The gamekeeper classes the nutters among "the reg'lar plagues" of
his life. Not that he begrudges them their nuts, but that they stand
for an old, old story of innocent pleasures and game disturbance. As
primrose-pickers are to the nesting pheasants of April, so are nutters
to the young birds of October, and the final result is always an
angry keeper. His young birds at this season are ever ready to avail
themselves of an excuse to stray to fresh woods. The nutter who would
avoid the keeper should avoid paths, and lie very low and still when
the keeper comes his way. This lesson in woodcraft had been mastered so
thoroughly by one young nutter of our acquaintance that when a keeper
chanced to pass along the ride near which he was picking, he still
lay low when the keeper's words were almost in his ear: "Where be ye?
Ah, I sees ye. Come out on it, then!" And he was duly rewarded by the
knowledge that these remarks were merely an exhortation to pheasants to
feed.
Dormice are the chief of all lovers of hazel-nuts. They are found very
often at work by human nutters; and their nest is seen sheltered by
hazel leaves--a neat round structure, built of dry grass, beautifully
woven. One autumn we came upon a nest containing six young dormice,
about half-grown and ready to run, and three of them, wonderful to
relate, were wholly white. Autumnal litters are common, and, as though
by a beautiful piece of foresight on the part of Nature, the favourite
nut food is most abundant just when the little mice are ready to give
up a milk diet. Though called "the mouse of the hazel," he seems as
partial to acorns as to hazel-nuts, and he is insectivorous, and feeds
heartily on nut-weevil grubs. With November he will be as fat as nuts
can make him, and before the month is out he will have fallen into his
long winter trance. The little reddish brown harvest-mouse seems to
have almost disappeared in the north of Hampshire and other parts,
and for years we have not seen a single specimen. The nest of the
harvest-mouse--cunningly woven amid the corn-stalks--used to be one
of the prettiest of things seen in the cornfields, especially when
the mouse was seen also, nibbling in his dainty way at the grain. To
go round an oat-stack and poke it with a stick was to disturb these
gregarious little creatures by the score. The common mouse remains as
plentiful as ever, and thousands are seen during the threshing of a
single stack; but the harvest-mouse has gone. So much the better, no
doubt, for the stacks. Their population of furred foes is always too
large--as some idea may be gained from the fact that in one season,
and from a group of three ricks, no fewer than 1300 rats were taken.
It is a proof of the barn-owls' value to farmers that they are often
caught in rat-traps set by holes at the base of stacks. The stack is a
favourite if sometimes a fatal hunting-place.
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