. The songs of the warblers and thrushes
as the light drains away, find an echo in the heart of the poet, for
they sing of the beauty of summer: the swift’s cries belong to the
spectral light of the stars and the mystery of infinite space. The
swift is the mystic among birds.
The spider moved on as the first star shone in the sky. Maybe his
problem was solved, or that he had waited for the beauteous whiteness
of Lyra’s ray. Slowly he travelled to the leaf he had chosen as a base,
paused awhile, and crept back across his life-line. The rooks were
settled in the elm-tops by the church, and their _caa-caas_ came less
often; the prospects of the next day’s forage among the new potatoes
had been discussed thoroughly, and were known to all--in satisfaction
the colony had settled down to sleep. Gradually the sun sank into the
sea, its fire spreading its broad glow through the cloud strata over
the far horizon. One by one the stars crept into their places, waiting
for the queen-moon to lift her head above the hills of Exmoor. Antares
shone in the south; above were Lyra, Aquila, Northern Crown, and all
the heavenly concourse: Mars glowed red, with Spica Virginis swung low
in adoration and sending its wan green fires to the watcher. Slowly the
afterglow drenched in the gray waters, an owl quavered in loneliness as
it fanned over the churchyard; a jackdaw answered sharply, querulously,
and night had come to the earth.
A pale golden vapour over the Exmoor hills, and the moon rose, like
the head of a yellow moth creeping from its case. It swam into view
over the dark hills, and I looked into its face, while it shrank into
a silver disk. The sky became lavender-coloured, the moon dust falling
with the dew and forming a gauzy veil above. The boom of the waves
pounding the distant headland was borne on the wind burthened with foam
fragrance and the scent of the sweet clover fields beyond the village.
It stirred the green corn, came fitfully, then sighed to silence.
The last labourer left the inn and the village slept. The walls of the
cottages gleamed white under the dark thatch as the moonlight fell
directly upon them. I was alone with the sapling wheat and all was
still.
I was alone with the wheat that I loved. Moving over the field my feet
were drenched in an instant by the dew. Lying at full length on the
earth, I pressed my face among the sweet wistfulness of stalks, stained
and glowing as with some lambent fire, pale, mysterious. On each pale
flame-blade depended a small white light, a dew-drop in which the
light of the moon was imprisoned. Each flag of wheat held the beauty
of pure water, and within the sappy blades glowed the spirit of the
earth--in the spectral silence a voice spoke of its ancient lineage:
of the slow horses that had strained at the wooden plough through the
ages, scarring the glebe in long furrows that must be sown with corn;
race after race of slow horses moving in jangling harness to the deep
shouts of the heavy men. Generation after generation of men, bent with
age and unceasing labour, plodding the earth, sowing the yellow grains
that would produce a million million berries for mankind. Spring after
spring, each with its glory of blue-winged swallows speeding, wheeling,
falling through the azure, the cuckoo calling in the meadows, and
the lark-song shaking its silver earthchain as it strove to be free.
Through all the sowings and the reapings for thousands of years the
wheat had known that it was grown for man, and the soul of the wheat
grew in the knowledge of its service. Lying there on the cool couch of
the silver-flotten corn, with the soft earth under me, sweet with its
scent of stored sunbeams, the beauty of the phantom wheat carried me
away in a passion of sweet ecstasy. Faint as the sea-murmur within the
shell, the voice of the corn came to the inward ear. Ever the same was
the earth that it knew, the east washed with faint rosewater in the
dayspring, the lark-flight loosened upon the bosom of the dawn wind,
and the golden beams of the sun breasting the hills of the morning. It
was but a moment since the wild men had goaded the sullen oxen, and
with rude implements torn a living from the earth; all the great power
of the wheat rested above the growing corn now, of kin to the grains
beaten by oxen, and later, by the flails of the wretches who were ever
hungry.
The moon floated in the nightpool with the Swan, the distant roar of
the surf floated from over the clover fields, and still I lay there,
one with the Maker of Life ... a white mistiness flapped in front,
beating broad pinions as it hovered, it dropped to the earth, and a
shrill scream trembled into the night. Fluttering like a moth, the
ghostly barn owl struggled with the rat, held it in a remorseless
clutch of powerful talons. Into the wheatfield the rat had come, urged
by instinct to seek the means of life, and it had found only death.
Dreamily the owl fanned the night with his broad wings and then floated
away to his nest in the loft of the cottage near the church. Saddened
by the consciousness of life’s tragedy--every form of life depending
for existence on the death of another form--I walked towards the
village, while a landrail began his jarring _crake-crake_ in the corn,
and little moths went down to drink the honey of the night-opening
flowers, living their short life while the moon, soon to die, was in
its fullest beauty. Antares was a dull red ember in the south: the star
of summer that Richard Jefferies loved. My thought was with him--he
was near me, though the body had long been lying in Broadwater. Had he
spoken to me in this mystic June night, I wondered; and then a blackcap
warbler sang in a thorn bush; my thought was as old as its song, and I
doubted no longer.
A FEATHERED WASTER
No bird-lovers can but desire the destruction of the Little Owl
(_Athene Noctua_), a prolific bird introduced into England half a
century ago by Lord Lilford. It has no redeeming trait. I have watched
several pairs, and my observations show without doubt that he is not
worth his salt, and deserves not the slightest mercy.
Old Bob, a keeper with whom I am very friendly, showed me a pollard
oak standing at the side of a hazel covert, which he suspected as
the home of a pair of these birds. I sat down in the dry ditch and
waited, while the humble bees swung themselves among the flowering
nettles. This was in the early afternoon, and not in the evening or
the night; in the bright sunlight, when all self-respecting owls are
dreaming in barn-loft or hollow tree. But to the Little Owl time is
obviously money, for it was not long before a brown bird, not unlike
a large thrush, fluttered out of the tree and flew to a may hedge
running at right angles to the covert. A large white cabbage butterfly
drifted past, and was captured dexterously by the alien. Now cabbage
butterflies are a distinct pest, so one good mark was registered to the
accused. Shortly he descended into the sapling corn, probably to take a
beetle or mouse, and as these are not yet valuable as human food he was
given another good mark.
He flew away after this, and landed a hundred yards down the hedge.
Something drew his attention, something that was in the hedge itself.
He dropped to the ground, and through my glasses I could see that he
was climbing up the branches. When he returned, it was with something
in his beak. I ran over the field and found that he had been robbing
a chaffinch’s nest of its fledgling young. A weasel will do this, or a
rat, and often a crow. But an owl! I was ashamed of my own kin.
I decided to advise the keeper to shoot all Little Owls.
Later in the day the little pirate seized a thrush, nearly as big as
himself, and perching on it falcon-fashion, commenced to tear at the
breast. I love the thrushes, for they do great good in the spring,
destroying snails and worms. Besides, they voice with such ecstasy the
joyful spirit of spring returned to the cold earth; in the winter they
fill the heart with hope for the future. Most certainly the Little Owl
would be outlawed.
During succeeding days I watched the pair eating worms; hunting,
stoat-wise, in the ditch for baby rabbits; hovering over the meadow,
like kestrel hawks, for mice and rats. Once I saw them catch a frog.
And I knew that later on the partridge chicks would be taken. There
was no doubt in my own mind that he must be shot and trapped whenever
possible. I would tell Old Bob to bring along his twelve-bore.
With this determination in my mind I thought I would look at the nest.
Now most owls will fly out when disturbed and leave the eggs or young
to their fate. Much to my surprise, this bird sat tight. I broke a twig
off and prodded her gently. She refused to budge. I pushed a little
harder. With a mew like a distressed cat she left her four eggs and ran
quickly to a hidden corner of the platform on which they were laid (the
eggs were just visible as I looked down at them through a small hole in
the top of the tree).
But she did not leave them uncovered for long, for with another cry of
pain she crept over them again, covering them with her body. Again I
tapped her with the stick, but she was obstinate. She was evidently
decided to risk death in the protection of her unborn little ones.
Later, over at the rearing field, I saw Old Bob.
“Well, sir, do ee reckon ’em to be proper vermin?”
“No, Bob,” I said casually, looking at his weather-rutted hands. “No,
they eat mostly beetles and mice, I think, and an occasional sparrow or
so. I don’t think they will hurt your chicks.”
Mere sentiment, of course, but the mother whined so wistfully, and her
little body was so soft when I, like a great bully, prodded her with
the stick. Besides, she was an owl, and blood is thicker than water.
INVOCATION
Throughout the long glaring days of July pitiful cries quiver in the
heat; the sheep are dying of thirst. Even some of the hill-springs are
now mere trickles.
This north coast of Devon is mocked by the vision of the bluest of
seas, calm and shining under the summer sun. The fields stretching down
to the sands are parched and brown, the grasses mere ghosts, dry and
sapless. Even the sea-breeze has little of refreshment in its motion;
it is merely heated air.
Many of the sheep are dead. Jackdaws, gulls, carrion crows, and rooks
are feasting on the bloated carcases which remain; the shimmering
hum of flies innumerable gives to our English midsummer a tropical
semblance. Nor are there any swallows to decimate these pests. I have
seen about four pairs this year--the first pair, which arrived on
the last day of March, was taken by the peregrine falcons. Swifts and
house-martins are not scarce, but they keep to the inland villages.
The prolonged drought seems to have brought to life several rare
butterflies, but even the interest that one may find in these is small.
Even the blue sky and the blue sea produce an intolerable weariness.
Wherever I go there sound those pitiful cries of the sheep; there is
the slippery grass, and the glare of the sun on the sward. The wheat is
yellow in the flag, dried and rustling; the poppies are sickly, though
usually the fiercer the sun the more sultry their bloom.
A brook runs through sandhills on the other side of the headland, and
at one place the red cattle stand in cool water to their dewlaps,
gazing tranquilly about them. Here is the great meeting-place of
the birds, and at any time of the day, from dawn to sunset, its
pebbly shallow is thronged with finches, pippits, doves, warblers,
and cuckoos. How the goldfinches love the water! With sweet, reedy
twitterings a flock will come from orchard haunts and bathe in the
running water, the yellow-barred wings aflutter and crimson faces
dipped again and again. Copper finches follow, with perhaps those
minute travellers the Golden-Crowned Knights, as the country folk so
beautifully term the smallest British bird.
Other creatures know of this avian meeting-place. The weasel comes, and
a great sombre pair of ravens; and the sparrowhawk dashes sometimes
in the midst, seizing one of the bathers. To me this is a place of
pilgrimage, where all things come down to the life-giving waters. Even
here, however, there is heard in the heated air those sad cries from
the hills.
A village girl showed me some verses she had written on the drought.
She was singing by the waterside, a little maid in a print dress. With
shy eyes she tendered the poem. I remember the last verse:--
_God of Pity, I beseech Thee,
Send us rain in healing shower,
For the fields I see around me
Death and Ruin hold in power._
But from the west comes no cloud; only the fiery sun burns in a
pitiless sky.
COCKNEY BIRD TRIPPERS
My work necessitated long hours in London, and I used to bless the
sparrows; I was never tired of watching them. They lifted my mind from
dusty pavements and the smell of motor traffic. A favourite place to
see them was a garden adjoining a church in Gracechurch Street; another
was by the fountains of Trafalgar Square. About the time of harvest
in the country, for which I pined, I used to notice an absence of the
winged urchins. Where before a noisy, squabbling party congregated in
the park or near the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, in August a solitary
couple or two hopped quietly. These, I imagined, had not answered the
call that came to their dingy brethren, the same call that came to the
weary Londoner at that period of the year.
The sparrows go into the country. Where the corn is cut and shocked
you will see them in vast flocks, searching in the stubble or openly
robbing the ripe ears. It is no uncommon thing to observe a thousand
or more in one field. And perhaps as you watch a swooping hawk will
flash over the hedgerow, the cloud will arise, chattering in terror;
one miserable victim will be seized and carried swiftly away. Almost
before the last floating feather has drifted to the ground the flock
will be back, greedy for the golden grains. Perhaps there is some deep
philosophy among the wild creatures, for immediately the danger of
death is past they have forgotten it, and continue to live every moment
in complete happiness.
Male chaffinches and other finches often join the trippers. So ready
are sparrows to imitate, or perhaps to return to natural conditions
long since abandoned in the city, that after a few pastoral days their
chirps become sweeter, resembling the silvery _spink spink_ of their
gay cousins.
The sparrow has the power to produce sweet notes, but in the rush of a
big city he has become careless regarding his personal appearance, his
song, and the construction of nest.
About the second week of September the bird trippers come back, their
voices clearer and their feathers sprucer. After a while, however, they
return to their old habits, quarrelsome and untidy as before.
“FULLNESS AFTER DEARTH”
(_September, 1921._)
Where the fields were scorched and drab during the drought the sweet
green grass is growing. Gone are those gaping fissures in the slopes by
the sea, those swarms of flies about the dead sheep, and the crows and
jackdaws ever glutted with carrion. Many summery flowers that should
have formed their seeds had no chance to bloom; but now the rains have
blessed them, and everywhere their colours and scents have been made
from cold earth, sunshine, and a dot of life.
In mythology the goddess of spring returned to the bleak woodlands and
barren fields, scattering life and song as she wandered. Nowadays we
do not believe in pagan deities, but the idea survives, like poetry,
for ever. That _something_ has returned to this wild and lovely land
by the sea there can be no doubt. In every dry ditch the nettles
are springing up, and the white blossom already crests some of the
clusters. The spade-shaped leaves of the celandine--a flower that
usually comes in February or March, and resembles a buttercup--are
among the grasses in the meadows, the cuckoo-plants are rising, a lark
has two eggs in her nest, while her mate sings with vernal ecstasy high
above.
The hedge-banks are refreshed with young seedling plants, dandelions,
hawk-weeds, speedwell, thistles, lords-and-ladies, and a score of
others. I know a damp patch by the roadway where every spring giant
docks grow. In July their immense leaves, three feet long, turn crimson
and brown; in August tall spires of rusty seeds are prepared, and the
stalks stand next spring. This year, however, the seeds were dropped in
June. Now the plants are putting forth fresh leaves that over-shadow
the tiny efforts of their off-sprung life. Those docks have been there
a generation, and are still unwearied--they must have launched millions
of seeds into the light.
The swallows are still singing, but the chill nights are a sign to
them. Yesterday a young bird flew full-tilt into the wall of a barn,
and was picked up dead. It was blind, and had been so since birth. How
had it existed till now? I am inclined to think that it had lost its
parents, who hitherto must have been shepherding it.
Or perhaps it had seen the goddess Proserpine come back into the
September days of gold and royalest blue, and had paid the penalty of
vision. I burnt the tiny corpse on a bramble-fire; its ashes went up in
smoke and spark towards the sun.
CUCKOO NOTES
Most people know that the “cuckoo lays its eggs in another bird’s nest.”
The few will say that the cuckoo does nothing of the sort, that she
will lay her egg on the ground somewhere, and then carry it either by
beak or foot to the selected nest, deposit it there, and fly away. They
will say (once I said the same thing) that “it never actually lays in
another nest.” They are wrong, in one case, at any rate.
This spring a hedge-sparrow built its nest in the rough edge of a pile
of faggots. In the course of time four pale blue eggs appeared, and one
morning very early a large bird flew down to it. She must have remained
there for some time, for as I strolled past when the sun was just
rising above the hills she flew off the nest. I knew by the flight
that the bird was a cuckoo. Below the pile of faggots, on the ground,
lay the scattered remains of the eggs, and the cuckoo, before _laying_
her solitary egg in the nest, had apparently sucked all four of them.
I feared that the hedge-sparrows would desert the nest, which now
surely was but an empty mock, with its one alien egg. In the ordinary
way one will find the cuckoo’s egg amongst the others, in some cases
exchanged for one belonging to the nest. When the young cuckoo is
hatched, he displays great irritation if anything touches his back,
and will not rest till the other occupants of the nest, whether eggs
or fledgelings like himself, are cast out. The parent birds show an
indifference to these unfortunates, and all their efforts are for the
intruder.
Thus I was considerably surprised to find that the female sparrow was
sitting on the strange egg. Had I, before the tragedy, taken the four
eggs away, and placed instead an egg of a robin or a thrush, it is
practically certain that it would have been ignored. Both parent birds
were near when the female cuckoo was laying her egg, and kept flying
round the nest, accompanied by a robin who may have been, like myself,
a curious spectator in this domestic affair.
Five weeks afterwards the young cuckoo was many times the size of his
wretched foster parents, and throughout the long days of June they
worked in the hedges, seeking caterpillars, grubs, and spiders for
their querulous nestling.
The migration of the young cuckoo in August is helped by a most
interesting series of ingenious frauds. The old cuckoos depart for the
south in July, and the younger birds making their way independently,
day by day, are directed only by instinct. But the baby cannot feed
itself (or probably will not, being a born parasite), and the poor
little pair of birds who have slaved for it will not follow him when
the wanderlust comes into his blood. The method of cadging a meal is as
extraordinary as it is utterly callous.
The cad will fly ten or twelve miles a day in a southerly direction. At
intervals he cries in an infantile, screaming voice. There is bound to
be near a pair of birds with young, and should they hear the cry, they
leave their own children and go and feed the wide-mouthed impostor.
No small birds, _with fledgelings_, appear to be able to resist the
call. They go and feed him. The fact that the young cuckoo bears a
resemblance to a kestrel hawk, both in flight and colour, makes their
charity all the more mysterious. Down to the south he wanders, his
wings getting stronger every day, until the time comes when the sea
shines in the distance, and his long journey begins. And throughout the
days of his English stay, he lives on the foolish and charitable ones
among the smaller, insectivorous birds.
Sometimes he is a positive blackguard. One year (1914) I found a
cuckoo’s egg in a tiny nest of a common wren. When hatched, and only
after much difficulty, he hoisted out all his companions, or squashed
them, until he broke the nest (round like a ball, and with the hole
about an inch or so in diameter in the side) and squatted insolently
on top of it. The wrens, with their upright, barred little tails
ever jerking with pride, fed him incessantly. The female worked so
hard, and the cuckoo was so greedy, that eventually the top of her
head was devoid of all feathers, and made quite raw by the beak of
her wonder-child. But she was very brave, and was apparently quite
indifferent to the risk she ran of one day disappearing altogether. I
have often wondered if cuckoos have the power of projecting into other
birds the maternal love, or instinct, that is so obviously deficient
in themselves. This seems to be the logical conclusion to draw, even if
it be incomprehensible to the man who in human life thinks in terms of
matter and the individual, instead of the spirit and the species.
_1916._
DAYS OF AUTUMN
One morning in the hollows of the meadow land below the wood lay a
silver mist. The sun sweeping upwards in its curve beat this away
towards noon, but it was a sign. The fire of autumn was kindled:
already the little notched leaves of the hawthorn were tinged with
the rust of decay, already a bramble leaf was turning red: soon the
flames would mount the mightier trees and fan their pale heat among
the willows and ash trees round the lake, lick among the drooping elms
and the lacquered oaks, and sweep in abandonment with yawning fire of
colour through the old beech forest.