Were it not for the oaks there would be scanty winter faring and
feasting for many wild creatures. When acorns and hazel-nuts are
scarce, and full beech-masts are not plentiful, birds and beasts have
an unusually hard struggle to tide over the winter, even should it be
mild, as a paucity of nuts is supposed to foretell. Different creatures
like their nut food in different conditions and at different times. The
rooks in their greed pull the acorns from their cups where they grow,
others do not relish them in their fresh green state, and wait until
they are ripe and mellow. Pheasants, who are very partial to acorns in
autumn and winter, when more delicate faring is not available, prefer
to eat them just as they begin to sprout. Like corn and other seeds,
acorns when sprouting possess a peculiarly attractive sweetness. Some
of the trees seem to produce fruit of extra sweetness or extra fine
flavour--at least, the gamekeeper finds that his pheasants seem to
prefer to feed beneath certain trees. Perhaps it is that those trees
which are most sun-drenched produce the sweetest acorns, just as the
most exposed hazel-nuts on the topmost twigs are so much better than
the pale ones of the lowest branches.
The keeper welcomes a generous supply of acorns--provided that the
trees which yield them grow in his woods, and not exclusively near
the boundary of his beat. Wood-pigeons, as soon as they have cleared
the beech-mast, their specially favoured food, will stuff their crops
with acorns to the bursting-point--and so grow fat. Acorns also form
an important item in the winter fare of rabbits and deer. It is true
that they draw rats to the coverts, and even when the last acorn has
gone it is not easy to clear the rats away completely. Whether or not
there are plentiful acorns, the keeper is much indebted to the oak for
food for pheasants, because they are so fond of the spangle-galls, to
be found in plenty on the backs of the leaves, that they prefer them
even to the maize which is freely scattered. All the galls of the oak,
whether oak-apples, or bullet, artichoke, spangle, or root galls, are
the outcome of eggs laid by the various gall-wasps, and the pheasants
know that within the spangle-galls are the grubs, feeding on the
galls' flesh. Left to themselves, the grubs will in due time reach the
chrysalis stage of existence, to be hatched in June as winged insects,
and to lay in turn the eggs which cause the pretty vermilion-spotted
galls. So the wheel of life turns again and would turn for ever if
unspoked by the pheasant's beak.
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