WILDFOWL OF THE LAKE--SEA BIRDS--DRIFT WOOD--FORCES OF NATURE AT WORK--
WAVES--EVAPORATION--AN EAGLE--FROST AND SNOW--EFFECT ON BIRDS AND
ANIMALS--WATER-MEADOWS--SHOOTING STARS--PHOSPHORESCENCE--WATERSPOUT--
NOISES `IN THE AIR.'
The `summer snipe,' or sandpiper, comes to the lake regularly year after
year, and remains during the warm months. About a dozen visit the
shallow sandy reaches running along the edge of the water, when
disturbed flying off just above the surface with a plaintive piping cry.
They describe a semicircle, and come back to the shore a hundred yards
farther on; and will do this as many times as you like to put them up.
Sometimes they feed in little parties of two or three: sometimes alone.
No other place for some distance is visited by the sandpiper: none of
the ponds, or brooks; only the lake.
In summer but a few species of birds remain on this piece of water.
Only two or three wild ducks stay to breed: their nests are not found on
the mere itself, but in the ponds adjacent. One small pond fed by the
lake and communicating with it--dug where the muddy shore would
otherwise prevent cattle approaching the shallow water--a quiet spot
almost surrounded by bushes, is a favourite nesting-place. The brooks
that run in are occasionally used by ducks in the same way, and one of
the large ditches which is full of flags and rushes and well sheltered
is now and then selected. But the ducks do not breed in any number,
though they used to do so within living memory.
The coots cannot be overlooked in spring; they chase each other to and
fro over the surface in the liveliest manner, and their nests are
common. Moorhens, of course, are here in numbers. Why is it that they
never seem to learn wisdom in placing their nests? Whether in the lake,
in the ponds, or brooks, they exhibit the same lack of foresight as to
changes of level in the water; so that frequently their nests are quite
drowned out. Occasionally in the brooks the nest is floated bodily down
the stream by a sudden rise. These mishaps they might easily avoid by
placing them a little higher up the bank.
In the lake there are several acres of withy bushes which when the water
is low are on dry land, but in spring and early summer stand five or six
feet deep. This is a favourite nesting-place with the coots: and they
show the same neglect of the teachings of experience; for their nests
are placed almost on the water, and if it rises, as it often does, they
are flooded.
It is said that otters used to come to the mere many years ago; but they
have never done so lately, though stories of their having been seen are
frequent. One summer the story was so positive and so often repeated
that I made a thorough search, and found that it originated in the
motions of a large diving bird. This bird swam under water with
wonderful rapidity, and often close to the surface, so that it raised a
wave and could be traced by it. This was the supposed otter. The bird
was afterwards shot, but its exact species does not seem to have been
satisfactorily ascertained. Several kinds of divers, however, have
without doubt been killed. Grebes are often shot.
Occasionally sea birds come--particularly a species locally called the
`sea-swallow,' which frequently appears after rough winds and remains
flying about over the water for a week or more. Six or eight of these
are sometimes seen at once. The common gull comes at irregular
intervals, generally in the winter or spring; it is said to foretell
rough weather. Occasionally a gull will stay some time, and I have seen
them also in the water-meadows. Considering the distance from the sea,
the gull cannot be called an uncommon bird here.
Towards winter the wild ducks return; and during all the cold months a
flock of them, varying in number, remains. They are careful to swim
during the day in the centre of the very widest part of the lake, far
out of gunshot; at night they land, or feed along the shore. Teal, and
sometimes widgeon also, visit the place. Once now and then wildfowl
come in countless numbers: it is said to be when they are driven south
by severe weather. On one occasion I saw the lake literally black--they
almost covered it for a length of half a mile and a breadth of about a
quarter. It was a sight not to be quickly forgotten; and the noise of
their wings as vast parties every now and then rose and wheeled around
was something astonishing. They only stayed a few days.
How many times I have endeavoured to trace the V said to be formed by
duck while flying, and failed to detect it! They fly, it is true, in
some sort of order, but those that come to the mere here travel rather
in a row, or line, slanting forwards, something like what military men
call in echelon. The teal seem much bolder than the wild duck: they are
often shot as they rise out of the brooks; but the ducks very rarely go
to the brooks at all, and can still more rarely be approached when they
do. They swim in the water-carriers in the great irrigated meadows, but
are careful to remain far out of range; so that the only way to shoot
them by day is for two or more sportsmen to post themselves behind the
hedges in different places while a third drives them up.
The first snipes are seen generally in the arable lands, afterwards
round the lake--the muddy shores by choice--and finally in the brooks.
As the winter advances they seem to quit the lake in great part and go
down to the brooks. A streamlet that runs through a peaty field is a
favourite spot. The little jack-snipe frequent the water-carriers in
the irrigated meadows and the wet furrows. When the lake is frozen over
the wild duck stand on the ice in the daytime for hours together,
leaving the marks of their feet on it.
In walking along the shore lines of drift may be noticed, marking the
height to which the waves driven by the wind have carried the floating
twigs, weeds, and leaves: just as along the sea the beach is formed into
terraces by the changing height of the tides. The shallower parts of
the lake are so thickly grown in summer with aquatic weeds that a boat
can only be forced through them with the utmost difficulty. Some of
these grow in as much as eight or even ten feet of water. On the shore,
where it is marshy, the mare's-tail flourishes over some acres: there is
often a slight marshy odour here, which increases as the foot presses
the yielding mud.
When the water is low in autumn these are mown, and, with the aquatic
grasses at the edge and the rushes, made into the roughest kind of hay
imaginable. The coarser parts are used as litter; the best is mixed
with fodder and eaten by cattle. Many waggon-loads are thus taken away,
but as many more remain; and in walking over the spongy ground a smart
`pop' is continually heard: it is caused by the sudden compression of
air under the foot in the mare's-tails lying about; for their stems are
hollow, and have knots at regular intervals.
After a continuance of the wind in one quarter for a few days--south or
south-west--the opposite shores are lined with such weeds carried
across, together with great quantities of dead branches fallen from the
trees and willows. So that on a small scale the same thing happens as
with the drift wood of the ocean; and, indeed, by studying the action of
natural forces as exhibited in our own pools and brooks, it becomes much
easier to comprehend the gigantic operations by which the surface of the
earth is altered.
For instance, the north-eastern edge of the water is continually
encroaching on the land, eating away the sandy soil, showing that the
prevalent winds are south and west. The waves, thrown against the shore
with the force they have acquired in rolling six or seven hundred yards,
wash away the earth and undermine the bank, forming a miniature cliff or
precipice, the face of which is always concave, projecting a little at
the foot and also at the top. So much is this the case that an unwary
person walking too near the edge may feel the sward suddenly yield and
find it necessary to scramble off before a few hundredweights of earth
subside into the water.
In this process the loamy part of the earth is dissipated, or rather
held in suspension, while the small stones and ultimately the heavier
sand fall to the bottom and form the sandy floor preferred by the fish.
The loam discolours the water during a storm for several yards out to
sea, so to say; so that in a boat passing by you know by the hue of the
waves when you are approaching the dangers of the cliffs. This
continuous eating away of the earth proceeds so fast that an old hollow
oak tree now stands--at what may be called the high tide of summer--so
far from the strand that a boat may pass between.
Like a wooden island the old oak rears itself up in the midst; the waves
break against it, and when there is but a ripple the sunlight glancing
on the water is reflected back, and plays upon the rugged trunk,
illuminating it with a moving design as the wavelets roll in. The water
is so shallow at the edge that the shadows of the ridges of the waves
follow each other over the sandy floor. They reflect the bright rays
upon the tree trunk, where they weave a beautiful lacelike pattern--
beneath, their own shadows glide along the sand. That sand, too, is
arranged by the ripple in slightly curved lines. These wave-marks,
though so slight that with the hand you may level fifty at a sweep, have
yet sometimes proved durable enough to tell the student after many
centuries where water once has been. Under the foundations of some of
the oldest churches--the monks loved to build near water--the wave-mark
has been found on the original soil.
In a hollow of the old oak starlings have made their nest and reared
their young in safety for several seasons. They seem to understand that
the water gives them protection, for their nest would not be out of
reach were the tree on land.
Just as at the seashore the wave curls over in an arch as it comes in
before dissolving in surf and spray, so here when a gale is blowing,
these lesser waves, as they reach the shelving strand, also curl over.
In the early morning, as the sun begins to acquire some strength, the
white mists sweep over the surface and visibly melt and disappear. One
hot summer, when the lake was full, and kept so artificially by the
hatches and dams, I found by observation that its level sank nearly half
an inch every day. This was the more striking because there was at the
same time an influx more than enough to repair the loss from leakage.
Now the evaporation of half an inch of water over such a width of
surface meant the ascension into the atmosphere of many thousands of
gallons; and thus even this insignificant pool might form a cloud of
some magnitude in a few days. What immense vapours may then arise from
the surface of the ocean!
Sometimes a winter's morning is, I think, almost as beautiful as summer,
when the ice is thick with the sharp frost, and the sun shines in a blue
sky free from clouds. One such morning, while putting on my skates, I
happened to look up, and was surprised to see a bird of unusual
appearance, and large size, soaring slowly overhead. I immediately
recognised an eagle; and that was the solitary occasion on which I ever
saw one here. The bird remained in sight some time, and finally left,
going south-east towards the sun.
On the afternoon of the day before the beginning of the frost the wind
gradually sinks, and the dead leaves which have been blown to and fro
settle in corners and sheltered places. As the sun sets all is still,
and there is a sense of freshness in the air. Then the logs of wood
thrown on the fire burn bright and clear--the surface of a burning log
breaks up into small irregular squares; and the old folk shake their
heads and say, `It will freeze.' As the evening advances the hoofs of
horses passing by on the road give out a sharp sound--a sign that the
mud is rapidly hardening. The grass crunches under foot, and in the
morning the elms are white with rime; icicles hang from the thatch, and
the ponds are frozen.
But there is nothing so uncertain as frost: it may thaw, and even rain,
within a few hours; and, on the other hand, even after raining in the
afternoon, it may clear up about midnight, and next morning the ice will
be a quarter of an inch thick. Sometimes it will begin in so
faint-hearted a fashion that the ground in the centre of the fields is
still soft, and will `poach' under the hoofs of cattle, while by the
hedge it is hard. But by slow degrees the cold increases, and ice
begins to form. Again, it will freeze for a week and yet you will find
very little ice, because all the while there has been a rough wind, and
the waves on the lake cannot freeze while in motion. So that a long
frost is extremely difficult to foresee.
But it comes at last. Two really sharp frosts will cause ice thick
enough to bear a lad at the edge of the lake; three will bear a man a
few yards out; four, and it is safe to cross: in a week the ice is
between three and four inches thick, and would carry a waggon. The
character of ice varies: if some sleet has been falling--or snow, which
facilitates freezing--it is thick in colour; if the wind was still it is
dark, sleek, perfectly transparent. It varies, however, in different
places, in some having a faint yellowish hue. There are always several
places where the ice does not freeze till the last--breathing-holes in
which the ducks swim; and where a brook enters it is never quite safe.
The snipes come now to the brook and water-meadows. Following the
course of the stream, fieldfares and redwings rise in numbers from every
hawthorn bush, where they have been feeding on the peggles. Blackbirds
start out from under the bushes, where there is perhaps a little moist
earth still. The foam where there is a slight fall is frozen, and the
current runs under a roof of ice; the white bubbles travel along beneath
it. The moorhens cannot get at the water; neither can the herons or
kingfishers. The latter suffer greatly, and a fortnight of such severe
weather is fatal to them.
I recollect walking by a brook like this, and seeing the blue plumage of
a kingfisher perched on a bush. I swung my gun round ready to shoot as
soon as he should fly, but the bird sat still and took no notice of my
approach. Astonished at this--for the kingfisher sat in such a position
as easily to see anyone coming; and these birds generally start
immediately they perceive a person--I walked swiftly up opposite the
bush. The bird remained on the bough. I put out the barrel of my gun
and touched his ruddy breast with the muzzle: he fell on the ice below.
He had been frozen on his perch during the night, and probably died more
from starvation than from cold, since it was impossible for him to get
at any fish.
More than once afterwards the same winter I found kingfishers dead on
the ice under bushes, lying on their backs with their contracted claws
uppermost, having fallen dead from roost. Possibly the one found on the
branch may have been partly supported by some small twig.
That winter snow afterwards fell and became a few inches thick, drifting
in places to several feet. Then it was the turn of the other birds and
animals to feel the pain of starvation. In the meadows the tracks of
rabbits crossed and recrossed till the idea of following their course
had to be abandoned. At first sight it seemed as if the snow had
suddenly revealed the presence of a legion of rabbits where previously
no one had suspected the existence of more than a dozen. But in fact a
couple of rabbits only will so run to and fro on the snow as to cover a
meadow with the imprints of their feet--looking everywhere for a green
blade.
Yet they only occasionally scratch away the snow, and so get at the
grass. Though the natural instinct of rabbits is to dig, and though
here and there a place may be seen where they appear to have searched
for a favourite morsel, yet they do not seem to acquire the sense of
systematically clearing snow away. They then bark ash--and, indeed,
nearly any young sapling or tree--and visit gardens in the night, as the
hares do also. They creep about along the mounds, being driven by
hunger to search for food all day instead of remaining part of the time
in the buries.
As to the hares, little more than a week of deep snow cripples their
strength: they will run but twenty or thirty yards, and may be killed
occasionally with a stick or captured alive. They are even more
helpless than rabbits, because the latter still have holes to take
refuge in from danger; but the hare while the snow lasts is a wretched
creature, and knows not where to turn. Birds resort to the
cattle-sheds, to roost; among them the blackbirds, who usually roost in
the hedges. Birds come to the houses and gardens in numbers because the
snow is there cleared away along the paths.
During severe weather the water-meadows are the most frequented places.
They are rarely altogether frozen. If in the early morning there are
sheets of ice, by noonday a great part will be flooded an inch or two
deep, the water rising over the ice, and forced by it to spread farther,
softening the ground at the sides. The water-carriers are long before
they freeze. Thrushes and blackbirds come to the hedges surrounding
these meadows; the fieldfares and redwings are there by hundreds, and
fly up to the trees if alarmed.
The old folks say that the irrigated meadows (and other open waters) do
not freeze in the evening till the moon rises; a bright clear moon is
credited with causing the water to `catch'--that is, the slender,
thread-like spicules form on the surface, and, joining together, finally
cover it. It is, of course, because the water-meadows are long before
altogether frozen that the duck and teal come down to them. When the
brooks are frozen is almost the only time when the dabchick can be got
to rise: at other times this bird will dive and redive, and double about
in the water, and rather be caught by the spaniels than take wing. But
when the ice prevents this they will fly. Wood-pigeons go to the few
places that remain moist, and also frequent the hawthorn bushes with the
fieldfares. They seem fond of trees that are overgrown with ivy,
probably for the berries.
The fish are supposed to go down upon the mud; but the jacks certainly
do the reverse: they may be seen lying just beneath the ice, and
apparently touching it with their backs. They seem partly torpid. In
open winters, such as we have had of recent years, the hedge fruit
remains comparatively untouched by birds: from which it would appear
that it is not altogether a favourite food.
The country folk, who are much about at night and naturally pay great
heed to the weather, are persuaded that on rainy nights more shooting
stars are seen than when it is bright and clear. The kind of weather
they mean is when scudding clouds with frequent breaks pass over, now
obscuring and now leaving part of the sky visible, and with occasional
showers. These shooting stars, they say, are but just above the clouds,
and are mere streaks of light: by which they mean to convey that they
have no apparent nucleus and are different from the great meteors which
are sometimes seen.
I have myself been often much interested in the remarkable difference of
the degree of darkness when there has been no moon. There are nights
when, although the sky be clear of visible cloud and the stars are
shining, it is, in familiar phrase, `as black as pitch.' The sky itself
is black between the stars, and they do not seem to give the slightest
illumination. On the other hand, there are nights without a moon when
it is (though winter time) quite light. Hedges and trees are plainly
visible; the road is light, and anything approaching can be seen at some
distance, and this occasionally happens though the sky be partly
clouded. So that the character of the night does not seem to depend
entirely upon the moon or stars. The shepherds on the hills say that
now and then there comes an intense blackness at night which frightens
the sheep and makes them leap the hurdles.
When logs of timber are split for firewood they are commonly stacked
`four square,' and occasionally such a stack, four or five feet high,
may be seen all aglow with phosphorescence. Each individual split piece
of wood is distinctly visible--a pale faintly yellow light seems to be
emitted from its surface. At the same time the ends of the
faggot-sticks projecting from the adjacent stack of faggots also glow as
if touched with fire. So vivid is the light that at the first glance it
is quite startling--as if the whole collection of wood were just on the
point of bursting into flame. In passing old hollow trees sometimes
they appear illuminated from within: the light proceeds from the
decaying `touchwood.' Old willow trees are sometimes streaked with such
light from the top to the foot of the trunk. As this phosphorescence is
only occasional, it would seem to depend on the condition of the
atmosphere.
I once noticed what looked like a glowworm on a window-blind at night,
but there was no glowworm there; the light was of a pale greenish hue.
In the morning an examination showed that the linen was decayed and
almost rotten just in that particular spot, and it had slightly turned
colour. Glowworms are uncommon in the district which has been more
particularly described.
The _ignis fatuus_ is almost extinct; so much so that
Jack-o'-the-Lantern has died out of the village folklore. On one
occasion, however, I saw what at a distance seemed a bright light
shining in a ditch where two hedges met. Thinking some mischief was
going on, I went to the spot, when the light disappeared; but on
retiring, after a search which proved that no one was about, it came
into view again. A second time I approached, and a second time the
light died out. A few nights afterwards it was there again, and must
clearly have been some kind of _ignis fatuus_. There was a small
quantity of stagnant water in the ditch, and a good deal of rotting
wood--branches fallen from trees.
One of the most interesting phenomena in connection with the weather
seems to me to be the radiation of clouds. It appears to be more
commonly visible in the evening, and, when fully developed, there is a
low bank on the horizon, roughly arched, from which streamers of cloud
trail right across the sky, through the zenith and down to the horizon
opposite. Near each horizon these streamers or lines almost touch;
overhead they are wider apart--an effect of perspective, I suppose.
Often the lines do not stretch so far, hardly to the zenith, where they
spread out like a fan. If the sun has gone down, and the cloud chances
to be white, these lines greatly resemble the aurora borealis, which
takes the same form, and, when pale, can scarcely be distinguished from
them, except for the streamers shooting--now extending, now
withdrawing--while the cloud streamers only drift slowly. Sometimes
there is but one line of cloud, a single streamer stretching right
across the sky. So far as I have been able to observe, this radiation
is usually followed by wind blowing in a direction parallel to the
course of the streamers.
Once while walking in winter I was overtaken by a storm of rain, and
took shelter behind a tree, which for some time kept me perfectly dry.
But suddenly there came an increase of darkness, and, glancing round, I
saw a black cloud advancing in the teeth of the wind, and close to the
earth. The trees it passed were instantly blotted out, and as it
approached I could see that in the centre it bulged and hung down--or
rather slightly slanting forward--in the shape of an inverted cone with
the apex cut off. This bulging part was of a slaty black, and the end
travelled over the earth not higher than half the elevation of an
ordinary elm. It came up with great speed, and in a moment I was
completely drenched, and the field was flooded. It did not seem so much
to rain as to descend in a solid sheet of water; this lasted a very
short time, and immediately afterwards the storm began to clear. Though
not a perfect waterspout, it was something very near it. The tree
behind which I had taken shelter stood near a large pond, or mere; and I
thought at the time that that might have attracted the cloud. The field
quite ran with water, as if suddenly irrigated, but the space thus
flooded was of small area--about an acre.
The haymakers sometimes talk of mysterious noises heard in the very
finest weather, when it is still and calm, resembling extremely distant
thunder. They were convinced it was something `in the air;' but I feel
certain it was the guns of the fleet exercising at sea. In that case
the sound of the explosion must have travelled over fifty miles in a
direct line--supposing it to come from the neighbourhood of the nearest
naval station. I have found by observation that thunder cannot be heard
nearly so far as the sound of cannon. I doubt whether it is often heard
more than ten miles. Some of the old cottage folk are still positive
that it is not the lightning but the thunder that splits the trees; they
ask if a great noise does not make the windows rattle, and want to know
whether a still greater one may not rive an oak. They allow, however,
that the mischief is sometimes done by a thunder-bolt.