Chapter III: Part 3

Meanwhile, the people in the cottage were fearful that the policeman would come their way and discover everything. The old birds kept banging away at the thatch, tearing out great mouthfuls of it in an endeavour to get at the fledgelings. Tiger did not dare to use his gun; the situation frightened him; so he opened the door. Immediately the cat pounced at a young bird, but one of the old birds swooped down and gave the cat a tap on the head that sent it spinning away, to drop dead with a hole in its skull that Tiger could put two fingers in. The youngsters, with nobody to stop them, got right away, half flying and half hopping.

“And since that day, zur,” Muggy said solemnly, “no raven has been known to touch a lamb. That’s as true as I’m sitting here.”

The ravens have nested on the headland again this year, using their old breeding ledge; and I am glad that at least one pair of these rare birds haunts the solitudes by the sea. No one interferes with them, except the peregrines, but the raven is too much for that fierce swift raider, turning on his back in mid-air and holding his beak upwards like a javelin as the falcon is about to strike. A quick eye the raven needs, for the hawk plunges at about two hundred miles an hour. But they never harm one another, and I know for a fact, having seen it myself, that the ravens practise their turning movement. They love to float in an uprushing wind just below the cliff-edge, and roll over like a twirled distaff, sideways, and then back again. And I think that if any stranger tried to shoot one, the Nightcrow Inn would rise in anger against him. The ravens have earned their sanctuary.

THE OUTLAW:

_Being the indisputable (journalese) truth about the peregrine falcon that came to St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1920._

The beechwood was ten miles from London. One morning in late September a strange visitor came to it, and perched upon a low branch. A blackbird, feeding below among the dried moss and brown leaves, shrilled a sudden alarm. The blackbird had never seen such an apparition before, but he recognised the family.

The newcomer remained still. He was tired and exhausted after a long journey. Since dawn he had flown high up, his pinions urged on and on by a fierce despair. For his mate had been shot upon Lundy Island, and he had flown straight into the sun’s face as though to find her spirit taken back into its flame that gave all the wild ones life. Swift had he flown, never pausing till he came to the beechwood; seeing it below, and wrapping his wings around him, he had fallen like a great iron arrowhead into its solitude.

The pigeons who roosted were in the stubble: the starlings haunted the water-meadows: the jackdaws flocked with the rocks about the furrows. The beechwood was still, for the blackbird had slipped away.

The stranger flapped his long thin wings, and looked around him.

He was about eighteen inches long, and bluish-ash in colour. His throat and upper breast were white, tinged with yellow, and marked with a few dark streaks. But the most noticeable thing was the eyes. They were large, and keen, dusky; ringed with yellow eyelids. Fierce and remorseless was their expression, aided by the short, hooked bill.

The falcon suddenly stiffened. From the lake below the sloping forest had come a faint trumpet-like call. He knew the call well, for many times had he and his mate preyed upon the wild duck in the Devon estuary opposite Lundy Island.

The next moment he had gone through the trees, a swift shadow. A little vole splitting a beechmast on the ground below crouched in terror. For everything preyed upon its kind. The weasel came by day, and in summer the grass snake; if it left the wood and went to the meadow there was the poised kestrel hawk; in the furrows a fox sometimes ran, snapping at the tiny mice; in the dark night came the great wood owl, and that white devil, the barn owl.

The mouse crouched in terror, but he passed on, a swift shadow: he was a noble bird, and did not take rodents.

Seven duck had flighted, and were going towards the reaches of the Thames. They flew fast and steadily, at fifty miles an hour. The passing narrow shadow became a relentless and swift whirling speck above them, ever climbing.

Then one of the duck was falling, the flight was scattered; the falling one clutched and borne to the beechwood, where the hooked beak tore and ripped.

Thenceforward the wood became a place of terror. One morning the keeper discovered a cock pheasant lying dead on the leaves. A small part of its breast had been eaten. At first he thought that it was the work of a fox--but he was puzzled; he knew that the fox usually ate more of a longtail than a small part of its breast, and always buried his half-eaten victim for consumption on another occasion. And on turning it over, he was still more puzzled. The back was ripped as though a knife had slashed and turned the skin right back.

A hundred yards away he found a carrion crow. The back of the crow was also smashed, although no attempt had been made to eat any section of its body. In other parts of the wood the keeper found slain pheasants, all badly broken; the remains of a squirrel--one forepaw and a bushy tail comprising the remains. Three dead duck floated in the lake. Whatever new and ghastly thing was causing the havoc, he told his head man later, it seemed to delight in destroying and killing for sport.

Gradually the terror became the topic of talk in the inns roundabout Bromley, in Kent. Some of the bolder and more imaginative declared that it was caused by an Arctic owl--one even said that he had seen it stooping at a dog in the twilight. He was a well-known liar.

No one in the district--which was outlying to a large town just outside the suburban area of south-east London--had ever heard of the like.

The mystery was solved in a sudden manner. The keeper had been setting baited traps--of the “gin” variety--tempting the unknown with the entrails of rabbits. But he caught nothing save a mangy stoat, blind in one eye and the other filming over with age. The gins were of no avail.

The keeper kept fowls in his garden. One day he was sitting in the porch of his cottage, smoking after the midday meal, and ruminating on what the squire had said about giving up the rearing of pheasants. His fowls were strutting and scratching: one had recently produced an egg and was proclaiming the fact with unmelodious insistency.

There came a hissing as of something falling: an alarmed curse from a hen. The keeper jumped up, swearing at the bluish tumbling of narrow wings that had gone over the hedge.

One of his fowls was kicking the air spasmodically. There was blood on the path. He picked the hen up--it was headless.

The keeper swore; he knew what had caused the mischief among his longtails and duck. It was a big hawk--of a kind never seen before. So swiftly had it come that the fowl was decapitated by those dagger spikes on the hind claw of the raider’s feet.

* * * * *

One day a journalist was walking in a meadow. The meadow was near to a copse containing a dozen tall elm trees. In the elms were nearly a hundred black patches--a colony of rooks at their old nests. The rookery had been deserted in June, when old and young birds took to the fields and made local migrations.

That morning a mist had lain in the meadow and the rooks had known that it was time to return to the colony.

As the journalist, happy in the October sunshine, passed near the rookery, he was surprised to see the whole flock--some hundreds of birds--rise with harsh imperative cries into the air. The beating of many jet wings caused a vast soughing, and the leaves below the trees rose and flitter-fluttered with the winnowing. As suddenly as it had begun, the outcry ceased. Yet still the birds climbed higher.

Soon they were just specks against the blue, wheeling like a ring of smoke in one great circle. Then the agitated cries came again. One segment of the circle broke into falling and diving, zooming and slipping, birds, as though a strong wind had scattered them every way.

The journalist was mystified. He sat down to watch, and to discover the reason.

Two of the rooks had left the circle, and were diving to earth. As they came nearer he saw that their wings hung limp. They fell a hundred yards away, and he ran over to them. They were dead.

Picking one up, it was warm, the sunlight gleaming on the hues of its wings, glinting green and purple. Their backs were bare of feathers, and gaping with a terrible wound. He was more mystified, then thought that for some inexplicable reason the other rooks had pecked them to death. But why? He was more puzzled as he thought. He was well known for his puzzles.

Looking up, he saw that the circle had swung higher than ever. Gradually it drifted away, silent.

The journalist, who had some knowledge of natural history and ornithology, returned to London the next day and wrote the incident up as a “news story.” But he could give no explanation. The editor was sceptical; said that it was no good. He laughed, and mentioning that it was “punk,” promptly “spiked” it.

Meanwhile something was about to happen in London.

It was half-past five on Saturday afternoon. The journalist, who worked with a newspaper that went to press on Saturday night for publication on Sunday, was passing St. Paul’s Cathedral. He stopped to look at the pigeons strutting and searching for crumbs upon the worn paving stones. He found two months continuous work to be most exhausting. He still was puzzled about the dead rooks. He had been to every paper in London with his “rook story,” but no one would print it. He even got laughed at as a “fake merchant”--a tribute to imagination, but damning as a reputation.

Like chaff before a blast of wind the pigeons scattered. His paper was rumpled by the agitated draught caused by their departure.

Looking up to the dome he saw a flock of about fifty pigeons wheeling in steady flight near the cross at the top. A speck fell with a suddenness that reminded him of a shot aeroplane: like a plunging halbert-head it was; there was a puff of feathers dancing and fluttering--the flock scattered, dived to earth, anywhere, anyhow, and the dark halbert-head became outlined against the sky, perched on the gilt cross that glistened in the afternoon sun.

Then he knew that it was a peregrine falcon, and thrilling with the sight, took a taxi-cab back to Fleet Street (he was young and keen) and “wrote the story up.”

His editor “liked” the idea, but demanded that it should be rendered in what the journalist thought was the most illiterate English. The journalist and the editor sneered at each other about prose for some time: and the editor won. The illiterate account was penned, mauled over by a sub-editor, and finally displayed prominently on the front page of his paper. But the editor only leered when the journalist asked for his taxi-cab fare.

* * * * *

The falcon, leaving the woods near London came once more. The woods were ten miles from St. Paul’s, and it took him eight minutes to fly to the dome.

His end was an epic one, and becomes such a noble spirit. From what the journalist dreamed, he was able to imagine the death, and here it is.

One morning by the lake side stood a gray stump, a tall thing on two stalk-like legs. The gray stump remained motionless, as though watching his own dull image in the water.

It was a heron fishing.

He remained still for many minutes. Something passed in the water, a long neck shot forward, and a gleaming fish, pierced by the beak, drawn from the lake. The heron, who had paid a visit every morning from the heronry at Tonbridge, flew away; a slow-flapping, unwieldy thing, over a yard in length. His feet stretched out behind him, his head was tucked in between his shoulders.

The falcon was about. He stooped at the heron. Perhaps the spirit of ancestors, who left the gauntletted wrists of falconers to fly at the heron of olden times, was about him: for how else should he have dared that pointed beak? Rolling like a ship in a gale, heavily and in distress, the heron turned on his back, and held his beak pointed at the stooping falcon.

The hawk swerved; swept up again; regained height, wrapped his wings about him and plunged. Again the beak met him, once more he swerved.

So the combat went on. Nearer the keeper’s cottage they drifted. Now the heron was calling in distress, _Kaa-ack, kaa-ack_. Fell the halbert-head, darted the spear-beak, slipped the halbert-head. It was to be a fight to the death, till one should misjudge by the minutest error of time, the plundering heron or the outlawed falcon. The small birds hid themselves in the bushes--the sound of a shot rang out, the heron tumbled in alarm, recovered, flapped away; an eddy of gray feathers swirled in the wind, the echo of the report shivered back from the woods--and the falcon fell on the grass, its beak gaping, and panting for breath.

The keeper picked up the wild one, never more to swoop on “longtail” or “bird,” never more to descend upon terrorised tame pigeon in Barnstaple or the great Dome of London. The proud eyes misted, the noble head fell back--the keeper was surprised to feel how light the bird was; and while he was weighing it in his hand the outlaw died.

* * * * *

But perhaps the most extraordinary thing about this falcon-raid was that nearly every journalist in London saw the bird; but I saw it first, therefore it is mine.

PEREGRINES IN LOVE

(_To E. G. S._)

In the salt winds of the Atlantic, and above their ancient eyrie, the peregrine falcons anchor their flight with easy mastery of the gusty uptrends of the precipitous headland face. When first the celandine came below the hedges, the male hawk mounted high, and stooped at his larger mate like a black and shaftless arrowhead of iron, uttering shrill love-notes the while. Now the dog violets and the red campion flowers are among the grasses; the pink sea-thrift blooms in sheltered places; and still the peregrines pursue each other and kiss with swift fondness over the foamed waters.

The kestrel is considered by some naturalists to be the most scientific hoverer of our British hawks. Certainly he uses with great skill the winds of heaven for his livelihood. He leans upon the moving air, sometimes slipping sideways and losing height, but reassuming poise by quick beats of his chestnut pinions. Our largest hawk, the buzzard, is common in this district by the sea, and with large wings outspread he sails circlewise till his prey is detected, when a slow descent is made to the ground. Often these birds have been observed to hang low over the heather and gorse, motionless, wings arched and bent backwards, for nearly a minute at a time. But the peregrines, so swift and ruthless in flight and habit, out-hover both the kestrel and the buzzard. The hovering of the kestrel is weak, delicately balanced; that of the buzzard clumsily weighty, and only managed in a strong air-current; the peregrine falcon cuts into the gusts, controlling his flight with instant power, unheeding the wind’s vagaries. He can remain still, soar higher, or drift sideways with ease.

The eyrie is a hundred feet down the cliff-face, upon a narrow ledge. For years their young have been taken by the Tiger, a small, wiry man who, descends by a rope attached to a driven crowbar, swings inwards to the ledge, and is hauled to the top with the young falcons in a basket. Yet every year when the celandines come the falcons’ courtship begins, ending only when the scent of the wild thyme fades and the sea-thrift rusts with autumn’s decay. They hunt together, ranging afar. Their stoop is terrible to behold, so swift and shattering its ending. It may be at a rabbit which ventures forth from the holes of the swarded slopes, at a stock-dove beating speedy flight from Lundy Island, or at an immigrant swallow flying from alien wastes to the shore and sanctuary. Nothing is immune from ravage save the larger gulls and the sombre ravens, who croak defiance from their aerial soughing.

The peregrines raid from their base upon the headland to the inland villages, watching for the chance of taking a tame dove from a cot; onwards to the lonely wastes of the sandhills, crowned with spike-grass, where the peewits wail throughout the springtime. They dash up the wide estuary; the ring-plover crouch low among the stones and seaweed as they pass; they even visit Barnstaple itself for the blue-gray pigeons that wheel above its old shipyards. In the skyey loftiness one moment are the hawks, watching and soaring, the male usually the higher; one will close pinions and dive like a dark arrowhead through the air, flattening as a bird is reached; there is a burst of feathers, a triumphant chattering, and the limp victim is borne to the solitudes of the dunes. A week later upon the sand a bleached skeleton will lie, surrounded by a scattered ring of feathers, in company with old bones of rabbits and bead-like shells that tell of ended generations.

The pair rarely separates. Maybe the leading hawk will miss; its mate follows instantly. Sometimes a third striking is attempted. Usually, however, it is not needed, although the course of the dive, once begun, cannot be altered--either the object is missed entirely or secured. In the pools below the cliffs the sea boils, tossing the spray afar. Shags haunt particular rocks, content in the sunlight. The falcons do not molest them, but they may watch the loving couple high in heaven, and so may the gulls that with yelping plaints rise and fall and glide upon the air. Swiftly and with quick wing-beats the peregrines climb, almost vertically, it would appear. Then a sudden speeding at eighty or ninety miles an hour, a downward dash at the rocks, beaks and wings touching; they hiss past the gulls, swoop apart and glide upwards, uttering their sweetly wild mating cries. Nothing matters in the ecstasies of spring. They may pass uncaring within a few yards of a beholder, when he may see the neck and wings, slate-ash in colour, the dark crown and nape, the hooked beak and the barred tail. He may shout and wave his arms in excitement, the ravens croak, the gulls scream, the lone buzzard wail as he circles, but the love-chase continues. On the falcons rush, above the crested waves and the marbled troughs of the ocean, past the crannies and the ledges of the precipice, among the summer cloudlets, over the hills of heather and the slopes of golden gorse, by the mounded sand-dunes and the glistening mud-flats; all the heavenly freeness is theirs to roam. Bold they are, and observe no law, but they hunt openly and in defiance--often cursed by the sporting farmer; and yet all of us are proud of our “pregun forlkns.”

MIDSUMMER NIGHT

(_To G. E. R._)

Against the deep blue of the sky a little money spider was taking a line from one veined ash leaf to another. Although so small, he was easily seen in the waning light, a dark speck moving with great care. It was evening time, and the vesper hymn of warblers and thrushes, pippits and blackbirds, was all but sung.

Throughout the day the great vibrant waves of sunlight were plangent on the cornfields and rushing with golden swell over the bee-visited hedgerows and green meadows, vitalising the slender grasses and red sorrel growing in beauty with branched buttercups and incarnadine poppy flowers. Slowly the day-tide of summer’s light and glory ebbed, the sun swung down from heaven and dipped its lower rim into the ocean. The fields and distant oakwood were laved in yellow light, and like a golden sand gleaming in the western sunlight as the sea recedes, the ebbing tide of sunlight left its pools among the woods and the hedges. Far away some children were singing as they went slowly homewards through the closed buttercups and daisies, and their careless cries were in harmony with the evening.

I sat on a gate and watched the rooks flying over the elm trees in the 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.

Years ago now, in the glamorous time of childhood, this coming of the mist in the morning with its fragrance arising from the earth peculiar to summer’s end--the fumous, clinging smell of a torch--filled me with great sadness. No birds sang in the woods. By the mere, about this time, hundreds of swallows would gather. Restlessly they clung to the sedges and the rushes, whose tips were beginning to brown and make faint whisper in the wind; now flinging themselves into the air, twittering, mounting high, wheeling and slipping, now descending like a shower of iron darts to the border of the lake. Sometimes on my way to school I went to watch them, being caught occasionally as I crept in through an unofficial entrance to the school, and punishment ensued. What use to explain the poignant feelings about autumn and the departure of my beautiful swallows to lands where I could not follow? More important to the boy were his forced learnings than his blundering and unconscious poetry; and the sunlight came through the window, making him miserable. In fancy he was roaming the old hills, or dreaming by the brook; and that was indolence--he would never fit himself for the conflict of a mature life in London by idleness and dreaming. So the little boy was often punished, and frequently occupied the lowest seat of his form.

As the days went on the swallows were more anxious. The cuckoos and the swifts had long since departed. Here and there in the fountain-shaped elms a yellow patch of leaves showed like a spilled plash of water imprisoning a sunbeam. The peggles on the hawthorns were reddening; and waving their pennants in the wind the dry rustling of the sedges came across the water with excited notes of the swallows. As one swept by, low in flight, the deep blue of his wings, their exquisite and soft uplift, the delicacy of the forked tail, were reflected on the surface; with a sighing sound he would pass and his liquid image glide on the mirrored surface below him.

The mornings were chilly, but the vagrants continued to hold their parliament in the rushes. Insect life was on the wane, adventure stirred their little hearts to excitement. Every passing of the wind beckoned a forlorn following of leaves from the trees, a spider seeking hibernation threw a prospecting line of silk against the face. With a tired sound the starred sycamore leaves, each condemned by the black patch of autumn, fluttered to the earth; by listening closely it was possible to hear the stalks break from the twigs. Flittering like chafer-beetles in a dusky summer night the vaned seeds risped and whirled away from the parent trees. As yet the conflagration had not caught the forest, only isolated flames browned a beech tree, scorched the branch of an ash with yellow or made a buff haze in the distant oaks. It seemed as though the funeral pyre of dead summer would blaze in majesty only when the swallows had left.

One afternoon their shriller notes told that the hour was approaching. So eager were they among themselves that I was permitted to approach within a yard of them. I could see their frail claws, and admire the slim outline of their bodies; a melancholy admiration, like that of age with a young heart for youth and beauty that it yearns to share; the swallows were much to me, but I was nothing to them. Suddenly with a rush of wings they swept up, soon to become a smudge against the sky. But the wind was not favourable, or the message anticipated had not arrived, for they returned to the sedges that never ceased to shiver of coming dreariness. The autumnal air was tranquil in its silence and solitude; the wings of gnats dancing their mazy columns assumed in the sunshine a fairy semblance. Over the waters sped the swallows, taking the last banquet, for once the long journey were commenced no halt would be made for food; the thousands of miles over sea and land must be passed without falter, urged and directed by the ancient instinct developed long before Zoroaster came from the plains of Iran with his Magian worship.

The next morning when I went to bid them farewell the lake was deserted. My friends had gone, and I had not said good-bye. During the night a wind had risen, and they had fled before it to the warm south. I prayed that their strength did not fail while the little things were over the cold gray sea. I could do no more. But my heart was heavy.

When the migrants have departed the fires of autumn throw their flames and falling shadows rapidly over the countryside. In the morning moisture drip-drips from the trees, their tops are wraithed in mist, and the jay screams as he lurks among the acorns. Every day the sun describes a lower curve and, red and small, looms through the vapours. But above he is spinning and carding the mist, warmth blows on the cheek as for a moment brightness streams down, and so happiness comes again. Once more the thoughts of desolation are dispelled like the mist, and hope rises anew to the heart. In the murmuring green of spring, the radiant birdsong of summer, it is indeed difficult to be sad. Though all human efforts seem without avail, the song and scent and colour of summer fills the yearning heart and assuages its broken hopes. But in autumn and winter, at least for a long time, no consolation was there anywhere. Underfoot the old paths were beaten into mire by the passing of feet; these were the leaves, each so perfect and veined and shaped, that had opened from buds to the croon of wild cloves and the tap-tap of woodpeckers. Nature seemed to care nothing for the things that were created: the hand that composed so lovingly decomposed as inevitably.

To youth the world seemed bitterly cruel and uncaring, for every form of life--except those idealists, the bees--survived by the death of another form. The declining days with their ebb of warmth killed the million million insects and butterflies whose hum had been so dim and happy in the summer.