One or all of these suggestions may perhaps account for the course followed by the rooks. In any case it seems natural to look for the reason in the trees. The same idea applies to the other stream of rooks which leaves the wood for the eastward every morning, flying along the Downs. In describing the hill district, evidence was given of the existence of woods or forest land upon the Downs in the olden time. Detached copses and small woods are still to be found; and it happens that a part of this district, in the line of the eastward flight, belonged to a ‘chase’ of which several written notices are extant.
The habits of rooks seem more regular in winter than in summer. In winter the flocks going out in the morning or returning in the evening appear to pass nearly at the same hour day after day. But in summer they often stay about late. This last summer I noticed a whole flock, some hundreds in number, remaining out till late – till quite dusk – night after night, and always in the same place. It was an arable field, and there they stood close together on the ground, so close that in spots it was difficult to distinguish individuals. They were silent and still, making no apparent attempt at feeding. The only motion I observed was when a few birds arrived and alighted among them. Where they thus crowded together the earth was literally black.
It was about three-quarters of a mile from their nesting-trees, but nesting had been over for more than two months. This particular field had recently been ploughed by steam tackle, and was the only one for a considerable distance that had been ploughed for some time. There they stood motionless, side by side, as if roosting on the ground; possibly certain beetles were numerous just there (for it was noticeable that they chose the same part of the field evening after evening), and came crawling up out of the earth at night.
The jackdaws which – so soon as the rooks pack after nesting and fly in large flocks – are always with them, may be distinguished by their smaller size and the quicker beats of their wings, even when not uttering their well-known cry. Jackdaws will visit the hencoops if not close to the house, and help themselves to the food meant for the fowls. Poultry are often kept in rickyards, a field or two distant from the homestead, and it is then amusing to watch the impudent attempts of the jackdaws at robbery. Four or five will perch on the post and rails, intent on the tempting morsels: sitting with their heads a little on one side and peering over. Suddenly one thinks he sees an opportunity. Down he hops, and takes a peck, but before he has hardly seized it, a hen darts across, running at him with beak extended like lance in rest. Instantly he is up on the rail again, and the impetus of the hen’s charge carries her right under him.
Then, while her back is turned, down hops a second and helps himself freely. Out rushes another hen, and up goes the jackdaw. A pause ensues for a few minutes: presently a third black rascal dashes right into the midst of the fowls, picks up a morsel, and rises again before they can attack him. The way in which the jackdaw dodges the hens though alighting among them, and as it were for the moment surrounded, is very clever: and it is laughable to see the cool impudence with which he perches again on the rail, and looks down demurely, not a whit abashed, on the feathered housewife he has just been doing his best to rob.
Wind-Anemones – The Fish Pond
First published in the Pall Mall Gazette, 1880
First collected in Round About a Great Estate, 1880
The only spot about the Chace where the wind-anemones grew was in a small detached copse of ash-poles nearly a mile from the great woods. Between the stoles, which were rather far apart, the ground was quite covered in spring with dark-green vegetation, so that it was impossible to walk there without treading down the leaves of bluebells, anemones, and similar woodland plants. But if you wished to see the anemones in their full beauty it was necessary to visit the copse frequently; for if you forgot it, or delayed a fortnight, very likely upon returning you would find that their fleeting loveliness was over. Their slender red stems rise but a few inches, and are surrounded with three leaves; the six white petals of the cup-shaped flower droop a little and have a golden centre. Under the petal is a tinge of purple, which is sometimes faintly visible through it. The leaves are not only three in number, but are each cut deeply thrice; they are hardy, but the flower extremely delicate.
On the banks dividing the copse from the meadows around it the blue dog-violets, which have no perfume, often opened so large and wide as to resemble pansies. They do not appear like this till just as their flowering time is almost over. The meadows by the copse were small, not more than two or three acres each. One which was marshy was white for weeks together with the lady’s-smock or cuckoo-flower. The petals of these flowers are silvery white in some places, in others tinted with lilac. The hues of wild flowers vary with their situation: in shady woodlands the toadflax or butter-and-eggs is often pale – a sulphur colour; upon the Downs it is a deep and beautiful yellow. In a ditch of this marshy meadow was a great bunch of woodruff, above whose green whorls the white flowers were lifted. Over them the brambles arched, their leaves growing in fives, and each leaf prickly. The bramble-shoots, as they touch the ground, take root and rise again, and thus would soon cross a field were they not cut down.
Pheasants were fond of visiting this copse, following the hedgerows to it from the Chace, and they always had one or more nests in it. A green woodpecker took it in his route, though he did not stay long, there not being many trees. These birds seem to have their regular rounds; there are some copses where they are scarcely ever heard. They prefer old trees; where there is much large and decaying timber, there the woodpeckers come. Such little meadows as these about the copse are the favourite resort of birds and the very home of flowers – more so than extensive woods like the Chace, or the open pastures and arable fields. Thick hedgerows attract birds, and behind such cover their motions may be watched. There is, too, more variety of bush and tree.
In one such hedgerow leading from the copse the maple-bushes in spring were hung with the green flowers which, though they depend in their season from so many trees, as the oak, are perhaps rarely observed. The elder-bushes in full white bloom scented the air for yards around both by night and day; the white bloom shows on the darkest evening. Besides several crab-stoles – the buds of the crab might be mistaken for thorns growing pointed at the extreme end of the twigs – there was a large crab tree, which bore a plentiful crop. The lads sharpen their knives by drawing the blade slowly to and fro through a crab-apple; the acid of the fruit eats the steel like aquafortis. They hide stores of these crabs in holes in the hayricks, supposing them to improve by keeping. There, too, they conceal quantities of the apples from the old orchards, for the fruit in them is often almost as hard and not much superior in flavour to the crab. These apples certainly become more mellow after several months in the warm hay.
A wild ‘plum’, or bullace, grew in one place; the plum about twice the size of a sloe, with a bloom upon the skin like the cultivated fruit, but lacking its sweetness. Yet there was a distinct difference of taste: the ‘plum’ had not got the extreme harshness of the sloe. A quantity of dogwood occupied a corner; in summer it bore a pleasing flower; in the autumn, after the black berries appeared upon it, the leaves became a rich bronze colour, and some when the first frosts touched them curled up at the edge and turned crimson. There were two or three guelder-rose bushes – the wild shrub – which were covered in June with white bloom; not in snowy balls like the garden variety, but flat and circular, the florets at the edge of the circle often whitest, and those in the centre greenish. In autumn the slender boughs were weighed down with heavy bunches of large purplish berries, so full of red juice as to appear on the point of bursting. As these soon disappeared they were doubtless eaten by birds.
Besides the hawthorn and briar there were several species of willow – the snake-skin willow, so called because it sheds its bark; the ‘snap-willow’, which is so brittle that every gale breaks off its feeble twigs, and pollards. One of these, hollow and old, had upon its top a crowd of parasit
es. A bramble had taken root there, and hung over the side; a small currant-bush grew freely – both, no doubt, unwittingly planted by birds – and finally the bines of the noxious bitter-sweet or nightshade, starting from the decayed wood, supported themselves among the willow-branches, and in autumn were bright with red berries. Ash-stoles, the buds on whose boughs in spring are hidden under black sheaths; nut-tree stoles, with ever-welcome nuts – always stolen here, but on the Downs, where they are plentiful, staying till they fall; young oak growing up from the butt of a felled tree. On these oak-twigs sometimes, besides the ordinary round galls, there may be found another gall, larger, and formed, as it were, of green scales one above the other.
Where shall we find in the artificial and, to my thinking, tasteless pleasure-grounds of modern houses so beautiful a shrubbery as this old hedgerow? Nor were evergreens wanting, for the ivy grew thickly, and there was one holly-bush – not more, for the soil was not affected by holly. The tall cow-parsnip or ‘gicks’ rose up through the bushes; the great hollow stem of the angelica grew at the edge of the field, on the verge of the grass, but still sheltered by the brambles. Some reeds early in spring thrust up their slender green tubes, tipped with two spear-like leaves. The reed varies in height according to the position in which it grows. If the hedge has been cut it does not reach higher than four or five feet; when it springs from a deep, hollow corner, or with bushes to draw it up, you can hardly touch its tip with your walking-stick. The leaders of the black bryony, lifting themselves above the bushes, and having just there nothing to cling to, twist around each other, and two bines thus find mutual support where one alone would fall of its own weight.
In the watery places the sedges send up their dark flowers, dusted with light yellow pollen, rising above the triangular stem with its narrow, ribbed leaf. The reed-sparrow or bunting sits upon the spray over the ditch with its carex grass and rushes; he is a graceful bird, with a crown of glossy black. Hops climb the ash and hang their clusters, which impart an aromatic scent to the hand that plucks them; broad burdock leaves, which the mouchers put on the top of their baskets to shield their freshly gathered watercresses from the sunshine; creeping avens, with buttercup-like flowers and long stems that straggle across the ditch, and in autumn are tipped with a small ball of soft spines; mints, strong-scented and unmistakable; yarrow, white and sometimes a little lilac, whose flower is perhaps almost the last that the bee visits. In the middle of October I have seen a wild bee on a last stray yarrow.
On the higher and drier bank some few slender square stems of betony, with leaves in pairs like wings, stand up tall and stiff as the summer advances. The labiate purplish flowers are all at the top; each flower is set in the cup by a curve at the lesser end, like a crook; the leaves and stalk are slightly rough, and have an aromatic bitter perfume when crushed. On the flower of a great thistle a moth has alighted, and hidden under its broad wing is a humble-bee, the two happy together and neither interfering with the other. Sometimes a bee will visit the white rose on the briar.
Near the gateway, on the edge of the trodden ground, grows a tall, stout, bushy plant, like a shrub, with pale greyish-green leaves, much lobed and divided: the top of each branch in August is thick with small whitish-green flowers tipped with brown. These, if rubbed in the hand, emit a strong and peculiar scent, with a faint flavour of lavender, and yet quite different. This is the mugwort. Still later on, under the shade of the trees on the mound, there appear bunches of a pale herb, with greenish labiate flowers, and a scent like hops; it is the woodsage, and if tasted the leaf will be found extremely bitter.
In the mornings of autumn the webs of the spiders hang along the hedge bowed a little with dew, like hammocks of gossamer slung from thorn to thorn. Then the hedge-sparrows, perching on the topmost boughs of the hawthorn, cry ‘peep-peep’ mournfully; the heavy dew on the grass beneath arranges itself in two rows of drops along the edges of the blades. From the day when the first leaf appears upon the hardy woodbine, in the early year, to the time when the partridge finds the eggs in the ant-hill, and on again till the last harebell dies, there is always something beautiful or interesting in these great hedgerows. Indeed, it is impossible to exhaust them. I have omitted the wild geranium with its tiny red petals scarce seen in the mass of green, the mosses, the ferns, and have scarcely said a word about the living creatures that haunt it. But then one might begin to write a book about a hedgerow when a boy and find it incomplete in old age.
A much-neglected path led from the park through some fir plantations down to the fish pond. After the first turn of the narrow track the close foliage of the firs, through which nothing could be seen, shut out the world with green walls. The strip of blue sky visible above was wider than the path, because the trees sloped away somewhat, their branches shortening towards the top; still it was so contracted that a passing wood-pigeon was seen but for a second as he went over. Every step carried me into deeper silence – the sudden call of a jay was startling in its harsh contrast. Presently the path widened where the thickly planted firs were succeeded by sycamores, horse-chestnuts, alders, and aspen – trees which stand farther apart, and beneath which some underwood grew. Here there were thickets of hawthorn and bramble and elder bushes which can find no place among firs.
The ground now sloped rapidly down into a hollow, and upon this descent numbers of skeleton leaves were scattered. There was no other spot all over the Chace where they could be seen like this; you might walk for hours and not find one, yet here there were hundreds. Sometimes they covered the ground in layers, several leaves one on the other. In spring violets pushed up through them and bluebells – sweet hope rising over grey decay.
Lower down a large pond almost filled the hollow. It was surrounded on three sides by trees and thickets; on the fourth an irregular margin of marshy grass extended. Floating leaves of weeds covered the surface of the water; these weeds had not been disturbed for years, and there was no check to their growth except their own profusion, for they choked each other. The pond had long ceased to supply fish for the table. Before railways brought the sea so near, such ponds were very useful. At that time almost everything consumed came from the estate itself: the bread, the beef, the mutton, the venison, game, fish, all was supplied by the adjacent woods, the fields, or the water. The lord in old days hunted the deer on his own domain, brought down game with a crossbow or captured it with nets, and fished or netted his own streams and ponds. These great parks and chaces enclosed everything, so that it was within easy reach of his own door. Sometimes the lord and his visitors strolled out to see the fish ponds netted.
This pond had originally been one of a series, but the others had been drained and added to the meadows. It was said to be staked at the bottom to prevent illicit netting; but if so, the stakes by this time were probably rotten or buried in mud formed from the decaying weeds, the fallen leaves, and branches which were gradually closing it up. A few yards from the edge there was a mass of ivy through which a little brown thatch could be distinguished, and on approaching nearer this low roof was found to cover the entrance to a cave. It was an ice-house excavated in the sloping ground or bank, in which, ‘when George the Third was King’, the ice of the ponds had been preserved to cool the owner’s wine in summer. Ice was then a luxury for the rich only; but when so large a supply arrived from America, a supply increased by freezing machines, the ice-house lost its importance. The door, once so jealously closed, was gone, and the dead leaves of last year had gathered in corners where the winds had whirled them.
The heat of a warm June day seemed still more powerful in this hollow. The sedges, into which two or three moorhens had retired at my approach, were still, and the leaves on the boughs overhanging the water were motionless. Where there was a space free from weeds – a deeper hole near the bank – a jack basked at the surface in the sunshine. High above on the hill stood a tall dead fir, from whose trunk the bark was falling; it had but one branch, which stood out bare and stark across the sky. The
re came a sound like distant thunder, but there were no clouds overhead, and it was not possible to see far round. Pushing gently through the hawthorn bushes and ash-stoles at the farther end of the pond, I found a pleasant little stream rushing swiftly over a clear chalky bottom, hastening away down to the larger brook.
Beyond it rose a mound and hedgerow, up to which came the meadows, where, from the noise, the cattle seemed racing to and fro, teased by insects. Tiny black flies alighting on my hands and face, irritated the skin; the haymakers call them ‘thunder-flies’; but the murmur of the running water was so delicious that I sat down on a bulging tree-root, almost over the stream, and listened to the thrushes singing. Had it been merely warm they would have been silent. They do not sing in dry sunshine, but they knew what was coming; so that there is no note so hated by the haymaker as that of the thrush. The birds were not in the firs, but in the ash-trees along the course of the rill.
The voice of the thrush is the most ‘cultivated’, so to speak, of all our birds: the trills, the runs, the variations, are so numerous and contrasted. Not even the nightingale can equal it: the nightingale has not nearly such command: the thrush seems to know no limit. I own I love the blackbird best, but in excellence of varied music the thrush surpasses all. Few birds, except those that are formed for swimming, come to a still pond. They like a clear running stream; they visit the sweet running water for drinking and bathing. Dreaming away the time, listening to the rush of the water bubbling about the stones, I did not notice that the sky had become overcast, till suddenly a clap of thunder near at hand awakened me. Some heavy drops of rain fell; I looked up and saw the dead branch of the fir on the hill stretched out like a withered arm across a black cloud.
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