THE WARREN--RABBIT-BURROWS--FERRETS--THE QUARRY--THE FOREST--SQUIRRELS--
DEER--DYING RABBIT--A HAWK.
Under the trunks of the great trees the hedges are usually thinner, and
need repairing frequently; and so it happens that at the top of the
home-field, besides the gap leading into the ash copse, there is another
some distance away beneath a mighty oak. By climbing up the mound, and
pushing through the brake fern which grows thickly between the bushes,
entrance is speedily gained to the wide rolling stretch of open pasture
called the Warren. The contrast with the small enclosed meadow just
left is very striking. A fresh breeze comes up from the lake, which,
though not seen in this particular spot, borders the plain-like field in
one part.
The ground is not level; it undulates, now sinking into wide hollows,
now rising in rounded ridges, and the turf (not mown but grazed) is
elastic under the foot, almost like that of the downs in the distance.
This rolling surface increases the sense of largeness--of width--because
it is seldom possible to see the whole of the field at once. In the
hollows the ridges conceal its real extent; on the ridges a
corresponding rise yonder suggests another valley. The two rows of tall
elms--some hundreds of yards apart--the scattered hawthorn bushes and
solitary trees, groups of cattle in the shade, and sheep grazing by the
far-away hedge, give the aspect of a wilder park, the more pleasant
because of its wildness.
Near about the centre, where the land is most level, an unexpected slope
goes down into a cuplike depression. This green crater may perhaps have
been formed by digging for sand--so long ago that the turf has since
grown over smoothly. Standing at the bottom the sides conceal all but
the sky overhead. Some few dead leaves of last year, not yet decayed
though bleached and brittle, lie here at rest from the winds that swept
them over the plain. Silky balls of thistledown come irresolutely
rolling over the edge, now this way now that: some rise and float
across, some follow the surface and cling awhile to the bennets in the
hollow. Pale blue harebells, drooping from their slender stems here and
there, meditate with bowed heads, as if full of tender recollections.
Now, on hands and knees (the turf is dry and soft), creep up one side of
the bowl-like hollow, where, the thistles make a parapet on the edge,
and from behind it look out upon the ground all broken up into low
humps, some covered with nettles, others plainly heaps of sand. It is
the site of an immense rabbit-burrow, the relic of an old warren which
once occupied half the field. The nettle-covered heaps mark old
excavations; where the sand shows, there the miners have been recently
at work. At the sound of approaching footsteps those inhabitants that
had been abroad hastily rushed into their caves, but now (after waiting
awhile, and forgetting that the adjacent hollow might hide the enemy) a
dozen or more have come forth within easy gunshot. Though a few like
this are always looking in and out all through the day, it is not till
the approach of evening that they come out in any number.
This is a favourite spot from whence to get a shot at them, but the aim
must be deadly, or the rabbit will escape though never so severely
wounded. The holes are so numerous that he has never more than a yard
to scramble, and as he goes down into the earth his own weight carries
him on. If he can but live ten seconds after the lead strikes him, he
will generally escape you. Watching patiently (without firing), after
the twilight has deepened into night presently you are aware of a
longer, larger creature than a rabbit stealing out, seeming to travel
close to the earth: it is a badger. There are almost always a couple
somewhere about the warren. Their residence is easily discovered
because of the huge heap of sand thrown out from the rabbit-hole they
have chosen; and it is this ease of discovery that has caused the
diminution of their numbers by shot or spade.
The ground sounds hollow underneath the foot--perhaps half an acre is
literally bored away under the surface; and you have to thread your way
in and out a labyrinth of holes, the earth about some of them
perceptibly yielding to your weight. There must be waggon-loads of the
sand that has been thrown out. Beyond this central populous quarter
suburbs of burrows extend in several directions, and there are detached
settlements fifty and a hundred yards away. In ferreting this place the
greatest care has to be taken that the ferret is lined with a long
string, or so fed that he will not lie in; otherwise, if he is not
picked up the moment he appears at the mouth of the hole, he will become
so excited at the number of rabbits, and so thirsty for blood, that he
will refuse to come forth.
To dig for him is hopeless in that catacomb of tunnels; there is nothing
for it but to send a man day after day to watch, and if possible to
seize him while passing along the upper ground from one bury to another.
In time thirst will drive him to wander; there is no water near this
dry, sandy, and rather elevated spot, and blood causes great thirst.
Then he will roam across the open, and by-and-by reach the hedges, where
in the ditch some water is sure to be found in winter, when ferreting is
carried on. So that, if a ferret has been lost some time, it is better
to look for him round the adjacent hedges than in the warren.
Long after leaving the bury it is as well to look to your footsteps,
because of solitary rabbit-holes hidden by the grass growing up round
and even over them. If the foot sinks unexpectedly into one of these, a
sprained ankle or even a broken bone may result. Most holes have sand
round the mouth, and may therefore be seen even in the dusk; but there
are others also used which have no sand at the mouth, the grass growing
at the very edge. Those that have sand have been excavated from
without, from above; those that have not, have been opened from below.
The rabbit has pushed his way up from an old bury, so that the sand he
dug fell down behind him into the larger bole.
The same thing may be seen in banks, though then the holes worked from
within are not so much concealed by grass. These holes are always very
much smaller than the others, some so small that one might doubt how a
rabbit could force his body through them. The reason why the other
tunnels appear so much larger is because the rabbit has no means of
`shoring' up his excavation with planks and timbers, and no `cage' with
which to haul up the sand he has moved; so that he must make the mouth
wider than is required for the passage of his body, in order to get the
stuff out behind him. He can really creep through a much smaller
aperture. At night especially, when walking near a bury situate in the
open field, beware of putting your foot into one of these holes, which
will cause an awkward fall if nothing worse. Some of the older holes,
now almost deserted, are, too, so hidden by nettles and coarse grass as
to be equally dangerous.
The hereditary attachment of wild animals for certain places is very
noticeable at the warren. Though annually ferreted, shot at six months
out of the twelve, and trapped--though weasels and foxes prey on the
inhabitants--still they cling to the spot. They may be decimated by the
end of January, but by September the burrows are as full as ever.
Weasels and stoats of course come frequently, bent on murder, but often
meet their own doom through over-greediness; for some one generally
comes along with a gun once during the day, and if there be any
commotion among the rabbits, waits till the weasel or stoat appears at
the mouth of a hole, and sends a charge of shot at him. These animals
get caught, too, in the gins, and altogether would do better to stay in
the hedgerows.
The grass of this great pasture has a different appearance to that in
the meadows which are mown for hay. It is closer and less uniformly
green, because of the innumerable dead fibres. There are places which
look almost white from the bennets which the cattle leave standing to
die after the seeds have fallen, and shrink as their sap dries up.
Somewhat earlier in the summer, bright yellow strips and patches, like
squares of praying-carpet thrown down upon the sward, dotted the slopes:
it was the bird's-foot lotus growing so thickly as to overpower the
grass. Mushrooms nestle here and there: those that grow in the open,
far from hedge and tree, are small, and the gills of a more delicate
salmon colour. Under the elms yonder a much larger variety may be
found, which, though edible, are coarser.
Where a part of the lake comes up to the field is a long-disused quarry,
whose precipices face the water like a cliff. Thin grasses have grown
over the excavations below: the thistles and nettles have covered the
heaps of rubbish thrown aside. The steep inaccessible walls of hardened
sand are green with minute vegetation. Along the edge above runs a
shallow red-brown band--it is the soil which nourishes the roots of the
grasses of the field: beneath it comes small detached stones in sand;
these fall out, loosened by the weather, and roll down the precipice.
Then, still deeper, the sand hardens almost into stone, and finally
comes the stone itself; but before the workmen could get out more than a
thin layer they reached the level of the water in the lake, which came
in on them, slowly forming pools.
These are now bordered by aquatic grasses, and from their depths every
now and then the newts come up to the surface. In the sand precipices
are small round holes worked out by the martins--there must be scores of
them. Where narrow terraces afford access to four-footed creatures, the
rabbits, too, have dug out larger caves; some of them rise upwards, and
open on the field above, several yards from the edge of the cliff. The
sheep sometimes climb up by these ledges; they are much more active than
they appear to be, and give the impression that in their native state
they must have rivalled the goats. The lambs play about in
dangerous-looking places without injury: the only risk seems to be of
their coming unexpectedly on the cliff from above; if they begin from
below they are safe. A wood-pigeon may frequently be found in the
quarry--sometimes in the pits, sometimes on the ledges high up--and the
goldfinches visit it for the abundant thistledown.
Between the excavated hollow and the lake there is but a narrow bank of
stone and sand overgrown with sward; and, reclining there, the eye
travels over the broad expanse of water, almost level with it, as one
might look along a gun-barrel. Yonder the roan cattle are in the water
up to their knees; the light air ripples the surface, and the sunshine
playing on the wavelets glistens so brilliantly that the eye can
scarcely bear it; and the cattle ponder dreamily, standing in a flood of
liquid gold.
A path running from Wick across the fields to the distant downs leads to
the forest. It would be quite possible to pass by the edge without
knowing that it was so near, for a few scattered trees on the hillside
would hardly attract attention. Nothing marks where the trees cease:
thin, wide apart, and irregularly placed, because planted by nature,
they look but a group on the down. There is indeed a boundary, but it
is at a distance and concealed: it is the trout stream in the hollow far
below, winding along the narrow valley, and hidden by osier-beds and
willow pollards.
Ascending the slope of the down towards the trees, the brown-tinted
grass feels slippery under foot: this wiry grass always does feel so as
autumn approaches. A succession of detached hawthorn bushes--like a
hedge with great gaps--grow in a line up the rising ground. The dying
vines of the bryony trail over them--one is showing its pale greenish
white flowers, while the rest bear heavy bunches of berries. A last
convolvulus, too, has a single pink-streaked bell, though the bough to
which it holds is already partly bare of leaves. The touch of autumn is
capricious, and passes over many trees to fix on one which stands out
glowing with colour, while on the rest a dull green lingers. Near the
summit a few bunches of the brake fern rise out of the grass; then the
foremost trees are reached, beeches as yet but faintly tinted here and
there. Their smooth irregularly round trunks are of no great height--
both fern and trees at the edge seem stunted, perhaps because they have
to bear the brunt and break the force of the western gales sweeping over
the hills.
For the first two hundred yards the travelling is easy because of this
very scantiness of the fern and underwood; but then there seems to rise
up a thick wall of vegetation. To push a way through the
ever-thickening bracken becomes more and more laborious; there is scarce
a choice but to follow a winding narrow path, green with grass and moss
and strewn with leaves, in and out and round the impenetrable thickets.
Whither it leads--if, indeed anywhere--there is no sign. The precise
sense of direction is quickly lost, and then glancing round and finding
nothing but fern and bush and tree on every hand, it dawns upon the mind
that this is really a forest--not a wood, where a few minutes either way
will give you a glimpse of the outer light through the ash-poles.
Other narrow paths--if they can be called paths which show no trace of
human usage--branch off from the original one, till by-and-by it becomes
impossible to recognise one from the other. The first has been lost
indeed long ago, without its having been observed: for the bracken is
now as high as the shoulders, and the eye cannot penetrate many yards on
either side. Under a huge oak at last there is an open space, circular,
and corresponding with the outer circumference of its branches: carpeted
with dark-green grass and darker moss, thickly strewn with brown leaves
and acorns that have dropped from their cups. A wall of fern encloses
it: the path loses itself in the grass because it is itself green.
Several such paths debouch here--which is the right one to follow? It
is pure chance. On again, with more tall bracken, thorn thickets, and
maple bushes, and noting now the strange absence of living things. Not
a bird rises startled from the boughs, not a rabbit crosses the way; for
in the forest, as in the fields, there are places haunted and places
deserted, save by occasional passing visitors. Suddenly the bracken
ceases, and the paths disappear under a thick grove of beeches, whose
dead leaves and beechmast seem to have smothered vegetation.
Insensibly the low ground rises again, the brake and bushes and
underwood reappear, but the trees grow thinner and farther apart; they
are mainly oaks, which like to stand separate in their grandeur. There
is one dead oak all alone in the midst of the underwood, with a wide
space around it. A vast grey trunk, split and riven and hollow, with a
single pointed branch rising high above it, dead, too, and _grey_: not a
living twig, not so much as a brown leaf, gives evidence of lingering
life. The oak is dead; but even in his death he rules, and the open
space around him shows how he once overshadowed and prevented the growth
of meaner trees. More oaks, then a broad belt of beeches, and out
suddenly into an opening.
It is but a stone's-throw across--a level mead walled in with tail
trees, whose leaves in myriads lie on the brown-tinted grass. One great
thicket only grows in the midst of it. The nights are chilly here, as
elsewhere; but in the day, the winds being kept off by the trees and
underwood, it becomes quite summer-like, and the leaves turn to their
most brilliant hues. The stems of the bracken are yellow; the fronds
vary from pale green and gold, commingled, to a reddish bronze. The
hawthorn leaves are light yellow, some touched with red, others almost
black. Maple bushes glow with gold. Here the beeches show great spots
of orange; yonder the same tree, from the highest branch to the lowest,
has become a rich brown. Brown too, and buff, are the oaks; but the
tints so shade into each other that it is hard to separate and name
them.
It is not long before sounds and movements indicate that the forest
around is instinct with life. Often it happens that more may be
observed while stationary in one spot than while traversing a mile or
two; for many animals crouch or remain perfectly still, and consequently
invisible, when they hear a footstep. There is a slight tapping sound--
it seems quite near, but it is really some little way off; and presently
a woodpecker crosses the open, flying with a wave-like motion, now
dipping and now rising. Soon afterwards a second passes: there are
numbers of them scattered about the forest. A clattering noise comes
from the trees on the left--it is a wood-pigeon changing his perch; he
has settled again, for now his hollow note is heard, and he always calls
while perching. A loud screeching and chattering deeper in the forest
tells that the restless jays are there. A missel-thrush comes and
perches on a branch right overhead, uttering his harsh note, something
like turning a small rattle. But he stays a moment only: he is one of
the most suspicious of birds, and has instantly observed that there is
some one near. A magpie crosses the mead and disappears.
Something moving yonder in the grass catches the eye; it is a reddish
bushy tail, apparently without a body, yet held nearly upright, and
moving hither and thither in a quick, nervous way. Suddenly down it
goes, and the squirrel raises himself on his haunches to listen to some
suspicious sound, holding his forefeet something like a kangaroo. Then
he recommences searching and the tail rises, alone visible above the
tall grass. Now he bounds, and as his body passes through the air the
tail extends behind and droops so that he seems to form an arch. After
working along ten or fifteen yards in one direction, he stops, turns
sharp round, and comes all the way back again. Some distance farther,
under the trees, two more are frisking about, and a rabbit has come to
nibble the grass in the open.
Looking across to the other side, where the fern recommences, surely
there was a movement as if a branch was shaken; and a branch that, on
second thought, is in such a position that it cannot be connected with
any tree. Again, and then the head and neck of a stag are lifted above
the fern. He is attacking a tree--rubbing his antlers against a low
branch, much as if he were fighting it. He is not a hundred yards off;
it would be easy to get nearer, surely, by stalking him carefully,
gliding from tree trunk to tree trunk under the beeches.
At the first step the squirrel darts to the nearest beech; and although
it seems to have no boughs or projections low down, he is up it in a
moment, going round the trunk in a spiral. A startling clatter resounds
overhead: it is a wood-pigeon that had come quietly and settled on a
tree close by, without being noticed, and now rises in great alarm. But
it is a sound to which the deer are so accustomed that they take no
notice. There is little underwood here beneath the beeches, but the
beechmast lies thick, and there are dead branches, which if stepped on
will crack loudly.
A weasel rushes past almost under foot; he has been following his prey
so intently as not to have observed where he was going. He utters a
strange startled `yap,' or something between that and the noise usually
made by the lips to encourage a horse, and makes all speed into the
fern. These are the happy hunting-grounds of the weasels.
During spring and summer--so long as the grass, clover, and corn crops
are standing, and are the cover in which partridges and other birds have
their nests--the weasels and stoats haunt the fields, being safe from
observation (while in the crops) and certain of finding a dinner. Then,
if you watch by a gap in the hedge, or look through a gateway into the
cornfield, you may be almost certain of seeing one at least; in a
morning's walk in summer I have often seen two or three weasels in this
way. The young rabbits and leverets are of course their prey also. But
after the corn is cut you may wait and watch a whole day in the fields
and not see a weasel. They have gone to the thick mounds, the covers,
woods, and forests, and therein will hunt the winter through.
The stag is still feeding peacefully; he is now scarce fifty yards away,
when he catches sight and is off. His body as he bounds seems to keep
just above the level of the fern. It is natural to follow him, though
of course in vain; the mead is left behind, and once more there is a
wall of fern on either side of the path. After a while a broad green
drive opens, and is much more easy to walk along. But where does it go?
for presently it divides into two, and then the fork pursued again
branches. Hush! what is that clattering? It sounds in several
directions, but nothing is visible.
Then a sharp turn of the drive opens on a long narrow grassy valley,
which is crowded with deer. Parties of thirty or forty are grazing; and
yonder, farther away by themselves, there must be nearly a hundred
fawns. Standing behind a tree, it is a pleasant sight to watch them;
but after a while comes back the thought, dismissed contemptuously long
since--the afternoon is advancing, and is it possible to be lost? The
truth is we are lost for the time.
It is impossible to retrace one's footsteps, the paths and drives are so
intricate, and cross and branch so frequently. There are no landmarks.
Perhaps from the rising ground across the valley a view may be obtained.
On emerging into the open, the whole herd of deer and fawns move slowly
into the forest and disappear. From the hill there is nothing visible
but trees. If a tree be climbed to get a look-out, there is still
nothing but trees. Following a green drive as a forlorn hope, there
comes again the rattling as of clubs and spears, and strange grunting
sounds. It is the bucks fighting; and they are not altogether safe to
approach. But time is going on; unless we can soon discover the way, we
may have to remain till the tawny wood-owls flit round the trees.
There comes the tinkle-tinkle of a bell: a search shows two or three
cows, one of which, after the fashion of the old time, carries a bell.
She comes and butts one playfully, and insists on her poll being rubbed.
Then there is more grunting, but of a different kind--this time easily
recognised: it is a herd of swine searching for the beechmast and
acorns. With them, fortunately, comes the swineherd--a lad, who shows a
drive which leads to the nearest edge of the forest.
Half an hour after leaving the swineherd, a rabbit is found sitting on
his haunches, motionless, with the head drooping on one side. He takes
no notice--he is dying. Just beneath one ear is a slight trace of
blood--it is the work of a weasel, who fled on hearing approaching
footsteps. Soon a film must form over the beautiful eye of the hunted
creature: let us in mercy strike him a sharp blow on the head with the
heavy end of the walking-stick, and so spare him the prolonged sense of
death. A hundred yards further is a gate, and beyond that an arable
field. On coming near the gate a hawk glides swiftly downwards over the
hedge that there joins the forest. A cloud of sparrows instantly rise
from the stubble, and fly chirping in terror to the hedge for shelter;
but one is too late, the hawk has him in his talons. Yonder is a row of
wheat ricks, the fresh straw with which they have just been covered
contrasting with the brown thatch of the farmhouse in the hollow. There
a refreshing glass of ale is forthcoming, and the way is pointed out.