THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESENTED BY PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND BY EDWIN LESTER ARNOLD AUTHOR OF "ON THE INDIAN HILLS," "A SUMMER HOLIDAY IN SCANDINAVIA, "COFFEE PLANTING IN INDIA," ETC. Honfcon CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADlCCF 1887 [The right of translation is reserved Lib, TO MY FATHER, MY COUNSELLOR AND COMPANION IN HOURS BOTH OF WORK AND PLAY, I GRATEFULLY DEDICATE ALL THAT IS LEAST UNWORTHY IX THESE PAGES. INTRODUCTION. IN these pages I have attempted to give a somewhat uncon- ventional view of bird life in England and her sister kingdoms to north and west. The naturalist may smile at a monograph so incomplete as this, but in Yarrel, Morris, Gould, Grey, and a score of others, he will find exhaustive authors who have gone with infinite care and pains through the whole list of British birds and epitomized each. No attempt of this sort has been made here. There are, to begin with, more than three hundred birds nesting with greater or lesser frequency in our islands, and even at such modest allotment as two pages to each, we should have at once a bulky volume of six hundred pages. But the greater part of these wild fowl of meadow and marsh are the curator's birds alone, and lovers of country side and the life of copse and dingle can only hope to meet with but a very much reduced selection from the formidable list which professors and students have put together. It is of these birds, the more familiar ones, I write. Nor, though loving the gun and a long day in the open over heather or rushes, illogical as it may seem to the viii INTRODUCTION. uninitiated, as much as I love the birds themselves, do I pretend this volume to be any rival to Colonel Hawker's immortal "Hints to Young Sportsmen," Daniel's com- prehensive "Rural Sports," Folkard's " Wildfowler," Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey's chatty reminiscences of Irish sport, or any of some hundred volumes which authors reputable with gun and pen have given to the world. For such treatises I have neither time nor inclination. Personally, it is my opinion that not very much real learning for our guidance in the field is to be picked up in the hard and fast instruction of type. A single season's successes and disappointments in the open, with a trusty weapon and a faithful dog at heel, will teach more about sport and wild birds than a year's rummaging in the home library and patient perusal of authors who never know an empty day or draw a cover blank. What judicious books can do is to foster a love for those outdoor exercises which in turn foster that spirit of resolution and patience, and strength of wind and limb, which is one of the happiest distinctions of Englishmen. Who is there that has not read St. John's wonderful descriptions of wild fowl clamouring at night in the shallows of Scotch salt-water lochs without ardently desiring himself to hear those motley multitudes feeding in with the tide, and to learn to distinguish their infinitely varied voices a language in itself ! Or, who is there who has not burned to stalk a " muckle hart " in highland fastnesses after a dip into the seductive pages of Scrope or William Black ? At best, however, our sporting authors can only teach us INTRODUCTION. i* technicalities and nourish a love of out-o'-door life, all else we must learn for ourselves. Nature is the only professor to her own great lore of land and water ; her lectures must be attended personally, and in her own open-air class- rooms. Such sketches of English shooting as I have included are suggestive rather than exhaustive outlines of the phases of sport they touch upon ; if there is much in them that is unorthodox, it is just in that I take special pride. For some of the worst results of British game preserving every naturalist must have an utter abhorrence. I would as soon sit on a woodside gate for an hour of a summer evening waiting with a "rook" rifle ready at hand for a rabbit feeding out with the twilight from the hazels, as " grass " a hamper of pheasants outside any Midland autumn coppice. These notes should be acceptable also to the practical agriculturist of to-day, who is surely now wiser than his ancestors were, and willing to lighten and enliven his some- what monotonous work by observation of, and a kindly feeling for, the birds with which his vocation brings him in constant contact. It is thus I have amused myself, indeed, for lonely months and years when all other recreation was hard to come at ; and these observations on bird migration, habits, and whims, have made pleasant in all weathers the monotony of Suffolk stubbles, the wild grass moorlands the Hampshire herdsmen love, and the bleak highland straths, purple in summer and white and cheerless in winter ! Country gentlemen within the last twenty years have x INTRODUCTION. greatly increased their interest in and ,' knowledge of ornithology. There is no reason why this useful, even important, knowledge should not descend to landholders in every degree, and then a good time for the bird will be at hand. The notes I have collected on the arts of trapping and snaring are very curious and far spread. For permission to reproduce many of them I must thank our leading sporting papers, The Field, The Sporting and Dramatic News, Land and Water, Bell's Life, and others, to whom also I owe many and sincere thanks for the indulgence with which they have treated my frequent trespassings on their space. A chapter on grouse moors and deer forests has been kindly supplied by J. W. Brodie Innes, Esq., Barrister-at- law. June, 1887. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. HAWKS AND OWLS ... ... ... ... ... 1 II. FINCHES ... ... ... ... ... 20 III. CHOWS . 52 IV. MAESH BIBDS ... ... ... ... ... 74 V. GROUSE ... ... ... ... ... ... 98 VI. PARTRIDGES AND PHEASANTS ... ... ... 146 VII. PIGEONS 181 VIII. DUCKS 195 IX. SEA FOWL ... ... ... ... ... ... 221 X. QUILLS AND FEATHERS ... ... ... ... 233 XL GROUSE MOORS AND DEER FORESTS ... ... ... 248 XII. GAME LAWS ABROAD 273 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND, CHAPTER I. HAWKS AND OWLS. THEIR USE AND MISUSE. THOSE tyrants of the middle air, the falcons and their kind, may boast of as much antiquity or as remote a genealogy as any birds we know of. Over the portals of Assyrian temples we recognize the familiar hooked beak and commanding wings, and upon mummy cases of Egyptian princesses who breathed when the world was six thousand years younger than it is now the hawk comes out again aggressive and predominant. In their relation to mankind they have played many parts. There is first of all this typification and poetic emblemism, springing from their keen vision, matchless flight, and fierce ^courage. This placed the eagle at Jove's footstool, and suggested him as a fitting bird to ride upon the standards of ancient Rome round the world. Even to-day, our great republics have this imperious and regal bird as their token. Strange anomaly which perches this autocrat and tyrant of his kind upon the banners of "universal equality!" As for the poets, it is difficult to say what would have happened had they been unable to 2 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. draw metaphor and simile from these many-virtued wild fowl; and half our best families, half the best families in Europe, have a hawk of one kind or another for their crest. This suggests the second count upon which the kind have proved useful to men, that, namely, wherein they have been associated with him in the pursuit of game another link of much antiquity. The kings of Babylon and Nineveh no doubt knew some- thing of hawking, while the science is also of immeasurable antiquity in China and amongst the wild tribes of Central Asia. With the Normans and their conquest the art was brought to a fine, chivalrous perfection in this country ; franklin and baron maintaining their own falconers and mews, while troubadours filled ballad and ditty with allusions to "gay goshawks," "gentle faucons," or their kindred. Then, we take it, it was a good time for all the race, as much in fashion as their quarry, the pheasants, partridges, and grouse are to-day. Next to heraldry, falconry ranked in esteem under Nor- mans and those who followed them. Only certain kinds of birds might be kept by certain subjects. For kings there was the ger-falcon ; for princes, the falcon-gentle, or tercel- gentle ; dukes had the rock-falcon, and earls the peregrine ; a baron might use the bastard-falcon, and a knight the sacre and sacret ; esquires, harrier or lanneret ; a lady, the merlin ; "young men " had the hobby, and yeomen the goshawk; the tercel was for a poor man, and sparrow-hawk for a priest ; " the musket for a holy- water clerk, and kestrel for a knave." This baronial hawking must have been pleasant enough sport then, when the Thames ran through eternal groves of oak and hazel, and the Severn shone in sunlight through far-stretching birch coppices ; while the Midland and Western counties, with their great fen lands and open downs, sup- plied ample preserves for the wild-fowl to fly the falcons at. But to-day hawking is in abeyance the pastime of a wise few who are, moreover, fortunate enough to live where it can HAWKS AND OWLS. be practised, on the borders of wide Hampshire downs, or vast fenceless pastures of such counties as Northamptonshire and the wolds beyond the Humber. Abroad, in India or elsewhere, it might well be followed more keenly than it is. The economical value of vultures and kites as scavengers or removers of " matter in the wrong place," is a considera- tion of very little weight to the Englishman of to-day. He leaves it to his Commissioners of Sewers, and they leave it to the noble river that stinks through his capital; so the vultures are not wanted ! Abroad they are invaluable in this respect, and lesser hawks keep lizards, snakes, and frogs within due limits of reproductiveness. Almost the only interest attaching to hawks at the present time is with regard to game and game preserving. What a debt of ill-will should the falcons owe to this com- paratively new hobby that has been their ruin ! We can imagine a kite, in days when kites were common, wheeling in easy circles over the open courtyard of some British^ Roman villa, located on the pleasant south coast or Isle of Wight, and watching with prophetic wonder the praetorian's black-eyed children feeding and teasing a pair of pheasants, two of the few, or even the very first in the island. How well justified might have seemed the kite's harsh laugh as he took another turn in the blue to glance again at the fresh importations and calculate on the chances of a successful swoop through the open corridors ! Who could have fancied those brilliant but defenceless birds with the ostentatious length of tail would sweep the enemy overhead from Saxon skies, making a kite a few hundred years subsequently a rarer sight than they were that day themselves ? Yet so it has turned out, to the chagrin of naturalists, and almost the whole hierarchy of the air has gone with the gledes. I would like to suggest in these pages (and all our most recent information tends to justify us) that in many cases where hawks are ruthlessly persecuted their destruction is absolutely unnecessary, the despotic barbarity of ignorant 4 BIED LIFE IN ENGLAND. gamekeepers and the like ; whilst in those cases where a taste for game unquestionably characterizes birds of prey our advice would be to strictly limit but not to eradicate the species. After the kites our two remaining birds of prey, the lords of their kind, have already reached a Nirvana of well- deserved protection. The golden eagle is already sacred in the Highlands, while, as far as the osprey is concerned, most lairds would rather lose their favourite piper than the gallant fish-hawk honouring the lonely mountain tarns or beetling sea cliffs by making them its home. Next to them, in the aristocracy of bulk, is the pere- grine falcon. In approaching him I feel all the doubt of the pleader who has an admirable and indomitable brigand (a pirate, perhaps, would better fit the character of this ocean-loving hawk) for a client. Perhaps the only safe course to take is to throw ourselves on the mercy of the court, to plead the picturesqueness, the gallantry, and the patriotism of the peregrine ! That he likes game when game is handy I cannot honestly deny. Fixing their home on the higher peaks of some wild and lonely mountain range in the North of England or Scotland, a pair will make their eyrie where the gnarled trunk and contorted branches of a birch or spruce jut out from the cliffs, inaccessible alike from above or below, and there they cater for their noisy young with a reckless disdain of tenant's rights and the lord of the manor, which we acknowledge is shocking. There, perched on a vantage-point of rock or storm-broken timber, the peregrine will sit in the sunlight for an hour at a time watching the heather or the glades in the hazel coppices far below for grouse sunning themselves or young rabbits coining out to play. It is surely worth the price of a moor- cock or two, and an occasional leveret to watch this peerless falcon's habits, to see his irresistible and unerring swoop that rarely fails to lay a victim low, and the graceful rise which follows and saves him from such certain destruction as his drop seemed to court. - HAWKS AND OWLS. 5 Or if lie is away from his own nesting- place, and owns no watch-tower on the crags, the peregrine will scour the heather and search the higher glens with an eagerness it is curious to watch. But his distinctive and peculiar process is the calm watch from an elevated spot until a victim is espied, and then a single impetuous rush. The gulls who go up to moorlands to breed are occasionally harried by him, wild ducks and waterfowl suffering too. So deadly is the onslaught of this hawk, whose flight has been calculated to. reach the figure of one hundred and twenty miles an hour, that a tiercel has been known to strike the head clean off a mallard at a single "souse," and has driven a partridge so fiercely to the ground by the shock of the encounter, that the bird has rebounded the height of a man. I have called this wonderfully graceful bird patriotic,, and he stays with us all the year round, but in the spring our indigenous peregrines are greatly augmented by arrivals from abroad. Old Belon, two hundred years ago, gives a curious account of the incredible armies of hawks and kites which he saw in the spring crossing the Thracian Bosphorus from Asia to Europe, a procession swelled by whole troops of eagles and vultures ; and from Syria and Africa come many of the birds that are with us all the summer, to the delight of naturalists. Upon the sea coast, where the peregrine is generally found now, he does no manner of harm, contenting himself with the ample booty sea-ledges or puffin-haunted caves afford. When a pair have once selected such a fastness over- looking blue water, they and their descendants will occupy the same eyrie year after year. When falconry was at the height of its popularity, these breeding-places were all known and jealously guarded. The site of a nest was placed under especial care of the occupier of land adjoining, and they were responsible by terms of tenure for the noble birds and their offspring. The loss of a right hand was the penalty for molesting breeding birds. 6 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. Such hereditary nests there have been at Goathland in Yorkshire, and Killing Nab Scar, while " Falcon Scar," " Hawk Scar," " Eagle Cliff " and such local names no doubt mark other localities. The peregrine likes to strike his prey in fair fight. The following curious story lays stress upon this peculiarity. " Whilst out shooting with two companions one day in January, in the county of Cork, we saw," writes a sportsman, " in the midst of a sixty-acre pasture a curious conflict going on between a peregrine and what we at first supposed to be a smaller hawk, but which subsequently proved to be a woodcock, a considerable number of which birds had been driven from the coverts by the late heavy rains into the surrounding turnip fields. As the pair seemed to be coming towards us we concealed ourselves, in hopes of getting a shot, behind a bank and hedge whence we could see the whole performance. The woodcock flew close to the ground until the hawk struck at him, when, avoiding the stoop by a. sharp turn, he invariably pitched on the ground until the hawk had passed ; then rising pursued his flight in the direction of a thick covet about five hundred yards distant, until again obliged to pitch in order to avoid a second attack. This continued until both came within fifty yards of the bank behind which we were concealed. Here the hawk " struck " several times at the woodcock whilst on the ground, wheeling round after each " stoop " to try again. Upon this the woodcock never attempted to fly, and we could plainly see his tactics. He was evidently tired, and, sitting well back on his tail, he presented his long bill against every onslaught of his enemy, and afforded us the strange spectacle of a woodcock by nature a very timid bird successfully defending himself from the attacks of a large hawk. The hawk, either fearing impalement, or, as is the habit of his species, not liking to strike his prey when on the ground, avoided coming to close quarters, and always turned aside when about a foot from the woodcock. After one of these HAWKS AND OWLS. 7 " swoops " he wheeled a little further off than before, and of this the woodcock took immediate advantage ; for, twisting over the bank and hedge, he got a good start and went at his best pace towards the covert, now about three hundred yards distant. He passed close to us, but in our anxiety to get the hawk we refrained from shooting him. The pere- grine at once mounted high, but out of shot, and pursued his quarry, now half-way to his haven and going at a much greater rate than I ever thought a woodcock capable of. The hawk gained visibly, but finally the woodcock darted into the thick covert a few yards ahead of his pursuer, who did not follow him. I now thought the cock would fall an easy victim to the gun, but not so ; for, getting up very wild, he made his escape after all without being fired at." Truly a hard-fought day for the woodcock ! Closely resembling the larger falcon is the common buzzard ; but there is one certain way to distinguish them. While the peregrine's neck is marked by a boldly contrasted black and white collar, that of the buzzard is shaded off between the two predominant body colours. Both birds are dark above and light below. In character, however, they are very different. This latter hawk, the "puttock" of Essex hinds, is, to tell the truth, somewhat a sluggard in habits. It is even suggested by Johnson in his Dictionary " buzzard " carries some indignity with it, and Milton uses the word as equivalent to stupidity. Morris in his " British Birds " has reason on his side, however, in refusing to accept such views. Bewick, one of its earliest detractors, declares the puttock is no match for a sparrowhawk, but Bewick was unquestionably misled in this matter. More a bird of the high woods than the cliff face or sea shore, no doubt it often takes to a rocky ledge or cleft in a " scar," but for the most part the nest is found, or rather was once found, in high beech trees and the like, on knolls and hillocks, in such broad and ample forests as those of Hampshire or Yorkshire. From these and similar districts 8 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. there is no possible reason why the beautiful plumage and startling cry of this hawk should be any longer banished. I am inclined to think that the species of prey most naturally sought after is the rabbit. It feeds, however, for necessity has no law, upon a great variety of other food. It destroys numberless moles of which it seems particularly fond, as well as field-mice, leverets, rats, snakes, frogs, toads, the young of game and many birds, worms, insects and newts. " The way in which the buzzard procures moles is, it is said, by watching patiently by their haunts until the moving of the earth caused by the subterraneous burrowings, points out to him their exact locality, and the knowledge thus acquired he immediately takes advantage of to their destruction. His feet, legs, and bill being often found covered with earth or mud is in this manner accounted for." These two hawks have often roused the ire of highland and lowland keepers respectively, but we have mentioned them somewhat at length because they are amongst the commonest (if the expression may be used) of our rarer hawks. Others of their family are hardly ever seen. The red-footed falcon is a very rare visitor indeed ; the goshawk keeps himself wisely to the fastnesses of the Orkneys, where he might well be allowed to take his toll of mountain hares and rabbits. The honey buzzard is almost as rare since the villainous greed of collectors ransacked the New Forest and other breed- ing grounds for eggs or young " in the down." The marsh harrier is far less common than it was, though its diet affords no justification for its destruction. " It feeds itself and nestlings," says Atkinson, "with young water birds as its name suggests. Young water birds may be found in its haunts, or young rabbits or birds, a few mice or rats doubt- less being not altogether unworthy of notice to such hungry customers as four young harpies." The hen harrier, the blue hawk, is a shade worse in the game preserver's eyes. Not very long ago I was resting HAWKS AND OWLS. 9 under a blackthorn bush on a lonely plateau on the Cotswold Hills when a hare came cantering along the top of a stone wall, and in close attendance was an old male harrier looking brilliantly blue in the sunlight,, who swept backwards and forwards, occasionally stooping at the hare, a full grown one, in a way that made him wince with fear, but never, so far as I could see, actually striking him. A worse place for repelling attacks of a hawk than a stone " dyke " we should hardly think there could be, yet the hare ambled by within a few yards, " dodging every time the falcon's wings touched him, until at last they were lost in a- hollow, and though I followed at my best pace I never saw how the fray ended." There can be little doubt but that although game is not its chief food the hen harrier will tackle anything not too manifestly beyond its powers. Sparrowhawks and kestrels hold their own in spite of all keepers can do. This is partly, perhaps, owing to the fact that they are not regarded as quite so harmful to game as some of the larger species, and also because they breed as often as not in out of the way places, ivy-covered cliffs, ruined towers, and the like, where they do not come conspicuously under game-rearers' attention. Unquestionably the commonest of all our British hawks, and with little doubt the most useful, the kestrel, a hawk of no repute in the old days, is perhaps more numerous in our shires than all his kindred put together. Round by the South Foreland and the white Dover cliffs we find them in abundance, hunting mice and small birds just above high water mark. There are plenty, too, all down the valley of the Thames, and especially wherever there are scarps over- hung with hazel or disused quarries. The bird -does practi- cally no harm to game. It is almost wholly a fur-hunting hawk, and the farmer who suffers them to be destroyed deserves to be overrun with field mice, and to kill something like a thousand in a day's wheat thrashing, as I have known to happen where kestrels have been abolished. Small birds 10 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. of all sorts, beetles, and no doubt other kindred foods, such as worms, slugs, and even frogs perhaps, form this useful red hawk's food. I cordially commend him to an enlightened forbearance ! Nor can the sparrowhawk that nemesis of the finches be considered very destructive to partridge or grouse. He is that dark-coloured bird we see beating the marsh lands, or mobbed by crows and sparrows as he flies guiltily from wood to wood. Twice a-year when hedges are thick with migrants he debouches himself and feeds licentiously on whatever he will, and for the rest of the time subsists variously on the changing small birds of the seasons. He is not popular in the chicken- yard. " A neighbouring gentleman," writes Gilbert White, "one summer had lost many of his chickens by a sparrowhawk, that came gliding down by a faggot pile and the end of his house to the place where the coops stood. The owner, inwardly vexed to see his brood thus diminishing, hung a setting-net adroitly between the pile and the house, into which the caitiff dashed and was entangled. Resentment suggested the law of retaliation ; he therefore clipped the hawk's wings, cut off his talons, and, fixing a cork on his bill, threw him down amongst the brood hens. Imagination cannot paint the scene that ensued. The expressions that fear, rage, and revenge supplied were new, or, at least, such as had been unnoticed before. The exasperated matrons upbraided, they execrated, they insulted, they triumphed. In a word, they never desisted from buffeting their adversary till they had torn him in a hundred pieces." Maternal feelings, I have observed, are always extravagant. As for those admirable birds, the hawks of the night time, their continual persecution is wanton and reckless. One correspondent thinks that since " the regular destruction of owls by gamekeepers and 'others, it is a notorious fact that field mice have increased to an enormous extent, so much so as in many instances to do incalculable injury to the ground HAWKS AND OWLS. 11 crops. As an instance of the good the barn owl does in the destruction of these depredators, I will mention that on an evening during the summer I was enjoying a pipe with a farmer friend of mine, sitting near an old barn, wherein a pair of owls were then rearing their young. My attention was especially attracted to them by observing their frequent arrival, with a mouse on each occasion grasped firmly in the claw. The supper of the young family that evening consisted, to my knowledge, of seventeen mice. Can any stronger plea for the protection of this grand old English bird be urged ? " And another observes of a kindred bird, the brown owl : "As an instance of the rat-destroying propensities of the brown owl, a keeper, in the employ of a large landed proprietor in an English shire, found at the entrance of a rabbit's burrow a dead rat for thirteen consecutive mornings. This burrow last summer was occupied by a pair of brown owls for breeding purposes, and they then had young ones. We can scarcely suppose that these thirteen rats were the only ones destroyed during the thirteen days ; but if they were, surely an occasional leveret or other game is but a small compensation for the benefits conferred by the destruction of a rat a day. Brown owls will now be protected on this estate by the gamekeepers. May this good example be followed by others ! " Groom Napier, a first-class authority, tells us of the long- eared owl, " the food of this species in April I have ascer- tained to be beetles, bats, and mice. " Barn owl. Two owls contained dormice, water rats, and bats. Three contained field mice and beetles. " Tawny owl. Two of these birds contained bats, but in one other case a young rabbit and two mice were taken from a stomach. " The white owl is rather destructive to the young rabbits of Abbotsleigh Down, Hunts. But we may place all the owls, on the whole, as A 1 among the farmer's friends." 12 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. His subsequent and careful investigations have more than carried out these first examinations. The whole of our ten species of owls, most of them rare and all scarcer than thej should be, deserve protection. "No other bird exceeds them . in service to man, silent unobtrusive service, and we have very few birds in Britain to compare with them in beauty of plumage." The " gamekeeper's tree," or the old-fashioned barn-door, are always shocking sights to an ornithologist who appre- ciates the labours of the feathered kind, and recognizes their multitudinous usefulnesses, but they never touch his feelings so deeply with their array of nailed up victims as when he notices the owls there, and knows how unjustly Ascalaphos and Nyctimene have died. I look forward to a better time for both the hawks of the day and those of the night. The sportsman avenges on birds of prey of all kind his real or fancied injuries by the severe judgment of the gun, but where falcons are needed for training to the delightful sport, not yet quite extinct in many parts of the globe, resource must needs be had to other and ingenious methods. A bait of some sort, either a living or a dead bird, is always essential. The hawk, unlike many of his weaker brethren, is not to be allured by his vanity, credulity, amativeness, or simple gullibility ; it is hunger alone that will bring him from the clouds to the netsman's toils. The mode of capturing falcons amongst the Arabs of Syria, for instance^ is as follows. Supposing the Arab to have noted some particular place in which hawks abound, such as ruins or rocky places, he provides himself with a pigeon or partridge, or any bird that they may be fond of. Fastened round its body is a very fine net, and when the sportsman has placed his decoy in some convenient spot, it is not long before its struggles attract the attention of some wandering bird of prey which swoops down upon it and is* entangled in the net. The captor, who has been hiding HAWKS AND OWLS. 13 near, then rushes out, and seizing the victim places a hood on its head, after which he carries it about with perfect safety on his shoulder. As long as deprived of sight it will make no attempt to escape ; and when after some months of careful and skilful training it is flown again at game, it exhibits the greatest fondness for and faithfulness to its captor. Hawks are caught in an ingenious but cruel manner in the Deccan. A stick, about a foot in length, is thickly- daubed with bird-lime, and some small bird, generally a dove, is tied to its centre. When the hawk is seen the unhappy captive has its eyes sewed up to make it soar, and is released. The enemy pounces upon it ; its wings strike the limed twig and it falls to the ground. Hawking in India is not practised to anything like the extent it might be. A cast of falcons should be in the compound of every Englishman's bungalow, and there is ample scope for the spread of a delightful pastime in many of the Indian stations where other sport is distant or hard to obtain. Natives take kindly to the amusement, and become good falconers. This is the manner in which one native "mew's man," purveyed his hawk's daily food. " Having distilled some extraordinarily sticky brown- coloured bird-lime, called * goolur,' from juice of the burr, or great Indian fig-tree, he would endue with this adhesive compound the end of a long thin stick, exactly resembling a full-sized fishing-rod. With this weapon over his shoulder Mahomed would go forth till he met with some sparrows chattering on the eaves of a low-tiled roof. At once he would hold the rod so as to be fore-shortened towards them, and then, having got within range, he made a sudden lunge, when one or more unfortunates would infallibly be seen adhering to the end of the stick. These were removed without being killed, and their heads inserted between his fingers, with their bodies outward, till his hands looked as though he had large boxing gloves on. I learnt how to do this myself well enough to catch birds out of the hedges, 14 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. but I never acquired sufficient accuracy to work amongst the roofs, where an error of half an inch would be destruction to the wand a valuable weapon, and one difficult to replace." Our own kestrel at home is such a terrible enemy to the professional bird-catcher, pouncing down and carrying off his trained decoy birds, that the following trap has to be frequently used against him. A white napkin to attract the hawk while in the air, is spread upon the ground and fastened down at the corners with little sticks. In the centre of this is a small peg to which a live sparrow is secured with a few inches of string. Slender twigs are then placed all round the napkin, so as to prevent the hawk from attacking the decoy from any position but above. Two long and slender limed willow twigs are then lightly fixed in the ground, one at each end of the cloth, so as to form an arch over the sparrow. When the kestrel strikes down at the sparrow his wings touch and stick to these limed twigs, and as they at once fall from their positions, he rolls helplessly over and over. Sparrowhawks are also taken very often in this way, but more commonly among lesser varieties in the famous but seldom described " square net," which is thus mentioned by Sir John Sebright : "A net, eight feet in depth, and of sufficient length to enclose a square of nine feet, is suspended by means of upright stakes, into which transverse notches are made, and on which notches the meshes of the net are loosely placed, so that as soon as a hawk strikes against it the net readily disengages itself and falls. The square enclosure is open above, and within it a living bird, usually a pigeon, is fastened as a bait. The colour of the net should assimilate as much as may be with surrounding objects, and the material should be a fine silk. The merlin, the hobby, and the sparrowhawk, may be taken in this way ; but the larger varieties, viz. gere-falcon, peregrine, and goshawk, are seldom to be thus trapped, and must be captured either by the bow-net, or the hand-net." The yearly migration of HAWKS AND OWLS. 15 hawks in Austria and elsewhere gives much opportunity for the use of such snares, and quite a trade is carried on in live falcons, or in their heads, for which antiquated municipal laws offer a premium to the conscienceless pothunter ! Sometimes these passage hawks are taken by huge hand- nets, similar in principle to the landing-nets used in fishing, but very much larger. With these the hawk is caught by the falconer, who is concealed near a pigeon tied by a string to his hand, and suffered occasionally to fly a short distance. The bird attracts the hawk, who makes a swoop, and is dexterously caught by the falconer while its attention is thus fully engaged. But one of the most successful nets in use, the bow net, has only been mentioned in two or three works, though there has been much curiosity on the subject. The method and working is so clearly given in one of Beeton's excellent little handbooks, I am tempted to reproduce it here. " Lanius excubitor is the bloodthirsty shrike's classic appellation. Excubitor, or sentinel, applies to the bird's vigilance in watching that no other bird, savage as himself, approaches its nest. Falconers take advantage of this peculiarity of the shrike to make him useful in the practice of snaring hawks. Towards the end of the year, in October and November, the hawks are on their passage to the southern and warmer climes of Europe ; and at this season the falconer can secure the most birds. He builds a low turf hut in the open country, with a small opening on one side ; at about a hundred yards distance from this hut, a pigeon (usually a light- coloured one, to attract the hawk while soaring high in the air) is placed in a hole in the ground, which is covered with turf, and a string is attached to it, reaching to the hut. Another pigeon is placed in a like position on the opposite side, at the same distance from the hut. At a dozen yards from each pigeon a small bow-net is fastened to the ground, which is so arranged that the falconer can pull it over, by a small piece of iron attached to the net, and leading to the hut. The string by which the pigeon 16 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. is held passes through a hole in a piece of wood driven into the ground, in the centre of a bow-net. The falconer has also a decoy-pigeon, in a string at a little distance from the hut, and half-a-dozen tame pigeons are placed on the outside of the hut, which, on the sight of a hawk, immediately take shelter within. The next, and most important adjunct in the business, is the butcher-bird. He is placed on a hillock of turf at a short distance from the hut, and is fastened by a leather thong. The falconer, however, does not sacrifice the life of his servant, but humanely makes a little hole in the turf, into which the bird can escape when it chooses. Having thus everything prepared, the falconer has nothing to do but to sit in the hut, and watch the motions of the grey shrike. Habit has sharpened the sight of this little bird, and he descries his natural enemy long before the falconer would be able to see it. At first, if a hawk is approaching, the shrike exhibits a certain uneasiness, a drawing-in of the feathers, and a fixed gaze in one direction, the meaning of which the falconer knows well. Even when the hawk is at the distance of three or four hundred yards, the butcher-bird will scream with fear, and retreat into the hole in the turf. The falconer then prepares his decoy, and draws out the pigeons where the bow-nets are placed, which, by fluttering round, soon attract the hawk, who swoops at them, and is caught in the snare. Not only does the butcher- bird give its master warning of the approach of the hawk, but lets him know the species by the greater or lesser degree of alarm which it exhibits." That magnificent vulture of South America, the great condor of the Andes, is not exactly the kind of game that would appear to lend itself most readily to the trapper's art. " Two of these birds will attack a cow or llama and kill it with their terrible beaks and claws," says the Rev. J. Or. Wood, and, added to this strength and prowess, there is its unparalleled power of flight, which enables it to hunt the preserves of half-a-dozen states, cross vast, wild mountain HAWKS AND OWLS. 17 ranges in search of a new meal, or hang suspended on the watch for prey at a height when even its monstrous expanse of wing is reduced to an. almost invisible point. Yet carrion and " a naked savage " bring this monarch amongst birds to grief. They are taken alive by the Mexican Indians and half-breeds in a manner which, though simple in itself, requires both nerve and strength in the trapper. The sole apparatus consists of a newly flayed skin of cow or buffalo. This the Indian places on the ground hair downwards on some bare spot, and then, crawling underneath, turns over on his back and waits. In a short time a condor comes overhead, wheels round and descends on the hide. Immedi- ately his talons touch the skin the Indian seizes the legs, and, starting up, overwhelms the bird and binds him with thongs kept ready ; a process, however, which usually meets with a very stubborn resistance. It is just this weakness for rank flesh that is the betrayal of all vulture kind. All through the East it seems as though Nature had kept especially in mind the scavengering duties of these her too hideous children, and meat with that gameyness which is produced by a few days' exposure to a tropical sun is an irresistible attraction to them. The Andes type is no better. The wandering tribes take it by placing a dead horse in an advanced state of nnsavouriness within a high wattle enclosure, and noosing the glutted birds when they have fed too freely to rise. And in much the same way, according to Tschudi, in one of the Papuan provinces there exists a deep natural funnel-shaped cavity in the side of a certain valley. This is utilized by the Indian as a ready-made trap for capturing condors. They place a dead horse or mule on the brick of this hollow, and the pecking and tugging of the giant birds presently roll it down the declivity. The birds follow, and being heavy and gorged, are unable to ascend again, clubs and stones finishing off the disgusting revellers to the last one. Mr. Willard Schultz, writing to the American Forest and Stream, gives a curious picture of the superstitions attendant c 18 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. on the procuring of eagle plumes for the head-dresses and robes of " braves." He says : " Another ingenious method of hunting, practised by the Blackfeet Indians of North America was the Pis-tsis-tse'-kay for catching eagles. Perhaps of all the articles used for personal adornment eagle feathers were the most highly prized. They were not only used to decorate head-dresses, garments, and shields, but they were held as a standard of value. A few lodges of people in need of eagle feathers would leave the main camp and move up close to the foothills, where eagles are generally more numerous than out on the prairie. Having arrived at a good locality, each man selected a little knoll or hill, and with a stone knife and such other rude implements as he pos- sessed dug a pit in the top of it large enough for him to lie in. Within arm's length of the mouth of the pit he securely pegged a wolf skin to the ground, which had previously been stuffed with grass to make it look as life-like as possible. Then, cutting a slit in its side, he inserted a large piece of tough bull meat and daubed the hair about the slit with blood and liver. In the evening, when all had returned to camp, an eagle dance was held, in which every one partici- pated. Eagle songs were sung, whistles made of eagle wing- bones were blown, and the ' medicine men ' prayed earnestly for success. The next morning the men arose before day- light, and smoked two pipes to the sun. Then each one told his wives and all the women of his family not to go out or look out of the lodge until he returned, and not to use an awl or needle at any kind of work, for if they did the eagles would surely scratch him, but to sing the eagle songs and pray for his good success. Then, without eating anything, each 'man took a human skull and repaired to his pit. Depositing the skull in one end of it, he carefully covered the mouth over with slender willows and grass, and, lying- down, pillowed his head on the skull and awaited for the eagles to come. With the rising of the sun came all the little birds, the good-for-nothing birds, the crows, ravens and HAWKS AND OWLS. 10 hawks, but with a long, sharp-pointed stick the watcher deftly poked them off the wolf skin. The ravens were most persistent in trying to perch on the skin, and every time they were poked off would loudly croak. Whenever an eagle was coming the watcher would know it, for all the little birds would fly away, and shortly an eagle would come down with a rush and light on the ground. Often it would sit on the ground for a long time preening its feathers and looking about. During this time the watcher was earnestly praying to the skull and to the sun to give him power to capture the eagle, and all the time his heart was beating so loudly that he thought the bird would surely hear it. At last, when the eagle had perched on the wolf skin and was busily plucking at the tough bull meat, the watcher would cautiously stretch out his hands, and grasping the bird firmly by the feet, quickly bear it down into the cave, where he crushed in its breast with his knee." In Scotland the eagle, it is said, is often captured alive by a method very similar to those employed in taking its kindred in South America. A circular space, twelve feet in diameter, is enclosed on a spur of the hills haunted by the birds, and a peat wall six feet high built round it, with one small opening at the level of the ground, over which a strong wire noose is suspended. The bait, a dead sheep or lamb, is placed within, and the eagle coming down to it, feeds largely not wisely, perhaps, but certainly too well and, like many another of superior creation, feels, after the repast, disinclined for any unnecessary exertion, so casting round for an easy place in the barricade, he espies the low archway, and attempting to leave by it is caught round the neck and killed at best a poor end for so gallant a bird. 20 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. CHAPTER II, FINCHES. AMONGST COEN AND FRUIT. IN every country in the world, and in all ages, small birds have been conspicuous for good or ill. They have been observed, utilized, petted, and abused in turn by every race under the sun. The Pharaohs owned gilded aviaries 011 the Nile when history itself was only in bud. Assyrian monarchs had a leaning to "the fancy," and the calm grandeur of Babylonian halls echoed, very probably, the pleasant ditties of caged warblers and cooing of doves. Chinese emperors have amused themselves with the brilliant plumaged finches of their flowery land for innumerable ages ; while bird catch- ing and caging is as old as any other institution from the banks of the Ganges to those of the Nile. Evidence, classical or mythological, of injury done to human industry by these industrious little spoilers is equally old, from the Hitopadesa to Herodotus and downwards. But it is not with diminutive pillagers in lavender or maroon who "spoilt" Egyptian millet crops two thousand years ago that we have to deal, or with any of their kindred who take toll of rice grains, or feed in endless clouds where bamboo harvests are littering the jungle ground. The page or two I have to devote to them is rather about their comparatively few and for the most part sober relatives of these islands, the sparrows and chaffinches of the stackyards, the bullfinches and cherry- loving thrushes of the orchards. FINCHES. 21 Legislation lias already and wisely confounded the bitterest antagonists of grub-eating small birds by affording them protection during their breeding season from the 1st of April to the end of August, but even this brand new protection may be endangered unless those who are mostly interested exercise a wise spirit of investigation and caution in hearing the carpings of certain critics so remorselessly dissatisfied that surely they will find fault with the municipal arrangements of Paradise if they are ever in a position to speak practically of them. Only the other day an indignant and no doubt well- meaning farmer rose at a local meeting and deduced from a tome of calculations he had made that small birds had in one season eaten grain in England to the value of nearly 770,000. What could be more shocking than such a consideration with wheaten loaves at sixpence the quartern ? On the face of it, it would seem to justify her Majesty and her peers, spiritual and temporal, in forthwith ordering the complete and effectual extermination of every thrush or finch in the land. Thus Frederic the Great declared war against the sparrows, because they were too fond of the cherries for which he also had a weakness. The sparrows disappeared, and within two years the cherries followed. Not long ago in one department of France, where every citizen loves la chasse, and the small birds find it difficult to hold their own, the loss on wheat from the raids of insects during one twelve months was no less than 160,000. This is the reverse of the matter, and serves to show, if it shows nothing else, how wide are the differences between the contending parties. In general the happy mean lies between the two extremes. There is a balance in Nature which cannot be kept too clearly in sight. The great Mother knows best the mechanisms of her own establishments. This is why, perhaps, hawks lay but one egg to every two or three the birds they prey on hatch ; and why rabbits and mice, the most universally perse- cuted of rodents, are amazingly prolific. If legal protection is afforded to grain- eating species, 22 BIED LIFE IN ENGLAND. while sparrowhawk and kestrel, the natural checks on their numbers, are ruthlessly destroyed, it may well happen they become numerous past all indulgence, and an imperative necessity arises to artificially readjust the balance. Those of our English birds of farm and garden most usually regarded as harmful are as follows, and to their names are attached a few notes on their principal food at different seasons as shown by post-mortem examination. Some of the information is taken from Mr. Groom Napier's admirable little work, "The Food, Use, and Beauty, of British Birds," some from my own observation, and the rest from researches of various observers, reports of the Canadian Agricultural Commission, and the like. The first birds in the usual sequence are The fly -catchers, of whom nothing but good can be said. All three kinds visiting England, live during the whole twelve months on gnats, " those motes that sting," on hymenopterous insects, and a host of diminutive enemies to cattle and plant life. The thrushes, coming next, some six species in all, are not so unquestionably innocent. The missel thrush, relies during December, January, Feb- ruary, on holly and mistletoe berries, on haws, earthworms, slugs, snails and anything of the nature he can pick up. This is varied all through the summer by many caterpillars and a little garden fruit, especially gooseberries. In the autumn he has to return to wild berries, and is keen on snails and slugs. Fieldfares and redwings are not here long enough to do any mischief. They pillage the hawthorn hedges and ivy bushes of Nature's alms, and take a certain number of snails, etc. Song thrusJies have been well abused, nor are we prepared to say the abuse is undeserved. They are unquestionably fond of fruit, currants being their chief delight ; but work energetically in our behalf at all other seasons. A friend FINCHES. 23 of the bird thinks " the thrush, like the blackbird, is doubt- less extremely useful in moderation, when its numbers are in proportion to the extent of farm or garden ground. When they are very numerous, however, they are induced to feed upon fruit ; but our experiences tend to show that they prefer insects and mollusca to fruit. The same remarks which apply to the thrush apply also to the blackbird." Everywhere but in the orchard the mavis is useful ; even there a remembrance of the pecks of slugs he has gorman- dized, the great earthworms he has drawn from the ground and shaken to death by the hundred, like any terrier, and those piles of snail shells round his favourite anvil stone, should stay the destroyer's hand. Blackbirds are not quite so black as chance and fruit growers have painted them. All I have said of the former bird applies to this. In the kitchen garden they are in- valuable, if fruit is netted from them a short time before it is plucked. The ring ouzel is an inhabitant of the wilderness, where it enjoys unlimited small snails and the insect life of the uplands. Warblers. That subdivision, known scientifically as the Sylvidcc, contains a numerous host of unimpeachable friends of the agriculturist or gardener ; and friends, moreover, which by a rough system of reasoning he values. The hedge sparroiv feeds under the hedges all the year round on seeds of weeds and small insects; robins take, perhaps, a small quantum of currants to vary their animal dietary, but they may safely be left in the protection of legend and favouritism. Whinchats, wheatears, and the like, if not amongst " the unco' guid," are useful in their way, while ivJiitethroat and wood wren destroy plenty of noxious insects. Titmice. Over these dainty little pinches of feathers the battle of the birds has waged long and hotly. They have been accused of stripping trees of buds (and especially fruit buds) in a reckless and wanton manner. But in nearly every 24 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. case it has turned out that the buds pulled off were already the home of a larva, which would effectually have prevented their arriving at maturity. Their natural food is to be found on trees and amongst herbage, and consists of all those multitudinous insects that, if allowed to multiply unchecked, would devastate our crops and wither up our flowers. " Let, therefore, the titmouse be permitted to follow its avocation as it chooses, and to range the fruit trees, fields, and gardens unchecked. For, in trutb, the little bird is working with all its might in our behalf, and is attacking our worst pests at their very root and source. Its micro- scopical eye discovers the eggs of noxious insects which have been deposited in spots where they will find plentiful nourishment when they are hatched, and in half-a-dozeii pecks it will destroy the whole future brood. The eggs of the terrible leaf-roller caterpillar, so tiny but so destructive, are devoured in vast numbers, as are those of that plentiful nuisance, the little ermine moth," writes the Rev. J. GK Wood, and we can fully endorse what he says. Wagtails, the Motacillidce of naturalists, do good service in thinning the swarms of summer insects ; we doubt, in fact, whether any one has ever called their usefulness in question, while their ways are dainty and their gracefulness con- spicuous. Larks. Against skylarks stands the indictment of scratch- ing newly sown grain out of the soil, and the little excava- tions made for this purpose are often to be seen during the spring months. Wheat or barley properly drilled in, we should fancy, w^ould be far beyond their reach. Nor is it difficult to argue in their favour that even a chance of feeding thus must extend over a very limited period. At nesting time, when many mouths have to be fed, grain of all sorts is out of reach, and resource must be had to the abundant and ever present harvest of seeds from weeds, wireworms, insects, etc. The chaffinch feeds " in January and February 011 seeds, FINCHES. 25 grains, and berries ; in March on seeds and insects ; in April on seeds, green food, and insects; in May on seeds and insects. Almost all finches that live on seeds and berries feed their young principally on insects," writes Mr. Groom Napier. "In June the chaffinch feeds on insects, berries, and fruits ; in July and August the same, with the addition of a little more seed; in September, October, and November on seeds, berries of many sorts, and grain." During these autumn months it haunts stackyards with flights of sparrows and searches for scattered grain. It will descend in flocks amongst newly sown turnip seed, and does, undoubtedly, a good deal of mischief there. In allusion to the frequent notices of the formidable gooseberry grub in the columns of The Field, that excellent observer, Mr. Doubleday, of Epping, observes that a brood of young chaffinches will soon clear a gooseberry bush from these grubs. It is, therefore, the obvious interest of gardeners to protect and encourage chaffinches in the breeding season, instead of taking so much trouble to destroy them or frighten them away. It must be admitted that this beautiful and most cheerful spring songster helps himself to our radish seed as soon as it has germinated ; but, without attempting to palliate this species of petty larceny, may we not regard its services in destroying the gooseberry grub as a full equivalent ? The greenfinch. This bird is fond of seeds, and has an extraordinary and insatiable appetite. His value, or the reverse, to British agriculturists is not very clearly defined. The goldfinch is not numerous enough to be of much economic consideration. One peculiarly good point he has, namely, a passion for downy seeds of any sort. This was a happy thought of Nature's, and the love of the goldfinch for the pernicious thistle (or rather its wind-scattered seeds) and the like, suggests him as being as useful in regard to numbers as he is unquestionably handsome. The bulfinch strips our cherry trees in a very lawless 26 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. manner of their buds, and is consequently persecuted by fruit growers. Fortunately he is not numerous, nor is he difficult to scare away, when this milder treatment is adopted. Starlings are unquestionably useful. They scour our meadow lands, effecting as they go a wonderful clearance of wirewonn and the detestable "daddy-long-legs" in all its stages. Amongst cattle, and even riding on the backs of sheep, they are still useful, having a taste for the parasites of such animals. On marsh lands they feed largely upon small mollusca, worms, etc. Occasionally a raid is made upon cherries, but there is no other indictment to be brought against them. The swalloivs are worthy of our fullest friendship, I think most people will allow. Leaving out of consideration the facts they are the symbol of summer, and typify the very poetry of motion, their existence is spent in keeping within bounds the myriads of winged insects, which might other- wise overwhelm us as Pharaoh was overwhelmed when he had refused for a fourth time to set free the Israelites ! The sparrow, it will be noticed, we have reserved for the last. The antiquity of his transgressions is beyond dispute. Perhaps he fell firstly with the prince of the nether world himself. In the most remote Egyptian hieroglyphics he is represented as then old in iniquities, bearing a name, sa-me-di, signifying "bird of destruction," and an outline on tomb and obelisk indicating death and scarcity. This is a point for his opponents which they have overlooked. His creden- tials have been faulty from the beginning, his passport has never been signed by the lords of creation ; and the farmer of to-day, in offering a reward for his head, is only inheriting a long and classic feud ! It is true the sparrow does not seem to care much for his disrepute and outlawry. He is equally cheerful " on the house tops " as rusticated. I doubt if he was happier, guided by the ribbons Aphrodite held and fed [on gilded seeds of Asphodel, than he is now, sharing the swine's breakfast and FINCHES. 27 dining on a dunghill. There is a storytelling how sparrows were nearly exterminated in Germany by a heavy premium paid for their heads which enlisted the enthusiasm of every knabe. In Norway and Sweden, too, for one reason or another, I noticed some time ago that sparrows were almost absent from homestead and stubble ; but in the main Fringilla domestica would seem to thrive on persecu- tion. " It would be a pity," thinks one tender-hearted ornithologist, " if the sparrow were completely extinct." I must say there seems but little prospect of this. Only a few months since seven thousand heads were capitated for by one club in one English shire, " and yet there seemed to be but little difference in the number of birds about,'* plaintively observes the Judge Jefferies of that ornithological Star Chamber. No doubt in such cases as this there is a difference, but other sparrows come in from neighbouring districts and fill up vacancies. The transgressions of sparrows are many. They eat corn, they shell peas, they spoil fruit, they encourage plumbers by building in ill-chosen places, they bully martins and swallows (a serious offence), and monopolize their nests; straw is drawn from thatched roofs, crocus, as well as other flowers, are pulled to pieces, better birds are driven away and much mess made. The indictment is heavy, and, what is worse, I fear a true bill must be returned in every case. I say this reluctantly, for I love the sparrow's pleasant chirrup as he basks in the first sunshine of the spring, and have seen in him every trait of love, anger, vanity, cunning, and resource that the bird world can produce. He is an epitome, in grey and brown, of natural uncultivated life. As for his actual food it is infinitely various. One "Monograph of the Sparrow," recently published, puts it down as corn, green or yellow, and nothing but corn ; but this is foolish prejudice. Mr. Groom Napier makes it more various : " January, February seeds, grains, refuse, insects ;. March green tops, seeds ; April insects, green tops ; May 28 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. larvae, seeds, green tops ; June, July fruits of the garden, seeds, insects ; August grain, insects, berries ; September grain, berries ; October, November, December grain, refuse, seeds, berries." " The proprietors of gardens have a special reason for gratitude towards the sparrow. Gooseberries are a favourite fruit, whether fresh or preserved, and we are too often doomed to see our trees lose their leaves, and the crop of fruit fail, solely through the attacks of the gooseberry-fly, the dark grey grubs of which are so plentiful and voracious. These grubs are very pleasing to the sparrow's palate though, by the way, it seems rather strange that a bird should have any particular sense of taste, considering the formation of its mouth and the substances on which it feeds and accordingly are killed in great numbers by that indefatigable bird. For many successive days the sparrows may be seen filling their beaks with gooseberry grubs, and bearing them off to their young. " The wire worm, again a pest that is perhaps more universally dreaded than any other of the insect tribes is a favourite food of the sparrow ; and it has been well calcu- lated that, though the sparrow is said to eat a bushel of corn annually, it saves a quarter by its depredations among the insects. The sparrow, in fact, has recourse to that most effectual system for ridding the plants of the destructive insects which, when performed by man, is termed * hand- picking,' but which cannot be achieved by man with one hundredth part of the success that attends the bird." The sparrow hates cats. When the poultry are whistled together at feeding times, numerous small birds join the dinner party. Pussy then creeps up and hides herself amongst the hungry group, by this time quite used to her tactics. Watching her opportunity, she suddenly darts upon her victim, which she stealthily carries off in her mouth, returning warily again to the charge. Taking advantage of this, the most effective way to scare birds from fruit trees is FINCHES. 2 this: From two pegs fixed in the ground stretch a piece of wire, then procure a cat or kitten three parts grown, put a leather collar on it, and attach ifc to the wire by a slip knot, also of wire, so that the animal can at will range the whole length of the pegs. The presence of the cat, combined with the rattling of the wire at its every movement, have proved a capital protection against the feathered marauders. For this to answer properly, however, the trees should be in rows, as in the case referred to, and the pegs fixed at the extremities, the wire thus running parallel to them. The sparrow, in fact, needs to be kept in bounds rather more than any other bird. The whole matter is one in which caution and reasoning are especially necessary, since there are side issues and cross- bearings on every point. The purely insectivorous birds, for instance, might be thought, like Csesar's wife, to be above suspicion ; yet it could be shown that, by eating a thousand forms of life that prey on more injurious insects, they are doing very dangerous labour, and many other instances could be given. One thing only is certain, the majority of birds do us yeomen-service, however much some few may transgress, and any tampering with the often ridiculed but nevertheless essential "balance of nature" is a matter deserving the gravest and most serious consideration on all sides. BY STACK AND STUBBLE. While there can be no doubt we have lost, and are losing, some of our larger indigenous birds the eagles, the kites, the bustards, the ravens, choughs, and such like there seems, 011 the other hand, little recorded diminution among the smaller feathered fauna of copse and hedgerow, in spite of the unreasoning warfare just alluded to. We still have the nightingale, " that sovereign of song " that Spenser loved, the sparrows King Alfred fed, the "throstle, with his note so true," who sung to Shakespeare in pleasant Avon wood- 30 BIED LIFE IN ENGLAND. lands ; and, in fact, nearly every one of those lesser birds enshrined in poet's verses, or enbalmed in our rich and his- toric folk lore, with which song or story has made us familiar. Perhaps the finches of the underwood and the wild birds of marsh and mountain top owe their immunity from extinction to their shyness and retiring habits. The whitethroats might be as scarce as bitterns were they equally noticeable ; but, as matters stand, who cares to molest the former that delicate little fragment of drab and cream-coloured feathers that hunts in the nettle forests and hides its grass-built nest amongst densest tangles of briar and bramble ? We might have obliterated the ouzels, again, as we have the auks, had they been half so valuable for food or so dull-witted as the gare-fowl. This, and much more of the same kind, goes to show that when left to their own devices Nature very rarely suffers any species of bird or beast to be " wiped off the slate." It is only when man, the lord and bully of creation, comes upon the scene that the balance is disturbed; races and species going down before his insatiable appetites and endless vanities. It was not Nature, for instance, who did away with the amiable but heavy dodo ; it was South Sea whalers, and all for the poor reason of sharpening their sailor's knives upon the stones his gizzard contained. The birds of paradise are dying to deck the dresses of savage tribes, and humming- birds to fringe fans and glitter on fair but thoughtless heads. Penguin flesh was very good eating the cods-men of the North Seas knew, and the fact was ruin to the species ; and just so the buffalo is being recklessly converted into glue and pelts for portmanteaus, until we are within measurable distance of his extermination ; and the price of elephants and elephant ivory going up every day, as they become scarcer and scarcer in their Indian or African jungles. Nature retaliates, it might seem, by multiplying unduly some smaller birds and beasts, not to mention lesser insect plagues. But leaving locusts and larva out of the question, even the naturalist must recognize sometimes that certain FINCHES. 31 manner of birds or beasts are unduly redundant. There is the rabbit in Australia, for instance, working shocking havoc on the sheep runs, and living in a very Arcadia where stoats or weasels are unknown, and ruining biped and quadruped with its ceaseless fecundity. The sparrow in America is as bad, and the Senate has arraigned, condemned, and excom- municated him several times, without, however, any percepti- ble effect on his cheerfulness or numbers. We forbear to enlarge upon the devices prepared for the beguilement of this little scourge of Christendom, as his enemies call him, since the erratic propensities of the sparrow not only lead him to trespass on every man's land, but bring him sooner or later into every man's trap. For this reason, and the fact of his small mercantile value, few lures are devoted to his special circumvention. Of those that are, however, the " bat-folding- net " is one of the most destructive. This consists of two twelve-foot bamboos, slightly bent and joined at their thinner ends, having a net of small mesh stretched between them nearly down to the lower or handle ends, where the net is turned back for a foot or so to form a trough-like pouch. When in use one man holds the lower ends of the bamboos, and applies the net, spread between them to ivy on walls or trees, haystacks, eaves, etc., and wherever the birds may be sleeping at that hour of the evening; while another man with lantern and stick beats the foliage, etc., and the affrighted birds dash from their roosts to meet the wall of net, falling after a brief struggle into the open pouch below. Barring these perky little finches that Yenus loved, we have in this country few kinds of birds that assemble in great flocks, and can thus be killed wholesale either in revenge for fancied injuries done or for "the pot." Abroad it is other- wise. In Germany, for instance, they are overrun with starlings. On November evenings the fowlers of the Upper Rhine watch for the arrival of the great nights of starlings. A little cloud is seen on the horizon, which gradually 32 B1ED LIFE IN ENGLAND. approaches and grows into a black spiral column, which at last almost darkens the air and deafens the ears with the chirping* of its innumerable host of birds. After a few spiral turns they suddenly perch in a body on the trees and reeds, which appear laden with leaves and fruit, and bend under their weight. The fowlers mark the spot where they settle, and then set up an immense curtain of nets on poles in an advan- tageous position, and so contrived that they shall fall when a cord is pulled. This done, they leave the chattering throng to settle down into their roosting-places, while they them- selves go home to supper. At midnight, however, they return, and posting themselves round the roosting-place of the birds, suddenly raise a tremendous shout, and with long- sticks and stones drive the frightened birds towards the net. The whole flock rises en masse and makes for the net, which, as soon as they beat against it, is pulled down, and the whole flock enclosed. They are left to be strangled in the meshes or drowned in the marsh till daylight, when the fowlers again return, to take them out and dexterously twist the necks of those which are not dead already. Sometimes as many as ten thousand are caught at one fall of the net, but not more than five or six thousand are taken, the others being allowed to escape, for fear of glutting the market. They are taken to Strasbourg and sold at the rate of 3d. to 4td. per dozen. There can be little doubt that though this may be a good speculation for those immediately concerned, it is a ruinously bad one for the Rhine lands at large. " Perhaps there is no- bird that does so much good to the husbandman as the star- ling," says Swaysland. He is the terror of every sort of grass .or corn devouring grub and pupa. The inquisitor of the meadows, he believes in summary jurisdiction, and the wireworm or grub hauled into his presence must expect very little mercy from that beak. Sometimes they come to be regarded as a nuisance, or available ingredients for a pie in our own southern shires A correspondent writes: "As owner of a larch plantation of over one hundred acres in FINCHES. 33 Somerset, I can give the following plan that I used to adopt some twenty-five years since, when my larch trees were young, by which plan I caught hundreds of birds, including starlings, fieldfares, and other similar birds, on. any dark, still night. One man carrying, say, four sheep bells, one man with a lantern, and another a long light stick, one sheepdog, enter the plantation after seven o'clock, the first man shaking the sheep bells, which drowns all sound of footsteps ; the second man turns the light on the trees, when the birds can be seen, apparently stupefied ; the third man knocks them down ; the sheepdog retrieves them. This may be called poaching ; bat where the birds roost in thousands they may be used as food, and certainly are excellent eating." And another of these, we must think, ill-advised land- owners suggests we should have some openings made by stripping the trees in two or three places right and left through our plantations so as to admit of many clap- nets, and then send a person to quietly beat the birds towards the nets, when we shall capture a score or two, as starlings do not rise and fly away, but flutter along the branches. These birds migrate, unobtrusively but widely, though the fact is not generally recognized. There can be little doubt the greater part of those flocks seen on our marshes and downs during the winter have come from Norway and Sweden. Though starling pate may seem a poor substitute for pigeon pie, the truth is, nearly all small birds are more or less good food. Nothing could seem less appropriate for this purpose than the swallow tribe ; yet Buff on tells us swallows roost at the close of summer in great numbers on alders by the banks of southern rivers, and are taken in vast quantities to be eaten in some countries, as Spain and Silesia ; and again we read, " The martins grow very fat in autumn, and are then very good to eat. They are taken D 34 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. very largely at Alsace, in nets;" adding that these birds, like all the swallow tribe, are excellent for the table when young and fat. The Spaniards who eat all sorts of "little game," in season and out of season, with no regard for plumage or habits capture bee-eaters and rollers at night, by going round and pouring water into holes in banks and trees where they roost, at the same time holding a net over the entrances, into which the affrighted birds speedily dash. When out on these expeditions, both Little and Scops owl are frequently captured in the same way, or even with the hand, owls and rollers alike appearing strung up above the stalls of the next day's market-place. Birds in Spain are taken when roosting on the ground by parties of two, the one carrying the bag and also a bell, which he tinkles monotonously, whilst the other carries a light ; the idea being that the bird supposes it is only some vagrant bell-wether, and remains till the captor with the light puts his hand upon it. My belief in the usefulness of the bell is limited ; that of the light is an established fact. Yet the bell is used in this manner in many countries. In Somersetshire and Andalusia we have noted its use. The Lincolnshire fenmen employ a bell when netting plovers ; and the lark, another very edible and marketable bird, is betrayed by its sound in Prance. The method is disgusting in its unvarnished brutality. A dark night being chosen, two men are required. One has a bell which he constantly jingles in one hand, and a lantern in the other, with which he throws a light along the furrows of the newly turned corn-lands where the quarry roosts. The other, who goes ahead, has a stick, at the end of which is a short strap of heavy leather, and a sack. When a bird is seen cowering under the light it is approached cautiously, and a single stroke from the leather " flap " extinguishes its life without spoiling it for to-morrow's market. The professional manner of catching larks is by means of a trammel net. This is FINCHES. 35 about thirty-six yards long and eight wide. At each end. of the net there is a pole, and the lower edge is weighted so as to drag along the ground. Men holding the poles and raising the front of the net tramp forward. If they are lucky all the birds at roost on the ground covered will be taken, the net being lowered to the ground whenever captives are felt or heard to rise against the meshes. Moon- light is fatal to the sport, and wet nights equally so, for then the net is too heavy to drag. It is an improvement if the men holding the end poles each lead a horse by the bridle, as his footsteps to which the birds are accustomed drown theirs; or the men sometimes ride the horses, as we have seen represented in old prints. In the winter, when the snow lightly covers the ground, larks may be taken in considerable numbers by horsehair nooses. This is accom- plished by driving pieces of wood into the ground so that some three inches are above the surface, and they should be about three yards apart ; then, after the fashion of a laundress's clothes-line, stretch twine from stump to stump ; now make nooses in lengths of horsehair, and suspend them from each line, so that the running loops dangle freely, about two inches from the surface of the ground; scatter black oats about the noose, and larks, in seeking to pick it up, will find themselves held captive by the horsehairs. Clever though these designs are, gourmands might sigh in vain for larks on toast, were it not for the clap-net that deadly device in skilful hands. Two nets, twelve yards long (and, when open, covering the ground twenty feet wide), are neatly laid down upon the ground. It is impos- sible, without a diagram, to explain the rough, but very effective, machinery by which a pull of the rope held by the birdcatcher will make those harmless-looking nets spring into the air, and catch the birds, either on the wing, or on the ground. The nets act so quickly, that the eye can scarcely follow their spring. Anything on the wing crossing them four feet high will be shut in instantly. It is better 36 BIED LIFE IN ENGLAND. to catch the bird before he has time to settle ; if he touches the net with his feet, he is off instantly. The next process is to put out the " brace bird." This bird always wears his brace, with a swivel attached, con- sisting of a piece of string made into a kind of double halter, and put over the bird's head, and the wings and legs are passed through, the feathers falling over, and rendering it invisible. The brace bird is then put on his " flur-stick ; " this is a straight stick, which, by means of a hinge at its lower end, is made to rise and fall at the will of the bird- catcher by means of a string. Then, when any bird is seen coming, the flur-stick is gently pulled up, the brace bird all the while standing on the stick is made to hover with his wings and show himself. This, of course, is to attract the wild birds to the place, which purpose is also attained by " call birds " put out round the net in cages, whose notes, especially when there are others of their kind in the neighbourhood, attract great numbers. Thus, no doubt, are procured those melancholy festoons of Nature's choristers we see in the gamedealers' doorways. Personally, we think that good as this little bird may be at table, aux trufles, legislation should sternly pro- scribe his presence there, or even his entombment alive in any of the cruel little cages with which some of us associate him. He should be as sacred to us music-loving nations of the West as doves were to the Greeks or the Ibis to Egyptians. This same " seraph of the sylvan choir " is a bird of strong passions, and often stirred by love or hate. The fowler, with the gross practicalness of his kind, knows this, and takes a mean advantage. If the season suggests the predomination of the gentler sentiment, then a female decoy, whose wings are tied and a lime twig placed over her is used. The male in paying his court thus gets hopelessly entangled. But if there is a note of challenge in the song we hear coming from under the clouds, " then," says a learned fancier, FINCHES. 37 "start at break of day, carrying with you a well-trained singing lark. Tie its wings, so that it can do no more than hop about the ground, and under the string slip the ends of two lengths of flexible whalebone, the projecting ends of which must be well smeared with bird-lime, and cross each other over the decoy's back. Watch where a lark rises, and put down your bird near the spot, the wild bird will drop like a stone on the back of the trespasser, and it is caught by the lime." One more method of taking these diminutive wild-fowl a curious and sportsmanlike method we might almost say if it does not take us to the end of our available notes, will at least probably exhaust a reader's patience : " To-day some bird-catchers brought a number of pipits for sale," writes an Indian traveller. " The method of capture was ingenious. Sheltering themselves under a screen of leaves, they would creep to within about thirty feet of where the birds were running about. They then push forward a series of bamboos, which fit into one another like the joints of a fishing rod, the top one being provided with a pronged twig smeared with bird-lime. This, on coming in contact with the bird, of course holds it fast, until the native runs up and wrings its neck ' in the name of Allah the Compassionate ! ' ' Small birds as food are much more popular amongst other races than amongst the Anglo-Saxon. Every con- tinental market-place is at times an ornithological exhibition. Under the olive-groves of the ^Egean Islands, and all through the Mediterranean, finches and warblers at all times of the year are liable to get themselves into nets or toils of varying make. Just outside Port Said I have seen something novel in the way of bird- catching. Two Arabs, with casting-nets, were walking along the canal bank, here dotted with patches of scrub a foot or eighteen inches high. Marking down some unfortunate small bird, they stalked and cast their nets over the bush on which it had taken shelter, seldom making a 38 BIBD LIFE IN ENGLAND. bad shot, though their " bag " could not have been a heavy one, as none of their victims were larger than a titlark; several were the tiny fan tail- warbler (cisticola), so plentiful throughout Egypt, particularly on scrubby ground anywhere near water. The wheatear is almost the only other edible small bird we recognize in these islands. Gilbert "White, it will be remembered, remarks, they " appear at the tables of all the gentry around Brighton and Tunbridge who entertain with any degree of elegance ; " and elsewhere we read, " It's favourite haunts in this country are the South Downs, and in the neighbourhood of Brighton, Lewes, and Eastbourne great numbers are taken in traps, which are set on the downs cut out in the turf. The habits of the birds in running to shelter on the least alarm are considered in the nature of the snares set for them, which are made after this fashion : Pieces of the turf are taken up in solid masses, and propped up over the holes from which they are cut; thus a sort of hollow chamber is formed, holes are left at the opposite end of the space formed beneath the turfy cover, and in the hollow itself nooses are set vertically, supported on small sticks ; the birds rushing in for shelter are caught by their necks in the nooses, and fall an easy prey to the setter of the trap. Quantities of wheatears are thus taken and sent to the different markets, where they realize from 9d. to Is. 6d. each. Their price has very considerably increased of late years ; from 6d. to Is. a dozen used to be given formerly in a plentiful season. Then the shepherds on the downs were the chief trap makers, capturing sometimes from fifty to sixty dozen in a day, and a custom then prevailed of people visiting the traps, taking out the birds (if there were any caught), and leaving a penny in the trap as a reward for the shepherd a somewhat primitive method of proceeding which would not hold good at the present time." The late Frank Buckland declares the best trap for wheat- ears is the common nightingale trap baited with a meal worm. FINCHES. 39 But for our part we think there is a very good time ahead for the small birds, and probably an enlightened public opinion will learn to recognize in them faithful allies on the farm lands, and delightful associates in the uplands and wildernesses. Abroad they take a very practical interest in their small game, especially in the French mainland, as also in the Mediterranean islands. From Corsica, for instance, vast quantities of birds are sent to the Gallic markets, and they are indeed the most popular "game " in the island. "AMONG THE COESICAN SCRUB." We, that is to say, W and myself, on one occasion had finished supper, and were smoking, in grim discontent, over a roaring fire of fir-cones in a little Corsican inn, the howling north wind rattling the badly joined window frames, and the rain pelting on the glass like so much small shot, as indeed it had done with scarcely a pause for seven days, every- thing feeling dull and uncomfortable, even a few feet from the blaze, when a footfall sounded in the passage, and the next moment our door was thrown open by a much be- wrapped Frenchman, who immediately advanced with out- spread hands, giving us a tremendously cordial greeting after the fashion of his country, and without more delay than served to divest monsieur of his two wet overcoats and uncoil a dozen yards of " comforter " from his neck, we refilled our pipes and plunged into the subject that so much interested us. Monsieur R was our chief reliance for sport in the island, whither we had come to spend the winter. We had made his acquaintance on board the French steamer, and as he was a well-known chasseur, he had promised to show us whatever sport there was to be had in Corsica, hence his welcome appearance on the wet evening of which I write. 40 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. " Could we not get a moufflon ? " asked my comrade. But B shook his head. It was out of the question in such weather as this. "What then?" we said, somewhat anxiously. Forth- with, our guest propounded an idea he had formed that we should have a rough day in the macchie and river estuaries, after (and W heard it with a blush !) the very small game in which continental sportsmen delight, varied by perhaps a duck or two, in fact, anything we came across, until such time as the clouds chose to lift from the hills and give us a chance of searching their summits for better game. This was the best he had to offer us. Though not much, it was better than hanging about the hotel verandah, smoking in- different tobacco, and wondering where on earth the sun- shine we had come so far to find had got to. It was there- fore agreed on, and an early start the next morning being arranged, we said good night, and " turned in," in a much better frame of mind. Half -past eight a.m., and the light clatter of wooden shoes on the red tiles outside my room roused one even before the fille-de-chambre's tap on the door, and the ostentatious clatter of her hot water can became audible. A little while later, we two Englishmen met in the coffee- room, where we were soon joined by R , who pointed out the happy fact that it was a glorious morning, with a lovely sky, and every prospect of fine sport before us. Breakfast over (and on such occasions one is apt to make short work of it), our mules were announced at the door. We, therefore, strap up the game bags (which R , to whom we left the provisioning of the expedition, has filled so full of lunch and bottles that they can only be fastened with the greatest difficulty), and when this is over, lighting our pipes, we sally out to our steeds in the courtyard, ready saddled, their head-gear bedecked with numbers of little red tassels which they shake to keep off the flies. My two companions, who have beasts of discretion, mount without trouble, but FINCHES. 41 mine is of a different mould, and wheels this way, and that, taking " snips " with his teeth at the trousers of the by- standers, and discharging sundry kicks that enlarged the circle of spectators with remarkable quickness. So I wait till he settles down for a minute, then rush into close quarters, and before he can move a leg, I am safely "on board " with every intention of staying there. Then away we go, our two men, with the guns and a couple of dogs, following behind as fast as they may, our steeds cantering along down the narrow village street, scattering the old women and children on every side, and creating a vast panic amongst the long-necked chickens. Once we get clear of the little Corsican capital the blue Gulf of Ajaccio bursts on us, brilliant as a sapphire fresh clipped from its mother rock ; here and there are feluccas stealing about its calm surface with long white sails fishing perhaps, or off to the coral grounds at the head of the gulf. On both sides of the lovely bay the land slopes upwards, terraced with dark-f oliaged lemon groves, or left unreclaimed in the wild dominion of prickly pears and cactus, giving the hill-sides a strangely mottled appearance, as cultivation and Nature thus struggle side by side. Far away to the north- west, where the blue water ends, Monte Botondo rears high over the valleys and plateaus, its head still crowned with heavy snows, the remnants of last winter's storms. Not only was the view fine, but the air was delightful after the rain, and the bright sun overhead seemed to put new life into the small birds along the roadside, and I could not help lingering behind the others, occasionally, as the road turned about amongst glorious gardens of orange trees, every twig of the forest of dark-leaved trees heavy with green or golden fruit, each leaf and blade wet with dew and rain that flashed in a hundred colours as the sunlight glanced down from above. An orange garden has always been a wonderful sight to me ! Half-an-hour's riding brought us to a branch road, down 42 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. which we plunged and pulled up at an old ruined chapel, shaded by a large olive tree. Here begins oar shooting ground, so we shoulder our cartridge bags, load up the guns, and, leaving one man in charge of the lunch, set off with the other and the dogs for the open macchie, or the close-leaved and densely planted shrubberies of wild myrtle, arbutus, and leutiscus that clothe nearly all the higher ground in Corsica with a delightful canopy of evergreen verdure. Amongst the various sweet berries of these shrubs astonishing hordes of blackbirds and thrushes revel all day. We put them up on all sides, to the great satisfaction of our French companion, who began peppering away at the petit gibier, and we, with a little hesitation, followed suit. It was pretty enough shooting, however unorthodox. An infinite variety of brisk little birds rose from the irregular growth of arbutus, and with a couple of flicks of their wings w^ere over the bushes and out of shot in an extraordinarily short space of time. Nothing but the quickest of snap-shooting was possible, and our light guns, and special small loads of powder and shot, had to be very "straight" to keep up a creditable average. "W , the deadly on grouse, scored several misses when the fun began ; of course I did no better ; while B led us up the rises, fusilading as he went, as though we were storming a Russian battery ! Where the arbutus berries were thickest a perfect cascade of small birds, thrushes, blackbirds, and pipits rose on every side. "No wonder there is so little game in the country," said my companion, looking at me ruefully as he began his third score of cartridges, " if much of this sort of thing goes on ! " But I pointed out to him it was only an experiment, as I much wanted to know where and how the French markets were supplied with their small birds, and he sighed and bowled over two thrushes right and left. A modification of this process is practised in the Ionian Islands, and a correspondent has penned a pleasant account of it, which I cannot resist reproducing. FINCHES. 43 " Far different is the course adopted in the Greek Islands, for so soon as the middle of October arrives, may you expect vast nights of thrushes, with which are mingled a few of the missel thrush (called here on the principle of everything large coming from Africa, the Barbary thrush). When it is fully ascertained that these birds have been seen in numbers, which is always the case by the 20th of October, then every one is bitten with the desire to go into the olive-groves to ' whistle for thrushes.' As this is rather a curious proceed- ing, and opens up a new phase in thrush character, I cannot do better, perhaps, than describe a morning expedition in one of the Ionian Isles, on which occasion I was inducted into the ceremonies. It was towards the end of October that I started for the fern-covered, woodcock-haunted glades of Gorino, in company with a Greek gentleman skilled in ' bird murder.' How well I remember how gloriously, the morning dawned, the early grey shadows softening the harsh outlines of the forts under whose guns we passed, ere winding up the steep hill upon which the picturesque little village of Potamo is placed. From this elevated spot the view was magnificent; far away below us lay numberless olive groves, over the tops of whose trees could be seen the grey still waters of the harbour, and the shores of the Emarantine Island now gilded here and there with the awaken- ing beams of the sun, which was driving the vapour in clouds from the bosom of the sea. Salvador's high crest yet wreathed in mists ; its sombre slopes clothed with the ever verdant holly and ilex, while it seemed yet summer, so calm and warm was the air, its silence unbroken save by the mournful whistle of the curlew on the sandbars below, or the harsh chattering notes of the wary jay in the thick trees above us ; around and about were mossy little dells thickly clothed with high bushes of myrtle and laurel, the velvet sward around luxuriating in the dew that our hasty passage brushed from off the brown tangle of herbage which served as shelter for the ^sby woodcock. On we 44 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. journeyed, through ravines, past hill-sides where the crimson fruit of the arbutus, called here * Frooli di Montagna,' or mountain strawberries, tempted us to linger awhile, past vineyards where the sere and rapidly dying leaves augured little as yet for that purple cluster which would depend from every branch when the heat of summer had again clothed them with verdure, past the orange trees and their now small unripe fruit hiding amid glossy dark green leaves, until some miles had been traversed ; and we stood at last, before the sun had risen high enough to dispel all the night mists on the far-off mountains, on the summit of a hill over- looking the sea, from which we expected the thrushes to arrive. We were not the only tenants of the spot we had selected, however, as there were two or three countrymen stationed under the cover of as many trees. My friend now produced his whistle, which was a round hollow piece of silver (though mostly constructed of copper) about one inch in diameter, convex on one side, and concave on the other, with a hole right through the centre. The concave part is placed in the mouth, pressing against the teeth, and by inspiring the breath, and modulating the tones with the closed or open hands, as the case may be, a very perfect imitation of the song thrush's note is the result. This the arriving or newly arrived birds hear, and imagining that it proceeds from the throat of one of their species, alight in the trees which surround and conceal the treacherous imitator, and quickly fall a prey to the ready gun. So infatuated are they, that enormous quantities are killed by this method early in the season ; in fact, I know one person who shot one hundred and four, besides other birds, to his own gun in one day. " In this particular instance the effect was wonderful, for the whistles had not been sounding long before high up in the clear air, some half mile away over the sea, some tiny specks appeared. ' Thrushes ? ' queries my friend of another posted a few yards from him. This ascertained, the whistling FINCHES. 45 proceeds more vigorously than ever. The voyagers near us, they appear now to waver in their flight, and hover together in the air; this indecision is, however, overcome by a few- persuasive notes from the call, and they descend into the trees with an undulating sweep. Theirs, alas ! is no happy welcome to a foreign shore. Bang ! bang ! go the guns almost simul- taneously, and five or six lay on the velvet turf ; the rest take to flight, but are followed and nearly all shot in detail, for while the fatal whistle sounds they may be approached, with a moderate degree of caution, and will sit with their heads on one side and their bright eyes peering into the under- wood, until the shooter gets almost as close as he likes to them." To return to our personal adventures. When we had shot enough small birds for a good store of pies, we got monsieur to come on to the borders of an overgrown wilderness of tall bamboo- like reeds, forming a dense jungle of many acres in extent at the estuary of a small river flowing into the gulf. Here we turned in the wild Corsican dogs, and got ourselves ready for whatever sport the fates might send us, W going round to the far side, while the other two guns stayed on this. The first thing to rise was a duck, which E. promptly " potted " at fifteen yards' distance, and retrieved in person with a very fair imitation of an Indian war-whoop. Two other ducks were put up from the thicket of waving stems, and we heard W get off both barrels, as the birds went over to his side. Then came a pause, owing to the dogs having struck work and disappeared, to be found after a quarter-of- an-hour's whistling a couple of hundred yards back, busy lunching on the remains of a dead horse. Of course they were " reproved," and then we started again, but the walking was very poor, at one time all bog or mud reeking, as we leapt from one spongy tussock to another, with foul malarial taints, again sand like that of the sea-shore, or worse still, a vast desert of rounded pebbles such as continental rivers are fond of depositing when they get a chance. However, we trudged 46 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. on this varied surface, getting in the first hour about a dozen shots at ducks, of which only seven were successful, owing to the birds hardly giving us a chance in the thick cover, and then the reeds gave out, and our forces met where the lagoon narrowed up to the mountain torrent that had given it rise. Here we rested for a moment to fill the pipe of peace, but this necessary operation was hardly done when the sharp ears of the Corsican guide caught the cry of some partridges higher up, and though likely to be "red legs" and great runners, we set off after them at once, getting two as they rose from under the side of a rock, the others if there were others making good their retreat to the nearest strong cover. Forthwith W 's enthusiasm for partridges rose to a high point, in which I backed him up, for the lovely sweet- scented macchie was much superior to the marsh below ; so we changed our duck-shot cartridges for smaller shot, and marched into the red legs' territory. A lovely shooting ground it was not particularly easy to work, but delightful from an aesthetic point of view. Noble hill-sides gleaming and warm under the bright Mediterranean sun, dotted about with clumps of olive and oak, over which the kites and hawks swept in circles, frightening out as the shadow of their wings passed along whole herds of small birds from the deep foliage of the myrtles and arbutus. Gardens of orange and peaches, just coming into flower, luxu- riated on the warm southern terraces ; here and there the white walls of a farm-house peeping out from amongst the verdure or the little peaked roof of a wayside chapel, in which the image of a saint standing under a ceiling of blue, spangled with golden stars, called on the passer-by to drop on his knees and breathe a prayer. Amid this charming hunting ground we strayed all the morning, taking things rather too easily for making much of a bag, but picking up a hare, three or four partridges, and a brace of quails out of a bevy of which we ought to have got more ; but we were not on the look-out when they suddenly rose and dodged round a rock with their FINCHES. 47 pretty chirruping cry, affording us only a very quick snap shot. Then we lunched under a wide spreading cork tree, with the blue Gulf of Ajaccio extended far and wide from the low ground at our feet, and the pale snow-fields of the Corsican Alps glittering at our backs. Thanks to the care of monsieur, who had prepared it, the meal was only too complete, and he now presided, beaming over the array of everything the hungry sportsman could desire : fascinating pies of myrtle- fed songsters and cold game from the hotel chief's larder to eat, while for drinking there was the bottled beer of the Saxon, and the light wine of the Gaul, honey stored by up- land bees, smelling of mountain pastures, and brought down from far inland by peasants, who had also supplied their goats' milk cream for us to eat it with ; and when all these dainties had been disposed of there came a glass of Chartreuse to wind up with. Truly a Frenchman understands the science of eating. Such a lunch, " though it might be magnificent, was not war," or rather shooting, and, need I add, that when it was over we smoked a pipe or two with great delibera- tion, and then coming to the somewhat tame conclusion that we had done nearly enough shooting for the day, con- tented ourselves with strolling homewards along the beach, getting a couple more ducks and three or four hares from a stony bit of half -reclaimed land that bordered the sea shore. There is not much to be said for Corsican sport. To make bags of any size it is necessary to go very far inland, where the best shooting is found. As to the famous moufflon, or wild sheep of the island, I have been after them once or twice, but it is much to be feared their day is near its setting, as they are well nigh extinct. Thrush hunting here in our own country is regarded as a fit amusement only for country bumpkins, or at most a pastime for Master Tommy home for his Christmas holidays, and revelling in the delights of a new gun a pleasant alter- 48 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. native for him, perhaps, from hunting cats in the shrubbery with his sister and the terriers; but abroad the matter is different. In Italy and Spain the orange groves and olive wastes are depopulated of useful small birds, as we have seen, and Gould, in his "Birds of Great Britain," gives a graphic account of " La Tenderie " in Belgium. " The thrush is a great source of amusement to the middle and of profit to the lower classes during its autumnal migration. Many families of Liege, Luxemburg, Luneberg, Narum, parts of Hainault and Brabant, choose this season for their period of relaxation from business, and devote themselves to the taking of this bird with horse-hair springes. The shopkeeper of Liege and Yerviers, whose house in the town is the model of comfort and cleanliness, resorts with his wife and children to one or two rooms in a miserable country village to enjoy the sport he has been preparing for with their help during the long evenings of the preceding winter, in the course of which he has made as many as from five thousand to ten thousand horse-hair springes, and prepared as many pieces of flexible wood rather thicker than a swan quill, in and on which to hang them. He hires what he calls his Tenderie, being from four to five acres of underwood about three to five years old, pays some thirty shillings for permission to place his springes, and his greatest ambition is to retain for several years the same Tenderie and the same lodging, which he improves in comfort from year to year. The springes being made, and the season of migration near, he goes for a day to his intended place of sojourn, and cuts as many twigs, about eighteen inches in length, as he intends hanging springes on. There are two methods of hanging them: in one the twig is bent into the form of the figure 6, the tail end running through a slit cut in the upper part of the twig. The other method is to sharpen a twig at both ends, and insert the points into a grower, or stem of under- wood, thus forming a bow, of which the stem forms the FINCHES. 49 string below the springe, and hanging from the lower part of the bow is placed a small branch, with three or four berries of the mountain-ash (there called sobier) ; this is fixed to the bow by inserting the stalk into a slit in the wood. The hirer of a new Tenderie three or four acres in extent is obliged to make zigzag footpaths through it, to cut away the boughs which obstruct them, and even to hoe and keep them clean. Having thus prepared himself, he purchases one or two bushels of the berries of the mountain- ash with the stalks to which they grew, and which are picked for the purpose after they are red, but before they are ripe, to prevent their falling off ; these he lays out on a table in the loft or attic. The collection of these berries is a regular trade, and the demand for them is so great that, although planted expressly by the side of the roads in the Ardennes, they have been sold as high as 2 the bushel ; but the general price is five francs. We will now suppose our thrush-catcher arrived at his lodgings in the country, that he has had his footpath cleared by the aid of a labourer, and that he is off for his first day's sport. He is provided with a basket, one compartment of which holds his twigs, bent or straight, another his berries; his springes being already attached to the twigs, he very rapidly drives his knife into a lateral branch and fixes them, taking care that the springe hangs neatly in the middle of the bow, and that the lower part of the springe is about three fingers breadth from the bottom ; by this arrangement the bird, alighting on the lower side of the bow, and bending his neck to reach the berries below him, places his head in the noose, and finding himself obstructed in his movements, attempts to fly away ; but the treacherous noose tightens round his throat, and he is found by the sportsman hanging by the neck, a victim of misplaced confidence. " The workman, who at this season earns a second harvest by this pursuit, carries on his industry in wilder districts, or he frequently obtains permission from his employer to E 50 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. set springes in his master's woods. In this case, he supplies the family with birds, which are highly appreciated as a delicacy, especially when almost covered with butter, with a few juniper berries, and some bacon cut into small dice and baked in a pan ; the rest, of his take he sells at from 5d. to Wd. per dozen. " ISTo person who has not lived in the country can imagine the excitement among all classes when the Grieves arrive. If the morning be foggy, it is a good day for Grieves ; if bright, bad Tenderie ! The reason is obvious : when the birds arrive in a fog, they settle at once in the woods ; if bright, they fly about seeking the most propitious place for food. I may observe a singular feeling of honour is en- gendered by this pursuit. Nobody will think of injuring his neighbour's Tenderie ; a sportsman would carefully avoid deranging the springes. If, when shooting in your own covers, a few are taken for the table, you would hang a franc piece conspicuously in an empty springe for every dozen birds taken. The law is very severe on poachers who place a springe on the ground to take partridges, woodcocks, or snipes ; but if three feet above ground, the law says nothing, and save as a trespasser, the placer of springes in the trees of a wood not his own property would not be punishable. The number taken is prodigious as many as one hundred and fifty thrushes have been found executed in a Tenderie in one morning. The younger members of families of the highest ranks commonly follow this amusement before a gun is placed in their hands. " It may be readily imagined that before five thousand springes are set in a Tenderie of four or five acres, a fortnight or three weeks will have elapsed, even should the grocer, the linendraper, or publican, be assisted by his wife and children. The amusement is common to all the family wife, boys, and girls. Many a small tradesman eats little else during his vacation at his Tenderie besides Grieves and Buem. From Liege to Tilf , thence to Ayvale on the rivers Meuse, Outhe, FINCHES. 51 and the Amblere to Chauspritaine on the Vesdre, where the rivers are for miles shut in by precipitous banks, covered with low woods, scarcely an acre is unlet for Tenderie during the months of August, September, October, and November. The first fortnight of August is occupied in preparations, the rest of the time is the harvest of Grieves." 52 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. CHAPTER III. CROWS. AMONGST THE BOOKS. THERE could not well be a thinner excuse than that which justifies the shooter's intentions as he goes out at the season of new green leaves to ravage the homes of his ancestral servitors the rooks. He says, perhaps, as he fills his pockets with cartridges, something about the need of adjusting the balance of Nature, and of the damage the young "crows," already noisy in the avenue outside, will do presently to the spring corn. Ten days ago had you asked him, his opinions were all in favour of the dusky birds, and he recognized that their plumage is but a physical chance, and not the livery of sin some have pretended. And a fortnight hence he will acknowledge that they do yeoman service on grass and plough, searching with restless inquisitiveness for grub and wireworm, and giving all and sundry of these and such other small but powerful enemies of the farmer the shortest shift. Yet for the brief period intervening between the feathering of the young birds and their incorporation with the wandering flocks of their parents, squire and farmer are remorseless, and per- secute them with a vigour not a little remarkable. But very likely the fact that this is a chance of burning powder coming after an abstinence and before another spell of the sportsman's Ramadam, accounts for the change of principle. Moreover there is delight simply in being out of doors in " the leafy month of June." GROWS. 53 Rooks have a peculiar aptitude for selecting for their home a spot of dignity and beauty. They are always asso- ciated with stateliness and repose. No one ever found their nests in a disreputable spot such as a gooseberry bush for instance, where we have known a magpie to build among the stony curls of a heroic statue like ribald jackdaws, or even among chimney stacks with the storks. Just as en- gravers give a little "local colour " to an Indian etching by bringing in a palm or two, and accentuate Arabian sands by a camel in the background, so an English artist never finishes up his cathedral precincts or surroundings of a ruined manse without throwing in the nucleus of a rookery and a bird or so coming home with sunset. No doubt these birds have built in the plane trees of Cheapside, where, by the way, kites built only a hundred years ago, in Gray's Inn Gardens, and in a few such other places, but this does not spoil the argument. Where we find them most numerous and available for sport is in the avenues leading to lordly mansions throughout the shires, and in the great elms that the foresight of our ancestor planted behind grange and castle to keep off the north wind, and to shame, perhaps, shallow, sceptical descendants, who live as if their lives marked the bounds of time, and who, cutting down, plant nothing for those who come after. There are countless traditions regarding the cunning and feudal instincts of the rook. No money-lender ever had a greater interest in the succession of great estates than these sable retainers of long-settled families. One authority tells us gravely they will desert a rookery that is about to change human ownership, and that a tenantless mansion where familiar faces have once been they abhor. Foresters more prosaically aver they can tell when an elm has the wet rot even sooner than the woodpecker, their distant relative. To bark their trees will drive them away, and so may a ring of paint round the bole, as surely as though with human eyes they associated that fatal mark with axes and woodmen. 54 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. But where some subtle auguries of inconvenience, of which we bipeds cannot fathom the origin, do not frighten them off, they are very tenacious of their homes. All through the winter of their discontent, when the early barley is as snug under the frost-hardened ground as gold in a usurer's chest, and grubs of every kind are at a premium, they keep an eye upon the wigwams that swing in the wind over the bare avenue, and a little later on, when the elms are thick with their unacknowledged copper- tinted inflorescence, they hold a curious festival in the tops perhaps an "at home," suggested by matronly forethought, " to bring the young people together," when the whole clan reassembles for a day or two, and " small and earlies " are held with vivacity and success. Then nests are overhauled and even added to a spectacle that prompts the wandering stranger to write to his favourite paper, pointing out that the winter must surely be one of the mildest on record. But those who live among rooks know that nothing comes then of this freak. In April they set to work in earnest, industry and jealousy reigning supreme in the colony ; faggot upon faggot of sticks is fetched and crossed over last year's foundations, tufts of wool and the like are gleaned from sheep-walks and pastures; and the last touch is put to the structure by an egg three or four perhaps no doubt in the opinion of each enamoured couple the most delightfully shaped, the most delicately blue-tinted, and the most artistically mottled of any in the park. But we have almost forgot to shoot our "branchers" in the interest of the steps leading to their hatching. The rook battue is the most popular form of this sport. The squire asks his friends down to the number of a dozen or so, according to the number of trees and nests, and for a day, or perhaps two days, the fun is fast and furious. The happy time to hit upon is just when the " squatters " are venturing upon their trial flights. Were they younger they might keep to their nests, where it is barbarism to shoot CROWS. 55 them ; and were they older, then the shooting would come to a speedy termination by the whole colony migrating with natural expeditiousness to less disturbed regions. As it is, some of the stronger birds go out to the pasture oaks, and we have to go after them, wading for a shot waist deep through wet, sweet-scented meadow parsley, or deep swathes of grass almost ready for the scythe, before we come back with our trophies, as likely as not wet through. But what seems to our selfishness the choicest sport is to be alone this early summer weather with our trusted little rifle only for a companion, and license to be as unsociable as we will. Then we can lie at leisure on the wide blue carpet of the wood hyacinths, or, sauntering down the drives, come un- observed upon many a curious bit of nature, and witness many a little comedy or tragedy of the woods that the powder-burners up at the hall never dream of. In this way we have spent many a summer morning, lying perhaps con- cealed among the green commas of the unwinding bracken and the thin covering of the new leaves, while the rooks fed their young ones on the low trees about us, all unsuspect- ing of our presence. Within the limits of the crow species, as we know them in England, are included some birds very dissimilar in out- ward garb, though there is a perceptible family likeness amongst them in character and outline. Their physical blackness is but the reflex of the character they bear amongst the less thoughtful, marking them as outlaws by flood and forest, common enemies, excommunicated beyond hope of redemption, whom it is virtuous to slay and witty to revile ! I am not going to white-wash them, but suggest the latest views of other country-side observers, and my own, on the depth of their negrititude. It is useless to pretend human observation can detect a track of shame or remorse in crow kind for even the most palpable and flagrant offences brought home to them. Nest-pillaging village boys they detest, and keepers, when they have a gun with them, they respect; 56 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. but for the rest of humanity they have an undisguised contempt. The jackdaw of Rheims was a false bird to the extent of his contrition for the theft committed. Had he been a daw true to his breeding and colour, as far at least as mundane probabilities go, he would have defied and derided the Lord Cardinal's "holy anger," and cared not a sous for the plenary absolution. Crows of all kinds are strong in their self- conceit, though this is best seen abroad amongst the white collared birds of the Transvaal or the slim-built Corvus splendens of the tropics. Here, at home, the crows (with the exception, perhaps, of the rook) shun civilization, keep- ing much to themselves ; nor is it to be wondered at, for constant trapping and shooting is making every one of our six or seven species scarcer each season. How can the raven thrive, for instance, when shepherds proclaim he tears the eyes from lambing sheep, and keepers swear he spits in pure wantonness every kind of young animal upon that remorseless black pionard, his beak ! No need to describe his geographical distribution. He is a citizen of the world. " His sable plumage reflects the burning sun of the equator, and his shadow falls upon the region of perpetual snow ; he alights on the jutting peaks of lofty mountains, and haunts the centre of vast untrodden plains ; his hoarse cry startles the depth of the dense primeval forest, and echoes amongst the rocks of lonely islands of the ocean : no ultima thule is terra incognita to him ; arctic and antarctic are both alike the home of the corbie crow." Johnson, the African traveller, found him, pied in colour by the way, when he was fighting and sketching on lonely Killamanjaro in middle Africa, and a raven was the last fresh meat Lieutenant Greely and his starving Americans tasted when they wintered under the bitter crags of Cape Sabine within the arctic ice. As far as England is concerned these birds have been driven into the fastnesses of the north, the Welsh hills and CROWS. 57 some such wild localities as the Yorkshire scars or Cumber- land wolds. There is little to be said for their protection or encouragement ; any little good they may do as eaters of carrion or destroyers of useless lower life, is lost in the immensity of their tenantless feeding grounds, while, on the other hand, they undoubtedly tyrannize over game and weakly sheep. " They will pursue even the buzzard, the goshawk, or the eagle, to endeavour to obtain from him his own capture," writes the Rev. F. 0. Morris, and consequently it may be understood they would not hesitate to attack a mountain hare far from cover in the snow, or rend a young sheep astray from its companions. The only facts commending this sable bird of Thor to our care is his place in history and legend, and the tender heart of the naturalist, which is Buddist in its encircling indulgence. Choughs and jackdaws are equally neutral in character, the former crows with scarlet legs and bills keep to a few rocky headlands round the Cornish or Yorkshire coasts. It is long since they were seen in any numbers east of the Solent, though Shakespeare knew them well enough, and recently one observer writes from Dover : "The chough has not been seen about these cliffs for many years. About twenty-five years ago I saw one from the parapet at ArchclifFe Fort, on which I was leaning, looking seawards at a lot of gulls. It was flying amongst the latter, and came within ten yards of me, so that I could see its orange bill and legs. A local naturalist has just told me that he saw a chough near the South Foreland some twenty years since. I. think the jackdaws, which swarm in these cliffs, occupying every available hole, would drive the chough away." Jackdaws, on the other hand, are well known wherever there are escarpments or ruins. No one can be familiar with the south coast without recalling its jackdaws. In spring I have seen them, quarrelling and building amongst the yellow wall flowers and Valerian on the ledges of the white 58 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. cliffs ; sweeping out in clamorous schools at every real or fancied danger the measured tread of a coastguard above or the shadow of a gliding kestrel crossing their nursery floors ; and in summer they curvet with their young over the breezy downs, or descend upon the cliff crofters' potato plots, but no harm is committed there or elsewhere by them. With infinite disgust have I met town gunners turning out of an afternoon to harry this cheerful and harmless little bird amongst his breeding places in the ruins, and in particular one such party comes especially prominently to my memory. I was walking down " Tweed side " and passed under the ruins of Drochil Castle, once owned, it is said, when Scotland was an independent monarchy, by a noble baron who turned his restless genius to the invention of the guillotine ; and sub- sequently, under direction of his sovereign, illustrated the working of the affair on his own person with the assistance of a few regal retainers ! This stronghold was overgrown with ivy, and abounded in jackdaws who cawed and chivied one another through casement or port holes, adding life and interest to the scene. I sat down and thought how well their presence befitted quiet. " Surely no voice in Nature was ever more suggestive of long undisturbed repose, more significant of the statelier forms of peace, or more in harmony with old baronial possessions than the pleasant clamour of the jackdaws up amongst the chimneys and turrets. Not only do they enhance the tranquillity of the ancient castle, but they add a solemnity to the minster; the poets are quite wrong when they say the * steeple-loving jackdaws' note is dismal.' Down the strath, when I had left the birds, with my heart full of friendliness to them, I met three or four townsmen armed with cheap breechloaders, about whose errand I speculated for a time. It was only when retracing my steps the same evening up the glen the wretched mystery was explained. Those gentlemen of clothyard and scales had had a field day amongst the birds, the castle was silent and deserted, and along both sides of the approach CROWS. 59 were some sixty or seventy greydaws, dead, and impaled in reckless mockery on the points of a hurdle fence at distances of ten yards apart, a most melancholy avenue under the rays of a rising moon ! It is hard to draw a hard and fast distinction between what is cruelty to animals and what is not ; but there ought to be no difficulty in morally denning wanton slaughter or distinguishing it from legitimate sport. In coming to the rook we come to a very fertile source of controversy which would fill a portly volume if argued oat to the bitter end. " Rooks do endless damage to seed corn," say the farmers, " and moreover peck holes in root crops, thereby letting in the frost, thus ruining acres of keep at a time when it is most valuable." " Besides this," suggests velveteens, who only knows some half a dozen birds, classing all the rest as " vermin," " they carry off plenty of young game in the season, and play havoc amongst the c-o-ops if left unguarded for any time." Of these accusations, the first is undoubtedly the most serious. Though the bareness at the base of their bills is not due, as has been ingeniously suggested, to constant friction with the soil, yet they are unquestionably great and successful diggers. If wheat in a dry March is put in lightly or broadcasted, the rooks will find it out and un- doubtedly take their toll. Yet there is a cheap and easy remedy at hand which solves their delinquencies at once, and makes us safe, moreover, from small birds. There will be no further need of bird keepers if farmers would adopt the following process : Take one pint of gas tar to two gallons of warm water, for eight bushels of corn, and well mix in the same way wheat is dressed for smut. When sown neither rooks or game of any kind will disturb it, nor will the dressing injure the growth of the seed. They by no means depend on one class of food for support. A close observer illustrates this. He says : " During the last few years I have brought up young 60 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. rooks by hand and turned them loose in the garden, where they have been continually under my observation, and I have never yet seen one of these birds eat a slug or a snail. " Earthworms they will drag up and eat by morsels ; ear- wigs, beetles, chrysalises and flies they will swallow whole in any numbers. When given to them they will eat cold potatoes, cbeese, biscuits and eggs, raw or cooked, and game. " One spends a great part of his time waylaying sparrows. When caught he holds the sparrow down with his claws, while he plucks it, regardless of its shrieks ; he then pulls off the head, and, after eating the body, buries the head and intestines. One of my rooks once caught a large frog, which he tried to swallow whole, but one leg protruded from his beak and was immediately snapped off by his fellow bird. While gardening we have frequently offered numerous slugs and snails to the rooks ; but, seeing that they never touched them we, of course, now destroy these garden pests as soon as discovered. "My rooks are quaint and amusing pets, easily tamed and very intelligent." About their sagacity there cannot be the slightest doubt. They are rarely caught in traps, though later on I give some ingenious devices for that purpose; sticks driven into the ground and connected by simple zigzags of string will keep them away from any place. They have a horror of any sort of beguilement, nearly as great as their repugnance to a gun. The farmer who can get near enough to the rooks unearthing his corn to shoot one of their number, will nob be troubled by the survivors for some time to come. The difficulty is to get within range. I failed so often in the attempt that at last I fell back upon a Snider rifle ; with this I have several times got to within one hundred and fifty yards of a feeding flock, and a shot " into the brown " or rather black, has caused a ridiculous panic without, how- ever, any great harm being done to the birds. Sometimes their attention is transferred from corn to CROWS. 61 meadow land, which latter they " scarify " after a day or two's work as though a patent harrow had been once or twice over it. Bad as this looks, it hides a good purpose. The rook does not feed on grass, nor has he time for mischief pure and simple. He has been indulging in wire- worm and cockchafer grub dainties of which he is very fond and the amount of these wretched, ruinous grubs a flock will make away with in a morning's campaign is simply astonishing. Let the farmer run his light roller over the well-probed leas and bless the rooks, they are not the least useful of his feathered allies. Perhaps the game- keeper can hardly be invited to say so much. Here, for instance, is a sad story from a writer in The Field. " My keeper one morning observed about half a dozen rooks engaged amongst the coops of young pheasants, and, suspecting their object, drove them off. The next morning, having fed and watered the young birds, he went to his cottage, and, looking out about six o'clock, saw a strong detachment of rooks from a neighbouring colony in great excitement amongst the pens. He ran down, a distance of two hundred yards, as fast as possible, but before he arrived they succeeded in killing, and for the most part carrying off, from forty to fifty birds, two or three weeks old. As he came amongst them they flew up in all directions, their beaks full of the spoil. The dead birds not carried away had all of their heads pulled off, and most of their legs and wings torn from the body. I have long known that rooks destroy partridges' nests and eat the eggs when short of other food, but have never known a raid of this description. I attribute it to the excessive drought, which has so starved the birds by depriving them of their natural insect food that that they are driven to depredation. It will be necessary to be on guard for some time ; bad habits once acquired (as with man-eating tigers) may last even more than one season. Probably the half dozen rooks first seen amongst the coops tasted two or three, and finding them eatable, brought their 62 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. friends in numbers the next morning. In former years, when drought has prevailed, instances have been recorded of rooks robbing nests of the callow brood ; and in the winter, too, when the ground has been too hard for them to get food, they have been known to hawk after and kill small birds." But rooks afford some legitimate sport in May time, and such transgressions as these are very rare indeed, the result unquestionably of being very greatly pressed by hunger^. Probably not one keeper in fifty has lost birds by rooks. Crows (and crows, I may point out to the unlearned in country side lore,, are quite distinct from rooks) do do some damage to our pheasants and partridges. In Norway and Sweden they and the magpies have obliterated ryper and grouse from the fell sides. Here at home they cater for their young with an atrocious want of discrimination generally bringing prompt vengeance upon them. Only let us be certain when the luckless corbie is arraigned and executed that we have got hold of the real criminal. A suggestive story in point should make many a game- keeper of conscience look aside as he passes his museum on barn door or ash tree. " Some time ago there were several letters in The Field regarding hedgehogs eating eggs. Within a single season there have been two distinct cases come under observa- tion, that have conclusively settled the question for ever. The first is this : I had a tame duck laying under some tops of trees that had been recently felled in the wood where I reside. There were five eggs in the nest. On the follow- ing morning there were only two and a piece of shell. On the following night I put down a common rabbit trap at the nest, let into the ground, and covered over. About ten p.m. I heard something crying out (similar to the noise made by a hare when in distress). Upon my going I found a very large hedgehog in the trap. I took it out, killed it, and set the trap again. About eleven p.m. there was another large CROWS. 63 hedgehog in the wood pile, which I killed, and set the trap again. I went again the next morning at five a.m., and found another large hedgehog in the same gin, making three hedgehogs in one night caught at the duck's nest. Since then the duck has been sitting in the same nest un- disturbed by anything. The second case occurred recently. One of my men came to me with a face as long as a fiddle. ' Master,' says he, ' the crows have been and spoilt a pheasant's nest that you knew of down the wood, by the withy bed.' I asked him if he was sure it was crows. ' Come and see for yourself,' was the answer. I went, and sure enough there were nine eggs destroyed out of fifteen. They appeared to have been bitten half through. It then came to my mind about the hedgehogs eating the duck's eggs, and I was determined to find out and prove what it was destroying these eggs. I took the remaining six eggs home, and inserted a very small quantity of strychnine into each egg, and sealed them up again, and took them back to the nest where the others were destroyed. The next morning the man and I went to see if anything was there, when we found an immense hedgehog flat on his belly, and very much swelled up, not a yard from the nest, and quite dead, and as if in the act of crawling away from the nest. Only two of the eggs were partially eaten. Is not this conclusive evidence that the hedgehog is a great enemy to the pheasant and partridge ? " And, I may add, evidence that crows and other birds often suffer for guilt not their own. I might enlarge to any extent on jays and magpies, those picturesque brigands of the coppices. As imported by its specific name, Morris observes, the acorn is the most choice morceau of the jay, and for them he even searches under the snow ; but he also feeds on more delicate fruits such as peas and cherries, as well as on beechmast, nuts, and berries, corn, worms, cockchaffers, and other insects, larvae, frogs and other reptiles, even mice, and is deterred by no qualms or scruples in making away with young birds. These birds, in the 64 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. autumn, are said to hide away food for future use, under leaves in some secure place, and in holes of trees. They are great egg-suckers also, and the nest of the missel thrush, song thrush, and blackbird suffer greatly, both when they have eggs and young ones. In the latter case many a furious fight I have witnessed, and the gallant conduct and boldness these birds exhibited in defence of their helpless brood was truly astonishing, since they pursue the jay with unrelenting fury, in and out of thickets where it would try to gain shelter. Occasionally I have observed it succeed if there were only one pair of birds defending ; but it often happens that other pairs come to their assistance whose nests or young ones are in the immediate neighbourhood, and these, boldly and unitedly concerting together against a common enemy, often drive it ignominiously away. The magpie is a little better in service to humanity. Of these two, as of all the rest of the genus, I can only say that in place and in reason they are a distinct gain to our allies by covert and meadow. When they trespass they trespass badly, worse indeed than the majority of birds ; but of this I am certain, that all the crow kind within our four seas do less harm to agriculture in the aggregate than a single shower when the hay is down, or corn is ripe ; and much less harm to game than a thunderstorm (or an inch of snow on the high grounds), when grouse or partridge chicks have grown too big and bulky to shelter under their mother's wings. CROWS AND THEIR CAPTURE. A reasonable and philosophical view must indeed soon be taken of the work done for mankind by the crow, the rook, and their kindred. Were it otherwise, we should hesitate before divulging any of those many and cunning secrets de- vised for their destruction which a store of human enemies have scattered through the pages of "Manuals "and "Treatises." CROWS. 65 For, heretical as it' may sound, we have a strong feeling of friendship for the dusky brotherhood. Perhaps it will be suggested we have never suffered materially at their hand, or we might be less indulgent. We do not allow this, for we have felt, and bitterly resented at the time, nearly every form of indignity to which the corvine species can put either the sportsman, the naturalist, or the farmer. And yefc there appears, in our mind, no legitimate need to consign the whole race to that hideous barbarity "the gamekeeper's tree," for when their numbers are moderate the good they do, and the life infused into often desolate regions, far outweigh their transgressions. At least, this is the writer's experience, an experience, moreover, practical and not altogether inextensive. The raven, for instance, the first of his kind in size, strength, and cunning, if a hundred fables about him are to be believed, has been my companion in many a lonely ramble up Highland passes and over the seldom trodden wastes of the wild western coast. Perhaps he does occasionally take a juicy young grouse, when he fancies a change of diet would be useful, and young hares or mountain rabbits playing about far from cover undeniably suggest dinner to him. But the harm done in this way is small, even when all carefully recorded, and we could write off with very little grudging in our game books each season a few brace of birds or fur to his account. Then, there is the crow a bird of evil omen all over the world, which, nevertheless, contrives to live a happy and useful life from the verge of perpetual ice along the Nova Zembla shores to the rim of the antarctic circle. The oldest Yedas tell us how he fell from Paradise, and the most ancient Cinghalese writings record his original sin : " In wrath for their tale-bearing for had they not carried abroad the secrets of the councils of the gods ? Indra hurled them down through the hundred storeys of his heaven;" and the Pratyasatka adds that "nothing can improve a crow." In India he is the common enemy; kites F 66 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. knock him off the roof ridge or wrench away the meat he has stolen from the kitchen ; pariah dogs come on him round the corner and shortly dine on " black game." Has the " mem- sahib " lost a silk handkerchief ? Then it must be that rascally crow on the cotton tree who has taken it, and forthwith the " butler wallah " attaches an appetizing bit of meat to a couple of feet of string and throws it into the compound. At the other end of the string is a small stone, and when the bird of sable plumage swoops down and flies off exultantly with the morsel in his beak, the string very speedily swings itself round his body, and the result is an ignominious tumble to earth, and an inglorious scuffle on the sand till native fingers loosen the tangle. But then begins the worst part of this proceeding for Corvus splendens. He is taken into the shed, which goes by the name of kitchen in India, and plucked remorselessly, being divorced from every vestige of plumage, as he struggles and kicks between the butler's knees ; and then, in this plight truly a sorry one he is released, to die of melancholia, we should fancy, on the nearest roof top, for a live plucked crow, " naked and ashamed," is about the most woe-begone spectacle in orni- thology that can be imagined. Native children are also proficient in capturing the much- abused crow. A lively and strong bird is obtained, little used to such indignities, and is pegged down to the ground in the open on his back with forked twigs, which are driven in over his wing^bones. He very speedily lets the whole neighbourhood hear of his misfortune, and the wild birds, flocking round him, crowd so close that at length one is seized in the sufferer's claws, and convulsively held until the fowler rushes from his ambush, and secures it for himself. Then, again, comes the bitter part, for the birds Apollo loved are taken, and after suffering numberless indignities at the hands of their small tormentors, each receive a daub of cobbler's wax on its beak, between the eyes, and in this CEO WS. 67 three or four red or green feathers are stuck a style of borrowed plumage comical in the extreme the unfortunate birds being a laughing-stock, not only to their biped enemies on the ground, but to their friends amongst the boughs, if one may judge by the clamour with which they are received aloft. Shakespeare speaks of the crow as " ribald ; " Prior, " foreboding ; " Dyer, " lurking ; " Churchill and Gay, " strutting ; " Dryden, " dastard ; " and so on. In every land they have a bad name. " Yet they do not wear their colour with humility, or even common decency. On the contrary, they swagger in it, pretending they chose that exact shade for themselves. ... In the verandahs, they parade the reverend sable which they disgrace ; sleek as Chadband, wily as Pecksniff. Their step is grave, and they seem ever on the point of quoting scripture, while their eyes are wandering towards carnal matters. Like Stiggins, they keep a sharp look out for tea-time, and hanker after flesh-pots." Hiawatha knew of a land of dead crow men, and in Thibet the wandering pilgrims say there is an evil city of crows. Those who have dipped into northern fiction must remember the Swedish "Place of crows and devils," and the Norwegian " Hill of Bad Spirits," where the souls of wicked men fly about in the likeness of the same unfortunate bird. In the latter country the crow is an undoubted nuisance, and a terrible poacher ; so he is shot and trapped without mercy, but (as usual) seems to thrive on persecution. The " crow pen " is a common sight in the Scandinavian backwood villages. It is nothing but a huge birdcage, but formed of slender saplings seven or eight feet in length, and about four feet high above the ground. The spaces on top are left pretty wide open for a time, until the crows have become used to going in and out to get the bait and there are few places where their kind will not go for that purpose and then when familiarity has bred hardihood the top pieces are put close together, leaving only a hole through which the 68 SIED LIFE IN ENGLAND. crows can easily drop with closed wings, but too small for them to flap through when they rise from the inside. Great is the rejoicing of the farmer and his small children, and prodigious the clamour of the birds on the outside of the trap, when this cage is thronged with an entrapped multi- tude. The rook is such a pleasant neighbour in a country house that he is generally and properly protected, but occasionally he is " wanted " either as a misdoer, guilty of agricultural offences, or as a victim to the modern falconer, who finds in him a convenient quarry to enter haggards upon. Mr. J. E. Harting tells us that rooks are taken for this purpose in two ways. The first is to get a boy to climb a tree in the rookery, taking with him a long line with a noose at one end. The noose must be carefully adjusted over the nest in such a manner that when a rook has settled down to roost in the evening, the falconer on pulling the other end of the string at the foot of the tree may catch it round the legs. It is in this way that herons are generally caught for the same purpose. A certain amount of care must be exercised to ensure the line running freely, and also to ensure getting the bird down nicely. The other method is to set traps behind a plough, and to get the ploughman to shift them from time to time as he proceeds. The trap need not be large or heavy, and a short line or peg will prevent a rook flying away with it. If the spring be too strong or the teeth too sharp, the jaws may be bound with list so as to prevent a risk of breaking the bird's leg, In putting on the list, of course care must be taken that it does not impede the closing of the trap ; otherwise the rook on springing it would extricate his foot and get away. But, says another friend of the birds " In his industry the farmer has but few such friends, or the insect world such foes. Up in the morning, before the dew is off the grass, the rooks are hard at work disposing of that ' first worm ' which proverbially falls to the lot of the early bird. CROWS. C9 Like detectives, they are perpetually on the watch to arrest some one, and woe to the insect, grub, or beetle whose evil ways are discovered. There is no appeal from a rook. It holds its sessions where it chooses, and they may look for summary procedure who come under this admirable bird." This only makes all the more ungenerous the device of the Wiltshire husbandmen. Though we have no experience of the success of the method, it is said rooks are taken by them as follows : A number of cones are made of dark- coloured paper. At the bottom of each of these is placed some corn, and round the upper edge is smeared a little birdlime. The cones are then stuck about a field, point downwards, where the rooks resort, and, on their coming there, they observe the corn, and thrusting their heads in to obtain it, the cones become stuck to them, rendering them blind, and they may be captured in that state by hand. In folk-lore they hold an honourable place. They are said to connect themselves with the fortunes of families, deserting their elms when disaster overtakes the house ; and Cosmo di Medici, visiting England two centuries ago, was especially struck by the pride the peerage took in its rookeries. " For these birds," said he, "are of good omen." The jay is a crow with the men of science, in spite of its gay dress, and lets out the secret in voice and inquisitive ness. Though "the brigands and tyrants of the coppice," they are one of the few birds of brilliant plumage native to England, and do but little harm to the game of our wood- lands, it is on the small birds that they chiefly wage war. Their clanship and the interest each takes in its neighbours' concerns is very remarkable. A writer in a long-extinct journal gives a very amusing account of the way in which this trait in the jay's character is turned to use for his destruction. Describing an orchard in German Alsace, he says : " It was pretty extensive, covering, I should say, a couple of acres, and its trees, which were, all but one, in excellent trim, were chiefly apple and cherry trees. The 70 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. lonely one which made thus an exception to the rule was truly in as desperate a plight as any fruit tree could ever be. Leafless, barkless, broken-down, and bare, it was but the very ghost or skeleton, at best, of an old apple tree. At its foot was a small hut, about the size of a Newfoundland's kennel. This hut was made roughly, of a few willow branches, with both ends stuck in the ground, tunnel-shape, and covered over with a few handfuls of evergreens. Karl, my active German guide, who had brought a large clasp-knife-, thereupon proceeded to cut down a few more branches and leaves from the nearest hedge, and he interlaced these with the frame- work of the hut, so as to make its interior tolerably secure from the prying glances of the jays on the morrow. " The next morning, early, ' we were all there,' as the Americans say. A cool morning it was, with a fresh breeze blowing, and the dew yet on every blade of grass, when we left the keeper's house. Karl was carrying a large pan of bird-lime, a bundle of small branches about a foot long, a long stick notched at one end, a large and long empty cage, and a smaller one containing a live jay. On his back was strapped a small bundle of hay. When we reached the hut, he, first of all, thrust the hay inside, and placed the cage out of harm's way in the hut. Then he cut the string which held all his bits of stick together, and taking them, one by one, he thrust each of them separately in the notch of his long stick, dipped them, turn by turn, in the fresh lime, and fixed them here and there on the uppermost branches of the apple tree, wherever any forks in the branches allowed a resting-place for them. "When he had arranged the lot, the sun was getting pretty well up in the sky, and we crawled into the hut. Oar position there was not remarkably comfortable, but the pro- spect in store was rather cheering, and that made a com- pensation for the somewhat cramped posture we were for the time being forced to adopt. " Meanwhile, by peering through the leaves I saw a band CHOWS. 71 of jays coming at a very slow rate across the tops of the forest trees towards us. " ' Now the fan will begin,' whispered the garde in my ear, and his eyes twinkled merrily. Saying this, he placed and held the little cage in front of his knees, and began poking his fingers through the bars. " Screech ! screech ! screech ! " at once shouted the captive jay, at the same time attacking vigorously the keeper's hand, and all the while keeping up incessantly its extraordinary clatter. " ' Screech ! screech ! screech ! " replied immediately the astonished wild jays, pausing at first in their surprise, and settling on the branches nearest to them to listen. " ' Screech ! screech ! ' pursued the tame bird, and the others, wondering no doubt what on earth was being done to their confrere, set sail without further parley, and drew nearer to try to find, doubtless, where the aggravating assault was being committed. In a few moments, the trees around us were covered with them, turning their big heads this way and that way, making their eyes sparkle and shine like beads, and showing themselves off, oh, so beautifully ! with their wonderfully bright plumage, amidst the ripe cherries and the green leaves which surrounded them. It was almost a pity to disturb and catch them, but the keeper did not see it ' in the same light.' ' Screech ! screech ! screech ! ' exploded Karl's bird under his manipulations ; and, lo ! whilst I Was watching one of the strangers in his evolutions something fell behind me with a great deal of spluttering, on the hut, and rolled from thence to the ground ; then another ; and another again ; and on turning round quietly I saw three jays on the grass, struggling to set themselves free ; but the glued stick held them well, and the birds' fate was settled. In a moment more four or five more jays were also coming down, and Karl, withdrawing his fingers, allowed his ' call ' bird to relapse into quietness. Thereupon those of the wild birds which were still free flew back towards the forest, 72 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. settling on the border trees, and as soon as the coast was pretty clear of them, Karl rushed out, picked up the caught birds, and thrust them quickly into the large empty cage. There was a ' row ' then, every one of the new-comers shouting most lustily, not only all the time they were held, but when caged ; every time we as much as winked at them, they broke forth in the most unmusical and noisy of concerts. " Of course, those that had gone away no sooner heard this shocking shindy, than they all flocked back to the rescue, and in less than a quarter of an hour's time over two dozen of them were also prisoners." English bird dealers find that to take this bird no plan is more effectual than sham eggs as bait to a gin. They should be turned out of wood, birch answers very well, coloured and varnished to represent the natural ones. Thrushes are perhaps as good as any for the purpose, as they show well and are easy of imitation. Four or five of these eggs should be put in a shatn or real nest, placed on a stage against a tree a few feet from the ground, leaving just room for the gin, which must have a little branch or two on either side of it, so as to bar access to the nest, save over the trap. The peculiar advantage of this plan is that, strange to say, it can be employed with success all through the winter when natural eggs are not attainable ; and the false eggs can be carried in the pocket without fear of breaking them. Then there is the magpie, of which old legends say, we read, that it still lies under Noah's curse, because when the other birds came of their own accord into the Ark, it alone gave trouble, and had to be caught. " What a delightful idea the whole of Noah's Ark waiting to start, till Japhet caught the magpie ! " It is everywhere a "fowl of mystery." On the far side of the North Sea it swarms, and perhaps does something towards keeping down the stock of game, for the " pyet " is desperately fond of eggs, and they often lead him into the gamekeeper's trap. On the shore of a shallow pond or lagoon which they frequent a small " pier " of stones and CROWS. 73 moss is built about three feet long from a shelving bank. At the end a steel rabbit trap is set. A hen's egg as bait having been emptied through a large hole on one side, a small piece of stick or a match with twine attached is placed cross-ways inside. To the other end of the twine a stone is fastened, and the egg is by this means anchored off the end of the artificial jetty. When a magpie sees the egg floating on the water, down it comes, and after a little while walks up the " landing-stage," to get within reach of the tempting morsel, and is caught in the act. We have said nothing about the admirable chough, who, like the crow and raven, is faithful to one mate until death divides them. King Arthur's spirit went into a " russet-pated chough," the Cornish bards sing after Camlan ; and the only mention we have in fable of the red-stockinged " market- j e w-crow " is when he very pro- perly refuses to " swop " his scarlet legs for the peacock's gaudy tail. He is modest and faithful in his personality, and attractive to the naturalist and lover of coast scenery. The jackdaws and hooded crows are as interesting as any of their kind, and fill up niches in the rich and varied bird life of the British Isles. 74 BIBD LIFE IN ENGLAND. CHAPTER IV. MARSH BIRDS. FOR POWDER AND PASTIES. PLENTY of sportsmen who are keen enough on heather or stubble "think small" of the various game of the marsh lands. They will when beating grouse cover pull trigger on a snipe, if he gets up out of a runnel, or springs from a miniature swamp where bog myrtles make diminutive forests on the wet peat tussocks. I have even seen these shooters " blaze " into a flock of plovers coming temptingly overhead, but it was always with an implied protest and a sense of the un worthiness of the game. Myself I do not much sympathize with them. Each sportsman will have his particular fancy in such matters, just as one man will go into ecstasies over a view which to another may be tame or barren. But, though not the first of sports, marsh shooting is very excellent in its way, and here at home, even in these days of hard draining and the reclaiming of land Nature never intended for cultivation, it is practised with enthusiasm and success by some of the keenest gunners on foot. They may at least claim for their sport that it is universal and world wide. Other countries have their distinctive shootings to some extent. Pheasant shooters will not find much to do outside English shires, and he who loves the grouse must go to Scotland, while big game hunters look to Norway for reindeer, Canada for her moose and bison, India for the tiger, and Africa for the lion and elephant; but he MAESH BIRDS. 75 who loves the merry brown snipe or his kindred, the wild wastes of sighing rushes, and the pools that flash back the daylight in their green setting, will find his delight in every land under the sun. When the ice cracks upon arctic tarns and the first fresh water of the year catches the red glint of the early summer sun, the snipe and the plovers are amongst those pools very possibly there is no one to molest them, but that is not their fault ; and as Lap or Siberian move up to the fells and spring time bursts over their country, all these little birds are there already. There is no better shooting anywhere, again, than in the tropics. The water- courses of the Flowery Land, the rich rice swamps of Ceylon, and the fertile plains of India have their Painted Snipe. A bewildering multitude of other game of much the same feather in Australia abound on the inland marshes. Nearer home I am much tempted to dilate on many pro- ductive snipe-grounds, but the subject is too extensive. As a rule it may be pointed out rough shooting is best all over the Mediterranean and the lands bordering upon it. just at " flight time," and falls off rapidly after a week or two. But extraordinary sport is sometimes had amongst fen birds from Constantinople and the Black Sea to Cadiz, " while the fun lasts." Here, for instance, is a sketch of the sort of thing they sometimes get in the neighbourhood of Smyrna nearly opposite Cyprus ; the writer being a resident and a good sportsman, his letter bearing a date in April. "A long and unusually cold spell," he writes, "brought our annual visitors in countless flights, to which the wholesale destruction apparently made no difference, as the cold in- tensified other flights, filled up the thinned ranks, until whole districts were alive with cock, every little bush holding a starved and emaciated tenant. " In Smyrna the streets were inundated with thousands of cocks for sale at 3d. or 2d. each, or almost any price you would name. During one week it is computed twenty thousand were brought into this town ; one French steam-packet alone 76 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. shipped eight thousand cocks for Marseilles ; in fact, the bird was a drug, and offering one of the most prized of birds to your friend was almost an insult. Many professional native sportsmen gave up shooting as not paying for powder, shot, and expenses, and on the first return of mild weather, when the flights returned to their breeding grounds, many might join in Dean Swift's grace, ' We've had enough.' " Of individual bags, it is said one gun scored one hundred and sixty-eight cocks in one day ; possible from the quantity and state of storm-driven birds, yet difficult to credit. Two guns, however, in fifteen and a half hours' shooting, extend- ing over two days, bagged just one hundred couples. Other guns during a day, or even part of a day, bagged fifty and sixty cocks each a feat accomplished by many ordinary shots. This took place in the neighbourhood of Smyrna, where the flights were more concentrated. If we consider that they extended over nearly the whole of Anatolia, and that thousands perished in the sea whilst crossing from the mainland to the islands of Ohio and Metelin when storm- driven and feeble, the destruction must have been enormous, and may in no way revive hopes in your readers of future plenty. Yet over a wide expanse of country many thousands of birds never heard a gun ; and if to these be added the apparent quantity of birds that survived the battering welcome of the elements and of sportsmen, which is known, it is clear that enough will return to the fens and lakes of Prussia, Finland, and Northern Russia, to breed numbers sufficient to partly make up for such destruction. " A point for discussion suggests itself, however. Do birds that visit our shores, in case even of favourable wind and weather, ever migrate to England ? Is it not rather those bred in Norway? and Sweden which are welcomed by sportsmen at home ? Flights from these latter countries will again vary the line of migration according to the direction of the wind at starting ; so a scarcity in England may be occasioned from such a cause, and not actual decrease of the breed." MARSH BIRDS. 77 What joy would there f be in Cornwall and Devonshire were such a flight as the above to grace their holly thickets and spruce plantations ! But I fear we must wait for that fortunate breeze at the flitting season the writer suggests as regulating the cocks' movements. I have wandered rather far away, and possibly the woodcock of Smyrna, or the long- bills that teem in Caspian swamps are of little interest to home sportsmen. It cannot be denied that, as far as cock are concerned, there has been a lamentable falling off in the number of these birds to be obtained in our home shires a decrease more marked indeed than that of snipe, though the improvement of land would on the face of it have been supposed to most affect the latter bird. It is difficult to say why this is, though there are some causes which may be pointed to with certainty as having contributed to this undesirable end. To begin with, the woodcock is a very shy bird, shy cer- tainly in disposition if not in habitat. During the hours of moonlight and in open weather, like most of their kind, they are active and feeding in the open. Thus they have some- times been taken in the poachers' drag nets when sweeping stubbles for partridges. You will find the woodcock during the day sitting under a clump of bushes or trees quite dry. If you examine the place where the bird gets up, you will see by the droppings it has kept its place after going to covert for the day, just as a hare keeps her seat until disturbed. They suffer a near approach the first time they rise, and should they escape being killed seldom afford another shot, unless a second person contrives to drive them to the gun, in which respect also they resemble hares, and it would not be difficult to imagine that the country where civilization is most oppressive to free spirits, and their midday repose is most often broken, would earn a bad name amongst them. But more prominently than this cause of scarcity may be placed some others, the greater deadliness of modern arms of precision, the far greater number who use them, and lastly 78 B1ED LIFE IN ENGLAND. but not least, a consideration closely allied to the first one mentioned, greatly increased facilities of locomotion and con- sequent close search of spots to-day that formerly were natural sanctuaries unbroken by human intrusion. The general tendency of such altered circumstances would be to give England a bad savour at the woodcock head-quarters, to diminish migration, and would of course lead to the thinning of the ranks of such as ventured here and the practical extermination of those that might wish to remain and breed. The woodcock, however, is a very persevering bird. With anything like fair play and quiet he will always find out favourite haunts and fill them. The Wild Birds Protection Act should have done as much for him as for any bird. But with the mention of marsh or fen the bird that rises before us is the common and cheerful little snipe, which we have seen inhabits the globe from far north to far south. I doubt if, after allowing for the inevitable halo of romance which always tinges antique shooting stories, it could well be proved that our forefathers made much larger bags of snipe fifty years ago on localities which have remained un- changed than they could do in a favourable season of this or any neighbouring year. " Capricious in their movements as snipe are, and influenced by every change in the weather, they are still fond of certain spots ; and if they are to be met with in the country at all, you will be sure to find them in some of these. Snipe have wonderful 'lasting,' as an old gamekeeper used to say to me. ' Lord bless you, sir, I don't know how they stands ; there's as many now ' (this was just the end of the season) ' as if there was ne'er a one taken out of them the whole year and sure we're shooting them every day since October came in.' It is a fact ; shoot them as you will, there will be always some after you ; and, though it is the fashion now to complain of the scarcity of snipe, I attribute that entirely to the great increase of drainage, as in localities which are favourable to them, snipe are as plentiful to-day as they were MAESH BIRDS. 79 when I first began to shoot, now some thirteen or fourteen seasons ago. Of course, if you go in for improving the land, you improve the snipe out of it. Within a couple of miles of this there was a swamp with a river running through it, where in frost you could get your ten couple of snipe, with the chance of a duck or a mallard in the day. Now you would not see a snipe in it. An improving proprietor got hold of it, sunk the river, drained and sub-drained the swamp, and in two or three years had turnips and oats growing where I have often sunk below my hips shooting duck and snipe. Woodcock, I think, are getting scarcer every year, but not snipe ; the only difference I see in the latter is that they seem to be wilder than formerly. This may be fancy on my part ; I accounted for it by the mildness of the winters. This, however, I can say, that over the same ground I have got as good bags of snipe in recent seasons as I ever got in previous ones." This exactly illustrates what I mean. " Of course, if you go in for improving the land, you improve the snipe out of it," but otherwise " over the same ground as good a bag of snipe is to be got now as in any previous season." I look upon the natural supply of snipe as practically inexhaustible, a result due to the infinite diffusion of the species and the vastness of their breeding ground. Here we shall never breed any adequate supply for the ever rising enthusiasm of the sports- men of mud boots and retrievers, but from abroad we shall have a constant and unfailing fund limited only by the capacity of our counties to harbour and feed the strangers. " And both those capacities are getting narrower and narrower every day ! " observes the pessimist. There can be no doubt there is much truth in this. When King Alfred hid amongst the osier forests of Norfolk, and there was a current superstition that all dwellers near the Wash were web-footed, snipe must have found our littoral a very Elysium. To go no further back than the time of our grandfathers, there still live men who shot snipe amongst 80 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. flags and reeds where there is nothing now but cobble and curb stones. Moorfields were an excellent place for long-bills, and so was Belgrave Square and Pimlico ! There can be no doubt in the " home counties," at least, the available range of the snipe is within a measurable distance of total extinc- tion, and it is so to a greater or lesser extent elsewhere. Seeing, however, that snipe are to be had for the humour- ing, I would hint the advisability of pampering them wherever possible. At the risk of becoming an apostle of osiers, I would suggest, as in the chapter on ducks, the possibility of pre- paring with very little trouble tempting resting-places for migrating birds. An excellent letter to the Field, from one well and professionally qualified to express an opinion, illus- trates the practicability of the idea. " A LIKELY PLACE FOE A SNIPE. " SlE, "While reading a pithy sketch of a 'white frost,' an idea came into my mind that has often arisen before, especially when crossing manors in different parts of England how often the opportunity is lost of making a bit of covert for a snipe or a cock. I have met with lots of men belong- ing to my calling who knew well how to show a stock of hand-reared and indigenous game, that never once thought of establishing a bit or two in the place that would screen wandering game birds. It is simple enough ; all that is to be done is to provide the ' feed ' after having found the 4 situation,' work a bit with the head, and then sign willing. I remember following a man on an estate in the east of England, and on asking him while we were going round the place, if they ever got many snipe, he said one ' now and agin.' Now, I had seen that it only wanted a little working to turn a stretch of about ten acres in a direct line into a first-class snipe beat, and all by commanding the water in the top pond by means of a sluice or two. This bottom ran MA11SH BIRDS. 81 as a fringe to the arable, and was between that and the coverts ; and by judiciously breaking up, trenching, ditching, and planting willows, and on the highest places hollies, T could, in the flight time, generally about the middle of October (according to the season), keep my sedge and rushes in the top pond nearly root dry, and the water sufficiently low to afford food for the snipe, and by flushing the bottoms afforded future feed for them. The consequence was that, instead of a snipe or two 'now and agin,' I could all through the season show some, and frequently have seen killed by one gun down this beat, shooting over a small setter broken specially to work for snipe, a bag of eight or ten couples or more in an hour's easy walking in a white frost. The hollies would provide a cock or two, for if quiet they will not leave the feed far in a frost ; and many a rare specimen this place has afforded some of the most rare that have been obtained in this country for in a few years I had a splendid reach, with about a dozen ponds of various kinds, some open, some Avell sheltered, and rough snipe ground between ; for it is as easy to show snipe, cock, teal, widgeon, duck, and many of the divers on a shooting, as 'partridge, always partridge.' Many a sour, wet corner of a field, useless to grow anything but osiers, if broken up, trenched, and planted, would afford a snipe or two where one was not known before only as a rara avis. Find the feed, and my experience tells me they will go nearly anywhere. I could relate numerous instances of this. The great thing is to supply suitable and likely spots, and have them prepared when the first flight comes, and you can then stop those that would otherwise pass by you ; and, feed once found, you may always insure birds. How is it a particular holly bush will provide you a cock as sure as the season comes round, but that the ' situation suits ? ' Can any one tell me why ducks and widgeon select different ponds, and keep to them, unless it is that situation has the main to do with it ? "W. J., " Noblcthorp, Yorkshire." " Gamekeeper." G 82 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. Ireland will always no doubt be a head-quarters for these dainty little birds, and they are still to be had in more or less abundance every spring- and autumn along our eastern coasts. There, too, are reed beds and gorse dunes that hide in season other quarry for the sportsman naturalist happy hunting grounds once of the fen netsman. Daniel describes how when a fowler discovers a marsh hillock where the ruffs and reeves play, he places his net overnight, of the same kind as those called " clop " or day-nets only, generally single, and about fourteen yards long by four broad. At daybreak he resorts to his stand at the distance of one or two hundred yards from the nets the later the season the shyer the birds, and he must keep the further off. He then makes his pull, taking such birds as are within reach. After that, he places stuffed birds or " stales " to entice those that are continually traversing the fen. " A fowler has been known thus to catch forty-four birds at the iirst haul, and the whole taken in the morning was six dozen; though, when the stales are set, seldom more than two or three are taken at the same time." Mr. Lubbock, in his "Fauna of Norfolk," says that in that county nets were never used to take this bird, but rather snares made of horsehair. Then again there is "the foolish dotterel." In the whole range of English poetry, only two writers mention him ; one is eccentrically unfortu- nate in his remarks, and the other draws heavily upon the recognized licence of his order. Wordsworth in the " Idle Shepherd Boy " writes : " the sand lark chants a joyous song." Now that appellation is a local name for Charddrius morinellus, and we need not say that the shepherd boy would deserve any other title but that of idle who caught the silent dotterel chanting any sort of ditty. Drayton again, in " Polyolbion," tells us " The dotterel which we think a very dainty dish, Whose taking makes more sport as man no more can wish, For as you creepe, or coure, or lye, or stoupe, or goe, So marking you with care, the apish bird doth soe, MARSH BIRDS. 83 And acting everything doth never mark the net, Till he be in the snare which men for him have set." The poet lias here clearly accepted as fact exaggerated stories of fen men, based no doubt though they have been on substantial facts ; for this " shore lark," when newly arrived from the primitive barbarisms of the far north, is both foolish and curious. Bright lights in the darkness of night possess an attraction for birds often taken advantage of for their destruction. Thus the dotterel was caught in long fine nets extended about the marshy sheep-walks frequented by them, of mesh just sufficient to admit their heads, and supported on light sticks. Then when the birds were settled for the night, and land and sea were merged in equal darkness, only divided it might be by the lines of pale breakers running in upon the shores, the dotterel men turned out, some walking in line beating with their sticks, and others clanking round stones together, and the drowsy birds ran before them. Another party stood just behind the nets with lanterns, and attracted by the glare of these, the birds ran towards them, and were speedily entangled. The knot again, that bird that was to King Canute what lampreys were to John, is found amongst the sedges, and has been decoyed into nets by wooden figures, painted to represent itself, placed within them, much in the same way that the ruff was taken, the best season for their capture being August to November. We doubt if a dozen a year find their way to Leadenhall Market now, so much have they gone down in fashion or in abundance. But I must not run through the whole gamut of unrecog- nized game which lives outside the manor and beyond the pale of an ordinary shooter's sympathy. There is the heron, that spectral blue bird of preternatural sagacity, and the bittern not yet quite extinct whose weird cry doubles the loneliness of the swamps and wastes. There are coots and moorhens which are wise enough to be equally unpalatable and sombre feathered ; the grebes, quaint in manner and 84 BIED LIFE IN ENGLAND. form, the dainty godwits who dabble in the brackish pools or flit lightly down the nullahs, not to mention the curlew and his kind, or the plovers who wheel and scream in the- yellow of early dawn overhead. But these birds are for the most part unpopular, so they get but short shift. I think, however, with the man who loves snipe and sedges, that there is good and healthful sport to be had "... by the drear banks of Uffins Where the flights of marsh fowl play ; " and in union with him, as well as from early association, the wild birds of the river-side will always be appreciated by me,. WINTER ON THE MUD FLATS. To make a successful marsh shooter, capable of enjoying the lonely w r astes, even though we indulge in this fascinating sport with the best regard to health and comfort, demands- good health and a certain amount of hardiness, tempered by judicious caution. The way in Avhich the most pleasure can be obtained, with the minimum of discomfort, is un- questionably by shooting from a boat, especially in the season of frost and snow, when it is no mean consideration to have a dry shelter to retreat to always at hand. Tha boat-shooter thus may find himself quartered over night at some comfortable water-side inn near a favourite haunt of the cold weather birds. His next discovery is that "five-o'clock-in-the-morning courage " is one of the essentials in the character of a successful rough shooter when he indulges in this frigid pleasure. His slumbers between the sheets of his com- fortable crib hang entirely on the state of the tide ; per- chance he is just indulging in that " beauty-sleep " which doctors tell us it is such ruin to break, when there comes the rattle of gravel on the lattice windows, thrown from the hands of a grim old "salt" below, who appears to sleep MARSH BIRDS. 85 In his thick blue jersey and rough cloth breeches from year's end to year's end, since it is impossible to notice the smallest difference in their arrangement no matter what the weather, or how unearthly the hour at which he plays chamber-maid. The early morning when the shooter reaches the snug coffee-room where the "neat-handed Phyllis" has already lit a roaring fire with the ribs of some long-ago wrecked vessel, and made preparations for breakfast is remarkably cold, the windows are dimmed with frost along their lower margins, and everything outside is silent, chill, and grey. As far as the eye can see down the little village street which ends in "the hard," and a muddy creek, whence fishing-boats gain the open water of the tideway, no soul is stirring the very boats are asleep, waiting for the water and the tardy light to open in the east, Breakfast over, the old sailor is followed down to the water's edge, where he deposits his burden of guns, bags, and wraps under the deck of a little craft that lies on her white-painted side just awash of the tide. She is soon shoved afloat, and, with a rag of a sail, goes creeping' down the creek, her skipper at the helm, and the gunner forward, seeing all clear amongst the stowage and lumber ere "going into action." It is still very early, and the sportsman feels much inward pride at being* afoot so long before the world is awake or many folk have shaken off their slumbers. He may be conscious of a zero temperature about toes and fingers, but he does not care for that. There is a prospect of really good sport before him, for the mud flats are just being uncovered by the still falling water, which leaves in its rear wide stretches of ooze, rich in soft-shelled straddling crabs, incautious flat-fish, and other marine delicacies, the presence of which is tempting the sea-game down from the marshes, where scores of them have been bickering and whistling during the evening. If the shooter is of still hardier mould he will have slept amongst these "noises of the darkness," and in spite 86 DIED LIFE IN ENGLAND. of feather bedsmen, there are worse places on a frosty night than the cosy cabin of a fishing smack. It is true accommo- dation is limited, and the landsman will look round helplessly for the conventional hat-stand, besides being likely enough to suffer from low hatchways, and to feel generally "cabined, cribbed, confined " for a time until he has got more used to the limited space 'tween decks. But for those to whom winter shooting is the best in the year, who love the tonic sting of a north-easter as it comes blustering over the salt flats, hurrying down a whole new fauna of bird life from the breeding grounds of the far north, such hardships deserve a gentler name when leavened by prospects of a few hours' brilliant sport on the morrow. A frost of a bitter kind came on not a dozen winters ago, our coasts being peopled for a week or two with wild birds, of a score of species, in flocks the like of which had rarely been seen before. The cold, while it lasted, was Siberian. We had chartered a handy fishing vessel, used once or twice before on such occasions, to await us as near as she could come to an out-of-the-way station on a sea arm that ran in from our north-western coast; and by nightfall on the third day of the frost we were rid of most of the conveniences of town life, and afloat 'tween decks on our smack. A warm at the gallery stove, a pipe, and a pannikin of the skipper's after- supper " tea," a yarn or two more or less spiced with the improbable, always nourished by sea air, and then a few hours of sleep under the yellow glow of a swinging lantern, were the preliminaries for next day's work. An old hand under these circumstances, coiled in his sea-jacket, a good blue jersey rolled up for a pillow under his head, and comfortably swathed in a stout Witney blanket, will sleep the sleep of the just, in scorn of down beds and the frost outside. If he has served an apprenticeship to green waters he will know in his slumber when the tide has turned as surely as though he had sat up to watch, probably going on deck to have a look round. At MAESH BIRDS. 87 two a.m. we thus turned out to see what the weather was like. There was an arctic stillness in the air and almost an arctic dryness. The wide sweep of sky overhead, dotted by a thousand stars, was glittering with wonderful brilliancy, and the gleam of the land under its snowy mantle just showed its whereabouts. The only sounds audible were the noise of thin ice floes grinding together in the filling creeks, the tinkle of salt w^ater falling through sluice gates, and, tuneful to the listening wild-fowler's ear, came the sound of the moving birds feeding and flying over salt wastes and estuaries, the chorus of the ducks inveighing against such " hard times " near some water hole, the whistle of restless widgeon, varied every now and then by those wildest of all sea bird's notes, the " troomp " of wild geese, or the unearthly booming of a heron. By six o'clock we had thrown off our frozen warps and dropped down the creek as the day came. We stole along quietly under the high banks, making hardly a sound in the still cool air of the morning, until over our sorrel, samphire, and sea grass sky line, fche skipper sees a couple of curlew coming up, and putting us on the look-out by an expressive wave of his short black pipe, tight between his lips since "the ship " got under weigh. Both curlews pay the penalty of their rashness, coming down headlong into the water with a loud splash, and are brought into the boat as she goes by with the help of a landing-net on a long staff, a fair begin- ning, since the old rhyme says that " A curlew, be she white or black, Still carries tenpence on her back." Then a shingle point is turned, the boat sliding into more open water, where she " goes about " and steals up as near as she dares to the edge of the flats. The skipper's practised eyes soon make out a cluster of black dots half a mile to leeward under the veil of mist which still hangs over the river, and a look through the glass shows them to 88 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. be ducks beyond doubt. Not a shade of any emotion ex- hibits itself on the honest face of the boatman as he cau- tiously edges his vessel down to the knot of birds that are feeding amongst the masses of floating* weeds, taking care, however, to keep her a point or so off them until, when the suspense is at the highest, the helmsman broadens her off a little, and as the birds, uneasy and at last affrighted, crowd too late together before taking wing, big gun conies to bear straight on the "brown of them," and the old sailor, with a nod of approval, fills the sails again, bringing the slain within reach of the landing-net. Those only winged require some skilful manoeuvring and a cartridge apiece, before they are laid beside the others under the thwarts. This is a very satisfactory continuation of business, but there is still plenty more work on hand, so pipes are hastily filled, Avhile the tide and a slant of wind drifts the boat up the estuary to search for another flight of birds. By this time the sun will be up, lighting with a vivid glow the red sprit- sails of a convoy of barges, and dispelling the thin drapery of vapour that has hitherto hidden the opposite shore, which now, however, starts up into light and shadow ; w r hile the water takes a new tinge from a sky of roseate pearl overhead. A wisp of ox-birds got up, almost under the button at the end of our little bowsprit, going twittering down the water as though they would never stop, but we reserved our powder for better game. This was not long in coming. In passing the mouth of one of the tortuous watercourses, draining down into our main channel, a couple of teal flew within easy shot, one of them being stopped promptly, and then the other. Both were speedily brought to hand by the retriever we had with us, who seemed greatly to enjoy his plunge overboard and the scamper over the dead weed and samphire flats. At the shots, a heron rose majestically, and then passed swiftly out of our range. A company of widgeon also went away to open water, and a cloud of golden plover MARSH BIRDS. 89 rose on the wing, flashing in grey and white as they wheeled hither and thither ; but what absorbed the attention of our skipper most, and riveted his keen sight for a minute or two, was a glimpse of, perhaps, some dozen birds of more than ordinary size, that took wing, and after a turn, settled again heavily in a creek about a mile away. It did not need his brief ejaculation to tells us they were geese, and forth- with, all lesser game was forgotten in the prospects of a shot at these choice birds from the far north. We stood across the shallow salt lagoon, just as the red winter sun was coming up in the east, the fresh north wind coming with it until we were half a mile from the solitary gander standing sentinel over his flock on a mud bank, outwardly engaged in sorting his back feathers, but, as we knew, keeping a sharp watch on us. Then we got the little dingy to the yawl's "off" side, and ourselves, boy, and dog, slipped in unob- trusively, but held on to the ship until the skipper edged us under cover of a mud bank. We pulled ashore, and while the boy minded the boat, we ourselves slipped in a couple of No. 4 cartridges, previous to making a careful stalk of some three hundred yards. We were within forty paces of the sentinel, on our hands and knees, when his contented chuckle gave way to the silence of alarm. In another minute the "whole flock were off: in their cumbrous fashion all but two that we had stopped, one of which gave the dog a lengthy chase. These mud flats are dangerous places to the careless. The waters fill the gullies so insidiously, that one may well be cut off and drowned, unless the greatest precaution is taken. With boats in attendance it is another matter, of course ; but it was at a lonely landspit, covered by a fathom or so of water at high tide, on these shooting grounds, that the body of a shore shooter was found only a short time ago. The luckless fellow had clearly been separated from the mainland, and had gone to the highest ooze he could see, had driven the barrels of his gun into the mud, and tied 90 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. a leg to this feeble stake to save himself, it was surmised,, from being washed away, meaning, probably, to stand the flood out ; but the exposure and cold proved too severe. He had been dead several hours when a lobster boat found him. But time and tide will not allow much space just at this juncture for melancholy reflections, and the skipper draws- the attention of the " gents " to a couple of widgeon that are coming up wind at a great pace. It is doubtful whether they will pass within shot, but fate has marked them, and they sweep nearer and nearer. Some fifty yards away, one is bagged in very good style, though the other gets off scathe- less, untouched by a hasty shot. Then a heron goes over the water to some fishy pool he wots of on the far side, with neck folded back and long legs trailing behind, as high above- the world as an aeronaut making meteorological observations. Sandpipers succeed singly or in flocks, and subscribe a victim or two to the bag ; lapwings, tame and silly, also paying' dearly for their disregard of ordinary caution, and their cousins, the golden plovers, more business-like, wheeling* hither and thither on rapid wings, showing their numbers clearly, or becoming almost invisible, as the position of their bodies varies against the dark background of the saltings. These, and many other birds that winter sends to gratify the rough shooter, people the estuary and afford shots more or less exciting, from sunrise to sunset. While the puntsman fires his big gun, it may be but once in twenty-four hours, the wild-fowler, who uses a breech- loader, has better and more exciting sport or at least more varied. A strict chronicle of his day's work in a good river, in a hard frost, would be a difficult task to undertake. Each shot he fires is distinct in itself, and the pleasure of working up to his birds, and the knowledge he gains of the curious ways, are often keener than the final successful result of his shot. A taste once conceived for such sport, as that I have MARSH BIRDS. 91 attempted to outline, is very difficult to eradicate. It holds its votaries from youth and rashness, to age and rheumatism ; it is never possible to have too much of it, and enthusiasts declare every day's sport is totally unlike the last, wherein, perhaps, lies some of its charm. Truly it is pleasant again in June to lie far out from the world amongst the long grass of some shingle pit " With the winds of summer blowing, O'er the wide sands wild and free ; " and for once not bent on destruction, but in pleasant fellowship with lowly nature to watch the wild bird life those dainty redshanks, for instance, who glitter and flash in the sunlight as it catches their white under plumage before they settle in a piping cluster on the flats. They dabble with infinite daintiness their coral beaks and legs, keeping them spotless and immaculate in a world of sludge. There are many other birds as pleasing and curious in their ways, of which no one but the cockle men and the marsh gunner know really anything. The snipe shooter proper is a being of higher sphere ; he rarely mixes with the Bohemians of the banks. Yet his special pleasure is, as we have said before, very delightful and engrossing. His is a fine art in itself an art that can only be learnt in its fulness by long years of patient study. Where the snipe will lie to-morrow, and where they will come from, whether to beat them up wind or down wind, with dogs or without, to take them in the rain or, with the gallant Colonel Hawker, to wait until the wind has dried the rushes ; are all important and pregnant questions. The themes under the heading of " snipe," are infinite. Who shall say with any finality whether No. 6 or No. 8 shot is best for him, whether it is true he uses his bill in rising, whether he really listens for the creeping worm, as he certainly seems to do when that delicate head of his is turned on one side, even of what his food consists, and whether August is too early to begin shooting. 32 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. We can only be glad such an admirable little game bird is still left to us, and if our brothers of smock frocks are each to have "three acres and a cow/' then we respectfully petition in the name of those Avho love the gun, that our portion may be, forty acres and a snipe ! WHY SNIPE ARE SCARCE. Though the misguided English yokel, who is to have the heifer and the triple meads as his share, may do much damage to our native wildfowl haunts, I doubt if he is responsible for the death of all those birds unmarked by shot which wave in the wind over our purveyors' stalls like the companions of Ulysses in the Cave of the Cyclops. It is rather the ingenious and mercenary foreigner who sweeps his fens and hill-sides to cater for the discriminating taste of " mi lord Anglais," and sends us " poached " snipe and woodcock by the crate full. Even our good cousins across the Atlantic, now ice rooms or refrigerators are fitted to nearly all steamships, evade their none too stringent game laws, dispatching us netted wild birds from Chesapeake Bay and the wonderful rice swamps of the interior. More than a few of our Leadenhall wild geese and ducks have come from the Yankee shores, and even, perhaps, that turkey who makes a final appearance at our Christmas boards may hail from the chippy curtilages of Canadian squatters' wigwams or the adjacent snow-buried pine forest. It is clear, for instance, when we read in weekly market reports how woodcock are selling at a few shillings a brace, while under the same date a sporting paper goes into ecstasies over the fact that a single couple of these little winter visitors have been flushed from a south coast spinney, that the market must perforce be supplied from some other source, and we should look abroad for it. Not so very long ago Cornwall and Devon were equal to the epicures' demand, and Exeter coaches of the day used to bring as many MABSII BIRDS. 93- as thirty dozen in a week to London. One person, an old writer tells us, sent in a single season from Torrington, in Devonshire, woodcock to the value of 1900 pounds into market. Truly those were the days when " cock " were at the height of fashion, and ten, sixteen, and even twenty shillings a couple was willingly given for this admirable table bird. At that time woodcock were taken in the south of England by Y-shaped enclosures in coppices and w r oods they frequented, formed of small light fences of dead holly or beach boughs a foot or so high. The woodcock, instead of attempting to leap or fly over these, ran down the inner side, looking for a small opening to creep through. This he found at the apex of the angle, but a noose hung over it which effectually secured him. by the neck a victim to undue fastidiousness ! But that Torrington game-dealer would never have made an annual income of four figures out of Scolopax Rusticola, had he known of no other snare but the above somewhat "single-barrelled" affair. The glade-net was no doubt the engine with which the western men took most of their quarry, though the device, I am well pleased to think, is hardly ever used now on this side of the Channel. It con- sisted of nets hung across the open rides in coppices, "the cock roads," as Blome calls them, into which migrating woodcock, and sometimes partridges, and even hares, plunged when driven from the neighbouring woods by beaters. "The nets have to be of length and breadth proportionate to the glades in which they are suspended," says Folkard, in his "Wild Fowler," a volume that should be on every sportsman's bookcase. The net is suspended between two trees directly in the track of the woodcock's flight. Both the upper and lower corners have a rope attached to them, which is rove through sheaves fastened to the trees on either side, at a moderate height, varying from ten to twelve feet. The falls of the two upper ropes are joined, so that they form a bridle, to the central part of which a rope is attached 04. BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. held by the fowler in his hand in a place of concealment, and thus he is able to drop it down suddenly and intercept any rash bird hurrying down the drive, the working of the net being assisted by five pound stones tied to the corners. The fowler having stationed himself in such a position as to command a full view of the glade, beaters are employed to flush the cocks out of their retreats amongst the dead fern, and undergrowths, if they are not actually migrating at the time, and just as the bird approaches the net it is suddenly let down or drawn out. The instant the birds have struck the net, the fowler lets go another cord looped to a stake within reach of his arm, and the whole net, with the birds entangled, then drops to the ground. In France they are particularly skilful in this art of taking the "becasses," and the glade nets they term " la pantiere." All birds when migrating fly through gaps in mountain ranges or any alleys natural or artificial assisting their progress. It is as if, conscious of a long journey before them, they took advantage of every chance to avoid digressions or deviations from the straight line. Thus, in sweeping over Heligoland, woodcock often pass actually through the streets of the town, and the worthy burghers, taking advantage of this, hang out from window to window at nightfall fine twine nets of small mesh. In these next morning, if the towns folk are in luck, hang an assortment of cock with, perhaps, a sandpiper or two ! There are even stories current that men out after dark have been knocked down and half killed by some blundering mallard or errant pochard taking a short cut down the local high-street in its autumn flight ; but the narrative wants confirmation. " Now is the woodcock near the gin," says Fabian, when Malvolio stoops to pick up the forged letter of his mistress ; 110 doubt the bird has been harried and hunted in one way or another from time immemorial. Perhaps there is no method more eccentric of taking this foolish bird than that French fashion, " a la folatrerie," we MARSH BIRDS. 95 read of in " Le Moyeii Age et la Renaissance." The fowler had a dress of the colour of dead leaves ; his face covered with a mask of the same hue, having two holes in the place of eyes. As soon as he saw the woodcock he- went upon his knees, resting his arms upon two sticks to keep himself perfectly motionless. Whilst the woodcock did not perceive him, he advanced gently upon his knees to get near the bird. He had in his hand two small baquettes, the ends of which were dressed with red cloth. When the cock was stationary, he gently knocked the baguettes one against the other ; this noise amused or distracted the attention of the bird; the fowler approached nearer, and ended by casting over its neck a noose which he had at the end of the stick. " And know this," adds the French writer, " that woodcocks are the most silly birds in the world." No doubt the foregoing discredits their sagacity sorely, but quails in Afghanistan, as many travellers point out, are caught in much the same way. There a native sportsman dons a yellow shawl with large black spots, and by crawling on " all fours " into the barley fields or peach orchards, palms himself off on the credulous and curious birds as their mortal foe, a leopard, whom they surround and mob. At first sight none of the three species of our lesser snipe, the common bird of rushy patches, the gamey little jack snipe, or the scarcer great snipe, would seem to tempt the fowler's art. Erratic in habits, and curious in feeding grounds, there is no knowing with any certainty where to look for them at a given period. Watercourses and the little "canons" draining moisture from marshes or meadows, are likely spots in frosty weather. There the country people in Ireland catch a good many snipe in what they call "cribs," which are a kind of basket, roughly made of pieces of stick tied together in the shape of a pyramid. This is supported by an arrangement of forked sticks very similar to that used for the old-fashioned brick trap. This crib is set by the side of a spring, and a snipe going inside it releases the catch, and the basket falls over 96 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. liim. The country people say that if a snipe is left any time in a crib, however fat when caught, he will get quite thin from fright and his attempts to escape. This latter fact is curious, but quite credible, seeing how under opposite circumstances this species of bird plumps up with even a few hours good feeding after his autumn migration or a period of frost starvation. Amongst reeds and rushes are sometimes to be found little paths pattered smooth by moorhens and water rats running* to and fro amongst the stems. Here, Sir Ralph Payne Gallwey tells us, a springe for taking snipe, woodcock, and other wildfowl, often used in Ireland, is made thus : Stick a pliant wand of a yard and a half firmly into the ground, bend it down till the ends of a short cross piece attached to it, and which may be four inches long, catch in the notches cut to receive them in two stout pegs driven firmly into the ground, and showing a couple of inches above the surface. Pass the fine wires that are attached to the cross stick over a slight nick in the top of each peg, and place the running nooses flat on the soil for snipes, edgeways for ducks and teal. When a bird is snared, the little stick cross ways between the uprights is freed at once, the wand flies, and the victim is strangled. This is done so quickly and quietly that the captive is not missed by his companions, though dangling above them. He has found half a dozen duck, teal, snipe, etc., thus strung up in a morning ! Such are some of the illegitimate devices tending to make both snipe and their big relative, the woodcock, scarcer year by year. No doubt there are more wholesale methods such as the fen men's long nets which go over some fens, especially near large towns, in the dusk of the evening, and frighten away what snipe they do not secure. Possibly not quite so much is done towards making these little wildfowl at home in our waste lands as might be. There are, as said, scores of places on many estates, even in the midlands, which by a little preparation in the way of flooding a corner or two of MARSH BIRDS. 97 " debatable land," and putting in a few willow bushes for cover, might be made to hold twice as many couple of snipe as they do at present. I take it as a fact not to be denied, there are always plenty of wild birds somewhere to occupy a desirable spot directly it is formed ; but the worst of it is, desirable locations are becoming so sadly scarce in our over- drained and over- "improved" shires ! It is in any case certain, however, we cannot be wrong in suppressing nets and kindred engines of wholesale destruc- tion, and giving the snipe a chance of resting in the limited selection of osier beds and marshes yet open to him. 93 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. CHAPTER V. GROUSE. MOOE AND MOUNTAIN FOWL IN THE THREE KINGDOMS. ALL the grouse family interest the sportsman more than the agriculturist. Hill crofters who live amongst the grouse bear no great grudge against them, though now and again perhaps a brood -will come down to searoh their rocky stubbles for shed corn, even pillaging to some small extent the barley shocks after harvest. But the damage they do is trifling at worst. Foresters complain that capercailzie and blackcock eat the tender shoots of silver firs in "hard times," but the complaint is not of any great weight. Radical legislators, perhaps, who believe in breaking up estates to instal a yeomanry on allotments, and would like to see the gneiss of Ben Nevis planted with turnips, and the sides of the Grampians devoted to carrot plots, may bear ill- will to the whole race ; but their arguments are more trivial than either of the others ! To gunsmen grouse stand at the head of all our indigenous birds. They are to them what the salmon is to fishermen, and the elephant and tiger to Indian sportsmen. How welcome is the eve of the 12th of August to those whose fortune it is to have toiled through a long hot summer amongst city dust for the rest of northern moors ! That night journey itself that takes us northward, with all the luxury of modern travel, is, the first time we make it, an experience the fascination of which never fades. There is the wonderful rush through the fertile midlands, GROUSE. 99 the chequered landscape under the moonlight, the long gleam of lights of sleeping towns whose names we can only guess at as we fly over the faultless steel roadway, and then the lurid flare of the furnaces down the vale of Trent. We have had our hot coffee, and taken our cigarettes, and perhaps " forty winks " in the folds of our thick ulsters, when dawn comes in the east over the deep dells and stone walls of Cumberland ; and classic Ridblesdale, that most fascinating valley, holds us before the sun has melted a single dewdrop or thawed the thin white frost that silvers the shadows. What does it matter that we have lost a night's rest, and that we are perchance somewhat travel- stained ? The Border is at hand, and beyond it lie heather lands and those grouse we have thought and dreamt of during weary days at work and the dusty crabbed hours of endless sessions. To-night we shall be amongst the hills, and to-morrow we shall breathe again air that is worth inspiring, and look upon scenes that are a tonic and a sedative a very lethe of happiness to a hack of dusty civilization. In fact, grouse shooting has a special charm of its own. It can never cease to be popular in one sense of the word ; while regarding its accessibility to any but the wealthy it must be confessed that the recreation and all delights it brings with it seem to be going back into the regions of the impossible. There was a time, and not so very long ago, when a tract . of moorland reasonably stocked with its own natural grown birds could be had, if not actually for the asking, for about the price of a week's shooting in the southern shires to-day. There was more adventure and more sport, I think, under those circumstances, and decidedly more of roughing ifc in the style of which Scrope speaks so enthusiastically. It was a tour of many changes, from mail-coach to dog-cart, and trap to pony, at those times, to reach outlying moors ; the shooter and his friends provisioning themselves for a siege, moreover, like Border, raiders when the Wardens of 100 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. the Marches were out. Plenty of exercise was then a cer- tainty, and the honest old muzzle-loader being in each man's hand, the grouse had a better chance of making good a retreat; men shot in more instances with greater modera- tion, more pleasure in the shooting, and less in seeing the total of their bags in the next batch of local papers ! In those Arcadian days, when the shooter was not de- posited in the midst of his grouse land by luxurious sleeping- cars, which had brought him north from the metropolis in nine hours or so, such a thing even as free shootings were not unknown. Amongst " the islands " and the rocky glens of the western coast, a man might establish himself and roam pretty nearly at will; to-day I doubt if there is a grouse in the highlands that could be shot without leave by any man of conscience, for ownership has extended in every direction, and the happy debatable lands of our fore- fathers are known no longer. I have no desire whatever tp decry grouse or grouse preserving. The teaching of our demagogues that moor and mountain belong to the peasant and should be cultivated for and by him alone is difficult to refute, because there is a grain of truth in it. Some seventy per cent, of the highlands cannot and will never be cultivated by any crop that the crofter can afford to rear. Such soil, rock it were almost better to call it, is fit only for grouse and the slow- growing firs and spruces (harbouring capercailzie and black- cock) which give no return for capital for twenty years. As for the remaining percentage of land, much of it is cultivated. If it will grow crops and does not, then it ought to. It is on this peg of a little cultivatable land unculti- vated that agitators hang all their grievances; and land- owners would do wisely by taking the ground from under their feet and helping crofters to reclaim that strip of bog, they covet, and to build a cot to look after their poor harvest of ragged grain. The shame of the highlands to-day, and their pressing danger during the next ten years, are the GROUSE. 101 few incorrigible landlords whose views have not broadened with the times, and who would tyrannize in mediaeval style over a long-headed and thoughtful yeomanry who are germi- nating new ambitions under the light of better education. It is such, and the harshnesses of American millionaires, who oust pet lambs from cottagers' paddocks, and de- populate glens to keep a few more head of deer, that endanger our northern shooting and strengthen the hands of demagogues. If the Game Laws are ever abolished, and we lapse into the gameless condition of France, for instance, it will be the direct result of such game-preserving as this. As for those heresies of a, higher class, the erection of " trap " fences round deer forests, by which your neighbour's stags can join those which are legitimately your own but can never return to their own feeding grounds again, and the snaring of your brother sportsman's grouse by nets put up along his marches, they are offences of the deepest hue, bar sinisters on the sportsman's escutcheon which should place him beyond the pale of any friendly intercourse or good fellowship, and reduce him at once to the rank of a professional poultryman. Such measures as the Access to Mountains Bill and others affecting game preserving will come, and ought to come shortly ; but otherwise, I think there will be no very revolutionary game legislation for a long time, no matter how much Radicals may bluster. As to the natural prospects of grouse, as one shooter observes, it has become almost a custom of late years on very prolific moors to test the number of grouse killed by comparison with the figures of the year 1872, the greatest grouse year ever known both in Scotland and in Yorkshire. In 1872, on a famous Aberdeenshire moor, 412 brace were killed over dogs, by four guns, on the 12th ; within a fort- night of this unexampled performance, Lord Walsingham killed his famous bag of 423 brace to his own gun, in one day, on his moor of Blubberhouse, in the Otley district of 102 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. Yorkshire ; 1000 brace were killed in one day at Studley Royal, 1100 brace at Wemmergill, and, to crown all, the highest yet recorded bag of grouse in one day, viz. 1313 brace, was made at MivRimington. Wilson's moor of Brom- head in the Sheffield district. During the same fortnight, 10,454 grouse were killed in ten days' shooting at High Force ; while at Bolton Abbey, for eighteen consecutive days, the average of grouse killed per diem was within a fraction of 300 brace. These figures sound like romance; yet their writer vouches for the accuracy of them all, and they are well known to be correct by those versed in the figures of northern moors. The Scotch moors in the same years yielded phenomenal results. By way of comparison, let us take an instance or two from the Yorkshire records of this year. On Danby moors, belonging to Lord Downe, after killing 600 brace over dogs, 900 brace were killed in three days' driving. On Wemmer- gill, Sir Frederick Milbank and party, six guns in all, slew in six days 4523 grouse, or an average of 376 brace a day. At Bromhead, in the early part of September, over 600 brace were killed in one day. These figures, it will be noted, are but for a few estates. The produce in grouse of even a single Scottish shire is. infinitely greater, and represents a very considerable amount of human food. " But," says the illogical stump orator, "it is food only consumed by one class." To this it should be said that, philosophically, the class who can afford to eat game, by doing so sets free other less expensive food for another section of the public. But it is the influx of visitors, the trade, and the briskness they bring with them that must be chiefly held to benefit the highlands, and socially justify the devoting of wide wastes to the muir-fowl. Let it be always remembered, and the evidence is at hand in Government Reports, that the- farmers, large and small, of the great English game-rearing GROUSE. 103 shires, turned out to be the warmest supporters of game- rearing and preserving when examined before the Game Laws Committee of the House of Parliament. It is the orators of Manchester allies and politicians of the salubrious slums of Chelsea who object on principle to property in fur or feather. The rents of shootings are far too high. This is, of course, the result of keen competition. Worse still, the com- petition extends itself into the actual shooting, and when an. agent stretches a point and says, such and such an estate ought to produce five hundred brace of grouse, the owner for the time naturally likes to get his thousand birds, and grumbles if he doesn't. A more fatherly interest is what we want for our northern shootings, and less, far less driving at the very end of the season. Mr. Archibald Stuart- Wortley very justly remarks it is not only outside warm corners of Suffolk coverts that " bird butcheries " take place, they are known sometimes on the far side of the Tweed when hot autumn days make the grouse lie in the bents like quail nnder a hedge, and the breechloaders mow them down at half distance remorselessly. I do not agree with Mr. Stuart-Wortley in his opinion that Scotch moors can never again carry such a head of game as they have done ; though agreeing with him that during the last five years they have been shot, "not wisely, but too well," with too much science, and too skilfully for " the pot," or worse still in some instances, " for the poulterer ! " Everywhere firs and spruces are being planted along the straths, and this should tend to the increase of that noble bird the capercailzie, who is rapidly regaining his position amongst the lochs and corries. A like cause should tend to the multiplication of blackgame, who love the openings in these plantations and the hollows overgrown with cotton grass and willow. As recorded by Mr. E. Harting and others in the Field, many attempts have been made to intro- duce the blackcock into Ireland by the importation of living 104: BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. birds of various ages, but entirely without success. The hatching the eggs under pheasants appears to offer a very reasonable hope of permanent success. The young would be accustomed to their new locality and the peculiar food furnished by it. I do not believe in the impossibility of introducing black game into Ireland. For a species whose habitat extends from Scotland in the north to the New Forest on the south coast of England, there mast be found many suitable situations in Ireland ; and the varieties of food on which it feeds are equally abundant in both countries. Landed proprietors should try to introduce this noble game bird into different localities in the Emerald Isle, select- ing, as offering the greatest hope of success, situations similar to those affected by the species in Great Britain not barren heath and moorland, but the vicinity of woods, coppices, and semi-cultivated lands, where alder, birch, and willow twigs are found in the spring; crowberries, whortleberries, and similar fruits in the autumn ; heath and vaccinia all the year round. The ptarmigan, that bird that conspires with the seasons to hide him, is, I greatly hope, able to take care of himself amongst his rocky fastnesses. None of these birds do any recognizable harm to the produce of human industry. As for the red grouse, I see no reason why he should not nourish and multiply in face of the grouse disease and human and feathered foes. Those who are fortunate enough to be able to spend long days in August or September upon the heather must, however, be moderate and philosophical in their sport, or we shall be within measurable distance of exterminating one of the finest game birds in the world and ruining a valuable recreation. Wise protection is also essential, and the stern suppression of unseasonable poaching. A matter that ought, for this reason, to be of some curiosity to the sportsman, is the abundance of capercailzie, black- game, and grouse hanging in rows along the outside of our GROUSE. 105 poulterers shops late into every spring, and attracting atten- tion by their cheapness. It goes almost without saying, they cannot all be English birds. Even their purveyors would hardly pretend that. Whence do they come ? The answer is, from abroad; the capercailzie and ptarmigan from Norway and Sweden, the blackgame largely from Russia, but the red grouse undoubtedly from the northern part of our own kingdom, as Tetras Scoticus is unknown elsewhere the only creature in the British fauna that can lay claim to that exclusiveness. Winter is a bad time for all these birds, and the snow-covered ground which sharpens their hunger and brings them into the snares of the poacher, also lets the gunner in a worse poacher as often as not than he of the nooses and nets by betraying their hiding-places and showing up their crouching forms. In autumn the capercailzie of a district are divided into packs of fifty or a hundred, the hen birds keeping separate from these gatherings, which feed along the sides of the numerous lakes and morasses with which the northern forests abound. The Swedes shoot these noble birds by torchlight. During the winter many capercailzie are also taken in snares. Two stout sticks, some eighteen inches in length, *and forked at the upper end, are driven into the ground on either side of a pathway, and across these a third stick is placed, from which depend as many nooses of horse hair as may be convenient. The nooses are kept in place by blades of grass, and should have their lower edges about three inches from the ground. Over the cross-stick thick-leaved pine branches are placed, with snow to cover the whole and protect the nooses from the weather. A simple kind of net for taking capercailzie, we read in L. Lloyd's " Game Birds of Norway and Sweden," is termed the " kasse," and can be used at any season of the year. It is about thirty inches square, and made of twisted silk with meshes so large as to readily admit the head of the bird. If 106 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. there is snow in the forest the net should be white, but if the ground is bare, green or some other dark colour. This net is also hung across a cattle path, the four corners secured to bushes or to pine twigs inserted in the ground for the purpose, by means of woollen threads of just sufficient strength to maintain it in position. A stout silk line is passed through the outermost meshes of the net all round, and both ends secured to a neighbouring sapling. When the capercailzie gets his head into the meshes he rushes forward, the woollen threads are broken, the net drawn up into a purse-like form, and the bird rolls over helpless with his wings closely pressed together. Then again, many a plump young bird that deserved a better ending has been cut off by the "stick-nat." This is a net usually sixty or seventy fathoms in length, twenty or thirty inches in depth, with the meshes some three inches square. The " telnar," answering to the cord and lead lines of our flue-net, consists of stout packthread, but instead of being fastened to the web itself they merely run through the outer meshes, and hence the net travels on them in like manner as a curtain on a brass rod. Stout sticks previously blackened by fire, and sharpened at the lower end for more ready insertion in the ground, are fixed crosswise to the net,, or rather to the "telnar," ten or twelve feet apart. The "telnar" is about one-third shorter than the net itself, and consequently there is a quantity of loose netting called " los garn." On the net being set this loose netting is drawn up in folds to the cross sticks, and when the capercailzie runs into the net, the "los garn" forms a sort of bag about the bird, making escape next to impossible. The fowler takes his place in the centre of the netted circle, and by " lacking" i.e. imitating the hen's cry attracts and generally secures- the whole of the covey of young birds on whose haunts he has placed the net after flushing them. The pullets only come to the pretended calling of the old birds when they are very young. GROUSE. 107 Then there are the blackgame the russet hens and young cocks on the game- dealer's hooks being, perhaps, often mistaken by the careless for Scotch grouse, but the male bird is steel-blue, and white under- plum age is distinct, and not easily confounded with the lesser sorts. It is from over the sea that our poulterers' shops obtain replenishments of blackgame. Podolia, Lithuania, Courland, Esthland, Yolhynia and Ukraine, are all forest countries, and here indiscriminate shooting and snaring go on. During the winter season, in Siberia, they are taken abundantly in those elaborate set-traps which the traveller must have noticed along the sides of the roads between villages. A certain number of poles are laid horizontally on forked sticks in the open forests of birch ; small bunches of corn are fixed to them by way of lure; and at a short distance off tall baskets of a conical figure placed with the broadest part uppermost; just within the mouth of the basket is set a small wheel, through which passes an axis so nicely fixed as to admit it to play very readily, and on the least touch to drop down and again recover its position. The birds are soon attracted by the corn on the horizontal poles, and after alighting upon them and feeding, they fly to the baskets and attempt to settle on their tops, when the wheel drops side- ways and they fall headlong into the interior. Every one should read those fascinating volumes of adventure in which Lloyd recounts his experiences amongst the Northern pine forests. His pictures of snow-covered trees, with a black-cock on every branch, eating the tender resinous shoots said to give their flesh a peculiar flavour at times, are enough to make the shooter envious indeed. The Russian peasants build huts full of loopholes, like forts, where the sawyers have been at work in the forests, or where an open glade presents an opportunity ; and decoy birds mere artificial imitations made of black cloth are arranged around. As the grouse assemble the shooter fires through the openings, and if the sportsman succeed in 108 BIED LIFE IN ENGLAND. keeping himself out of sight he may litter the ground with slain, as the birds are not frightened by the mere sound of the gun a curious weakness of the grouse family. From Norway and Sweden many a box comes to Leadenhall Market, with this advantage, that less demand is made upon the tenants of our own highlands, and thus a plentiful supply is left to add variety to the " mixed bags " which are made before winter comes, and add point and interest to many a long day upon the "birken braes" that would never have been " trudged-out " but for the enthusiasm their pursuit arouses. While black grouse killed by the score in these fashions sell at five shillings a brace, the " white grouse " of old writers, or, more familiarly, the ptarmigan, only reaches the modest figure of ninepence or a shilling each bird. But then they are pursued relentlessly. Grreenlanders capture them in nooses hung on a long line, and drawn by two men, who drop the nooses over their necks. They eat them with train oil or lard, and their skins are converted into shirts to wear next the skin. Laplanders take them by forming a hedge with boughs of birch trees, leaving small openings at certain intervals, and hanging over each a snare. The birds are tempted to come and feed on birch tree catkins, and when they pass through the openings are caught by the neck and strangled. As "Bushman" says in "A Summer and Winter in Lapland " : " The Laps select a birch sapling six feet long. It is cleared of twigs, and a horsehair noose fastened a little above the point, which is bent down and lightly stuck in the snow, the noose being about a hands- breadth above the surface. Small hedges are then built up either side, and catkins or fruit stuck on their thorns. When the bird walks up the avenue to get the bait he becomes entangled in the noose, and his struggles free the bent sapling, which then flies up and hoists him out of the way of foxes, wolves, etc." On the Hudson's Bay territories also nets twenty feefc GROUSE. 109 square are used for the capture of ptarmigan, and they are so numerous that ten thousand have been taken during a single season lasting from November to April. In reference to the former snare, and showing how the same idea occurs to different people, it may be mentioned that the Aleut Indians of Canada use snares of twisted deer sinew made into a running loop and attached to a pole nicely balanced between two branches, the noose end held down by means of a small pin tied to the snare. Rushes are then piled on each side of the tracks in which the grouse run, so that they have to pass through openings in which the snares are set ; a touch loosens the pin, and the heavier end of the pole falls, hanging the bird in the air. Probably the willow grouse is here spoken of a bird that is not uncommon in the London shops, and very numerous in the Canadian "backwoods." An allied bird shows equally little appreciation of danger. A writer on caribou hunting in Forest and Stream, says : " Just after crossing Murray's Brook, passing through some heavy timber, we flushed from the trail a spruce partridge, which alighted on a limb about eight feet from the ground. William was at first going to throw his axe at it, but Joseph urged him to snare it. A pole was cut and trimmed, and a noose made from a bit of salmon twine tied to the end of it. While this was being done, the simple little bird sat cuddled up on the limb, unconscious of danger, not even looking at us. When all was ready, William took the pole, and stepping quietly up to the tree passed the noose over its head, and dragged the innocent fowl from its perch." This process repeated several times, always with success, would seem to owe its practicability to the tameness of game in- habiting a region where human footsteps rarely penetrate. I have been led somewhat far afield, and fear space will only admit of a glance at the " dodges " by which red grouse are trapped, to the chagrin of honest sportsmen, and the spoiling of not a few shootings. Tramps and loafers from 110 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. the nearest towns set horse-hair nooses in their runs amongst the heather ; and, as they -often forget where many a springe has been placed, such nooses may remain set until the spring, and take parent birds, with nests adjacent. Again, in autumn, the reapers always ready for a little work of the kind stroll out of an evening, under the pleasant yellow harvest moon, and peg down fine nooses atop of the barley shocks. As a result of this sundry grouse are found there, napping helplessly, head downwards, next morning, before the mists are off the low meadows. A few find their way into rabbit traps, Yarrell tells us, set on open moors, and one has been taken in a steel hawk trap, on top of a pole; but of all destructive and objectionable methods, netting of grouse by fixed nets is, perhaps, the worse. They consist of long lines of fine netting hung on poles, usually by the proprietors of small, narrow allotments facing- big moors, where a large head of game is reared. Now, when grouse fly, they rise ten or twelve feet perpendicularly, and then rush forward at the same height with a velocity which must be seen to be understood, and thus they plunge head- long into the meshes with a force which generally disables them at once. Instead of fair give-and-take, which is the rule amongst neighbouring landowners in matters of game, these daytime poachers take all they can lay hands on, and hardly rear a score of grouse, in return. All this misplaced ingenuity is painful enough, and I turn with satisfaction to more legitimate manners of sport, adding a sketch or two from -my note-books of quiet days upon the heather and solitary scrambles amongst pine barrens, dear to the naturalist as well as the sportsman. If I succeed in beguiling an idle half hour, as my own half hours have often been beguiled, by classic pens in the literature of out of doors, or in recalling pleasant remembrances, the object of these chapters will have been fully obtained. GROUSE. Ill "THE TWELFTH." But " the twelfth " is the white letter day of the heather trudger. He may enjoy it "in the ranks" of a noisy but well meaning party of lowlanders or alone. On a recent occasion various circumstances prevent us, however, from doing conventional justice to the occasion by a big muster of guns and a proper day's shooting myself and J , equally enthusiastic, determined to try our fortune alone since we could get no one else to join us. Be the party big or small, the weather is always a matter of the first importance. Fortunately it was fine and bright when we turned out at seven a.m. on the morning of the 12th. The sun was just rising behind the hills on which the old Scotch house was built, and throwing clear blue shadows of pine-clad summits half way up the opposite side of the valley, where the land was long heather and patches of coarse grasses, broken up by thin mountain torrents and veined by grey stone dykes. This was promising enough, but from some cause perhaps the purity of the air the sky in the Highlands is almost always blue and clear at isuiirise, a state of things which early rising but inexperienced .southerners take to be a sure token of a lovely day. Un- fortunately the promise is often broken. This time, however, .a fair sky was accompanied by a strong hoar frost covering the grass in the shadows of the trees with a beautiful powdering of white crystals, and glittering as it melted into dew-drops in the fast-increasing warmth. I roused up the other " gun " who was to accompany me, and by 7.30 we were hard at work at breakfast, dividing our time between the hot coffee and many good things, and getting into our " war-paint." We agreed not to trouble ourselves with any dogs, and when I suggested that a keeper should come with us, J , who is rather a Philistine in such matters, said, " Oh, bother keepers ; let's 112 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. see what we can do quite by ourselves ! We shall be much freer to talk and smoke, and if we shoot more game than we can carry we can easily ' cairn ' it for the moment." So it was settled, and with guns on our shoulders and bags at our back we started as the blue reek, beginning to ascend in thin columns from the many chimney-stacks of the old lodge, told us the household was astir. Loading up at once, for there were large woods all round the house, and my companion declared his intention of shooting everything he saw feather or fur we entered one of these pine coppices and speedily found the rabbits had not yet retired for the day. The first shot fell to me, and a rabbit was bowled over as he bolted across the path ahead. Then J scored a right and left in good style, followed by three or four more as we went forward. Every now and then we had to stop to admire one of the many ferny hollows amongst the grey rocks and under the drooping branches of the spruce firs; dingles so deep and shady that, even at midday, they were silent and cool, and the sunlight only made its way through the thick roof of leaves overhead to play about for a short hour at midday on the soft carpet of moss and short grasses. At the top of the wood was a shallow pond a tank we should call it in India of an acre or so in extent, and much overgrown with rushes. This we approached with caution, but no sooner did the smallest patches of our deer-stalking caps show through the bushes than the ducks we had expected to find " at home " rose with loud splashing and many guttural quacks. I had one chance for half a moment at the mallard as he went oif through the tree-tops, and firing in an instinctive manner, the moment the gun touched my shoulder, he fell back headlong into the water, and, after a desperate endeavour to dive, succumbed. My shot put up a family of teal from the far end of the pond, who imme- diately separated and flew round and round their home as though loth to leave. This hesitation was fatal to one of GROUSE. , 113 them, for I got another snap-shot exactly as the bird came between myself and the sun ; and, very considerably to my astonishment, down he came on to dry land. When we went to pick him up, the sunlight on his extended wings and head really made him appear as lovely a bird as there could be. A little further on a heron flew overhead, out of shot, however like all his kindred, shy and careful. I remember, one morning early, rowing up a quiet and secluded creek at the estuary of a Cornish river, and as the tide ebbed, I punted the light skiff along by the shallow margins, and no less than ten times got successfully within sixty yards of as many separate herons, all busy fishing ; but nothing would persuade them to let me come just the requisite fifteen paces closer. The manner in which they rose and flew away, directly that distance was passed, was most striking, and showed a wonderful unanimity in their ideas of safety. These Scottish herons often breed on" the ground, on rough mountain sides, contrary as it may seeni to their general habits. Finally, after a long pull up-hill, we came to the outskirts of the moorland, and " forming in line," as J said, we pro- ceeded to work at once, for already the sun was fairly high, and the grouse might be expected to have made their early morning meal of heather tops rather dry food, one would fancy and to have settled down for a comfortable siesta on the sunny side of the grey boulders, or heather clumps, stretching as far as the eye could see. With what a rough interruption the 12th comes to these pleasant morning meditations of the grouse ! What a panic must seize the new broods, and how the old birds' hearts must fail them when they hear the guns, and know the great anti-grouse conspiracy of last year has broken out again ! Our plan was to walk about fifteen yards apart in long beats across the range on which our moor lay; so working our way up to a well-known summit, almost amongst the clouds, where we might find a wide prospect to gaze on as we made I 114 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. our midday lunch, already the faint reports of the guns were coming from all sides, as the day's work commenced on the neighbouring moors. Across the valley, where the land, rising abruptly, exposed all the face of the deep-tinted strath to us, we could see a party at work, and in the bright morning air, as thin and limpid as ether, it was easy to recognize several well-known forms of friends and broad-shouldered gillies. Now and again we caught a faint glint of sunshine from a gun-barrel, and tben there would be a puff of cotton- white smoke, followed rapidly by another and another ; and as the wreaths lengthened out on the light breeze the sound of the shots came to us one by one, and perhaps even the shrill whistling of a keeper, calling in a wild young dog that had gone in pursuit of the covey up the hillside. The first thing we put up was an old cock grouse, who hardly showed for a moment, as he went down a hollow ; but this fixed our attention on the work in hand, and we went forward with guns ready and determination on our faces. Up got another bird, and, determined to draw first blood, J fired immediately. We walked up, and there lay a grey-hen a forbidden bird until the twentieth. However, J said nothing, but slipped it into his bag, and we moved forward. Two or three grouse followed, one at a time, and we are just beginning to keep rather a lax look-out my companion marching along with his gun over his shoulder, and myself lost in admiration of the wide-stretching ranges of mountains, rising to the northward step above step in tiers to the sky, purple in the shadows, green in the sunlight, with twenty shades of grey blending above when from the long heather at our feet comes a cackle, a flapping of wings, and up rise some fifteen grouse as though they had all been thrown up by the same spring. We got one with our first two shots, and another with our next two by no means good shooting, but, to tell the truth, we did not expect them just then, as my companion said. We picked up the slain, and as we straightened down their feathers, could not help admir- GROUSE. 1L5 ing their beautiful sleek forms, their roundness of shape and compactness of build ; in fact, one could almost trace the effect of the healthy mountain air in them. They would no more suit the lowlands than a loch trout would become an Essex ditch. A few yards further again a solitary bird got up on my side, and was brought down in better style. Then J had a chance at two with like result, and so we went along for a couple of hours. Whether it was that the birds had not done feeding, or for some other reason, they lay well, and in general rose by twos and threes instead of coveys, an arrangement which suited us well, as the wholesale rises on this, the opening day, shook our nerves very considerably. I have listened to wild elephants charging through the dense bamboo thickets of a southern Indian jungle, and expecting every moment to see a great colossus bearing down on my stand, but somehow it was not half so deranging to my shooting as the sudden springing from heather of a whole concourse of loud- winged grouse. A little later on, when the bags were becoming very heavy and our thoughts turned to lunch and the bottled beer waiting for us, we entered a rough piece of land with a rather thick growth of spruce firs. This we beat carefully, until about the centre our nerves were again tried by the rising of a monstrous brown bird, which, as it went away down the slope like a runaway boulder, seemed as large as a big turkey. We both threw up our guns, but J fired first, and down it came amid a cloud of feathers, though the distance was a fair forty yards, and the shot only N"o. 6. We knew it must be a capercailzie, and such it turned out to be, a fine young bird of nine or ten pounds, an addition to the bag which decided us at once to strike straight up the hillside to the spring, at the edge of which we were to tiffin. There seems to be no legal close time for these grand wild fowl ; as far as Scotland is concerned their protection may safely be left to the owners of the wild mountain forests 116 BIED LIFE IN ENGLAND. in which they dwell. They are not much in the poacher's line, and with fair play from the sportsman will probably be well able to take care of themselves. As to the common charge brought against them, the damage they do in pulling off the young tips of the spruces and firs is as nothing to the havoc made amongst those trees in the same way by the squirrels ; but even were they very guilty on that count, they are magnificent birds and well worth a little indulgence. We had been at lunch some few minutes, comfortably seated in the long heather, with the provender spread out in front and our guns behind, when a demand rose for water to mix with some " whuskey " which we proposed to drink to the success of our sport, and going down to fetch it from the little pool that bubbled up close at our feet, J put up a woodcock from the stones where it had been crouching and watching us, certainly not twenty paces away. It was useless for my companion to call to me to fire, for by the time I had got my gun the "cock " was half way across the valley. Then our lunch proceeded in peace, and for a time we divided our attention between aesthetic admiration of the glorious wide prospect stretching around us in an amphi- theatre . of rugged hills, broken here and there by pale mountain tarns or rushing streamlets, and the more practical occupation of demolishing beef sandwiches and emptying sundry bottles of beer. It was curious to listen to the silence which had come over the valley ; every one seemed to be at tiffin like ourselves, all the guns were hushed, and nothing broke the stillness but the occasional call of a grouse down below getting his scattered family together, or the far-heard whistle of a curlew. We spent half an hour over the after- tiffin pipe, and then rather reluctantly roused ourselves, stretched, and after having cairned the game and the luncheon basket with heather and rocks, we shouldered arms and again proceeded to carry the war into the enemy's country. The afternoon added a few brace to our total, a hare, GROUSE. 117 which was very cleverly stopped by J at a wonderful distance, a plover that flew overhead in an irresistibly tempting way, and a couple of wood pigeons returning from a foray in the low-lying barley fields. We were also guilty of the lives of two hen blackgame, which met their fate by rising amongst a covey of their cousins the red grouse, and under such circumstances, in the hurry of the moment, I for one can rarely tell the difference between the two species. Finally, as the sun sloped down in the west and the grey rocks were beginning to have very distinct shadows, we reached the outskirts of a deep pine forest, clothing the whole summit and side of a hill on our ground, where, bidding adieu for the time to the grouse, we scrambled over the lichen-grown boundary dyke, and picked our way amongst the dense stunted firs, all on the qui vive for another caper- cailzie, several families of which made this their special home. The intense solitude and wildness of these " pine barrens " are difficult to describe to one who does not know them well. For my part, when I first made their acquain- tance fresh from the lowlands, I was struck with surprise. It seemed some chance had swept me from the crowded little British isle to the wilds of Siberia. And what bird befits these great solitudes so well as the hermit-like " cock of the woods ! " But I may have something more to say about these grand game birds below. For the present we made one beat lengthways through the dense forest, already in the gloom of approaching dusk, adding to the bag, a wood- cock, another capercailzie, a couple of wood pigeons, a hare, and half a dozen mountain rabbits a species differing very considerably from the lowland form. When we counted up the spoil that evening in the verandah of the lodge, though not large it was pleasantly varied. We had stocked the game-room for the time, and if we had not shot very many brace of grouse, we had at least got that what we went out for a capital rough day's shooting. 118 BIED LIFE IN ENGLAND. AMONG THE BLACKCOCK. Why Blackcock enjoy exemption from the dread disease which ever and anon carries off their near relatives, the red grouse, sends down the rents of highland shooting, clipping the expenditure of the lairds, and influencing the finances of one-half of the British isles, can only be determined when the true nature of the malady is better understood. But many things favour a long and happy life to these birds. Their food is various ; frost-bitten heather in the spring matters little to them ; from the time the snow melts on the mountain tops to the period of its coming again, their bill of fare is ample and full thus they are placed beyond the reach of hard times and sickness-bringing scarcity. Then their powerful bodies and large size must modify the courage of attacking hawks, giving them little " stomach for the fight," the same cause doubtless repelling the attacks of the marauding hill crows and ground vermin, who think twice before robbing the nest of so stoutly made a bird as the watchful and courageous grey-hen. Lastly, it might be suggested that the freer flight and less gregarious habits of the moor-fowl save them from what is probably the most pregnant cause of grouse disease, the overstocking of estates. This preamble, however, is merely to introduce the fact that, disappointed with the grouse last season, and yet bent upon getting something in the way of sport out of our ten thousand acres, I turned my attention, directly the 20th of August gave lawful sanction, to the " grouse of the second degree." Let me place before you the surroundings of myself and another equally ardent "gun" on the eve of that long-looked-for date. No palatial shooting-lodge this time. A scorn of rheumatism and a taste for roughing it had determined us to take time by the forelock, and to march out into the enemy's country over night and camp GROUSE. 119 in a shepherd's " shiel," in order to find the birds on the feed the next morning by dawn, and run up half-a-dozen brace if possible before the stay-at-homes were even thinking of turning out. The time, then, is eleven p.m. ; we have made our way three miles out to our destination, and a roaring fire of birch logs flashes and crackles in one corner of a rough stone hut of very modest dimensions; the grey smoke ascending in spirals to the roof of heather and bracken fern, whence, after much consideration and many contortions, it finds a way through a weak corner, and dis- appears into the darkness. Though rough, the hut is by no means uncomfortable. The crannies between the stones have been filled with moss and fern, while plenty of both at one end of the cabin form a delightful lounge, either to sit or to sleep on. The guns, cartridge bags, etc., with a stray head or two of game picked upon the way out, hang from pegs or lean in corners, while my companion heaps logs on the fire with one hand, the other meanwhile keeping in scientific motion a frying pan, whence comes a most appetizing odour of grilled supper. I myself, having fetched an ample supply of water from the neighbouring burn, demand and obtain a place for the kettle on the fire, when a brew of tea is soon ready, and in less than a minute we are hard at work at our simple m'eal, our knees for tables, and wide rounds of home-made bread for plates. At such times the conclusion comes with irresistible force, that too much culture deadens half the enjoyment of life, and that man in a state of semi-wildness, " earning the food he ate, and pleased with what he got," must indeed have lived in the true Golden time. Perhaps more mature consideration will lessen the envy with which a man is apt to regard such a state of simplicity, for it is a very doubtful point whether freedom from butchers' bills would compensate for an occa- sional involuntary fast of a day or two when game was wild or scarce. Yet a return now and then to primitive manners, an unshackling of the harness of civilization, and a brief 120 B1ED LIFE IN ENGLAND. period spent in imitation of our huntsmen ancestors, must always prove attractive to a well-constituted sportsman's mind and body. The camp fire alone is a delight of the first degree. "Men scarcely know how beautiful flame is," nor truly appreciate it ; but when a thousand stars are twinkling overhead, the crisp crackle of the wood and the flying sparks impress the mind with a pleasant sense of companionship in solitude and love for the great Promethean gift which is felt but dimly under more familiar circumstances. Yet, though Lares and Penates are usually looked upon as strictly house- hold gods, the resting-place of the shooter or traveller, if only for a short time, needs its altar as much as does the most fixed abode. What could strike a pilgrim with more sense of discomfort than a halt under the canopy of heaven without the cheerful light of leaping red flames ? Can we imagine bright stories and laughter as the evening meal is made among men sitting with feet towards darkness ? No ; the idea is barbarous. Little matter place, time, or tempera- ture, the sojourner in the wilds, on halting, turns his first attention to a cheerful fire, in presence of which he can con- tentedly enjoy well-earned repose. With it the hunter's food is ambrosial, his drink, though it come from a hill stream, is nectar for the gods, while his sleep, if it be only on the mattress of earth, is the choicest gift in the liberal apron of good mother Nature. All these pleasures, which make out-of-door life so fascinating, we acknowledged as we sat by our fire, en- livening the evening by stories and laughter, and piling up the logs till the flames threaten destruction to the roof of sod and heather, our only protection from the night dews ; till, our pipes having burnt out twice or thrice, we drank health to the morrow, and, wrapping ourselves in the ready tartans of our adopted heath, with a final touch to our heather couches, were soon in the unsubstantial hunting grounds of sleep. But the pleasantest repose will give way before a prearranged determination to wake at a certain hour ; and GEOUSE. 121 thus the earliest dawn, stealing through the chinks of the doorway, disturbed us as effectually as a louder summons would have done. We were soon up, and while the other gun replenished the camp fire I went for water from the tumbling stream to make the early coffee, the very thought of which gave us an appetite. How fascinating the world was in its " beauty sleep ! " The sky an undecided purple, with here and there a star twinkling faintly ; and, down in the east, a great straw-coloured planet lying just upon the deep, black, rocky outline of a towering mountain summit. The stillness meanwhile was worth listening to. Even the rill by which I stood, regardless of my errand, seemed quieter than usual, and fell into its deep pool between the rocks less obtrusively than heretofore, not another sound breaking the silence far or near. The whole glen, indeed, was buried in calm repose and peace ; below, the black, profound, silent shadows, contrasted here and there with pale streamers and patches of mist marking the bogs or peat holes ; above, on either hand, against the sky the rugged edges of the hills were now just touched with a suspicion of the coming day, their outlines growing sharper every minute. But an im- patient shout from my companion brought me to the con- templation of the practical. The kettle was soon filled at the bubbling cascade, and, hurrying back, we were forthwith busy in the preparation of a hasty meal, for we were bent on watching the sun make his rise from a point of vantage, and there was little time to be lost. Nor was our energy without its reward. The meal over, and the things replaced for the moment in the hut, with guns on our shoulders and our sprightly dogs at heel, we boldly turned our faces to the steep northern ascent ; and, hand over hand, through deep rock-bestrewn bracken, and dim ghostly tangles of dwarf birches and alders, silent and quiet in the cool air of the early morning, we made our way, until, somewhat breathless and warm after ten minutes' hard climbing, a rocky ledge was gained commanding a mag- 122 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. nificent panorama, and we sank down on the moss to await the rising of the sun. Soon my companion exclaimed, " Here he conies ! " as a pink light flushed into the sky like the reflection of a far-away conflagration. Quickly it rolled up till it reached the purple sky right above us, deepening into crimson, and bringing out with a touch of colour on each, that grew every moment more vivid, squadrons of light fleecy clouds, of whose presence we had hitherto been ignorant. Then the light in the east streamed strongly up from the nether world, catching the distant hill-tops, and spreading rapidly from peak to peak, touching, as it went, each with gold, until they stood out from the purple shadows like the jewelled bosses of a shield ; while the wonderful refulgence ran down the gullies, and, glancing from the high plateaus, passed, above and below, through a hundred changing shades of flame and orange. Finally, while we were still watching this shifting trans- formation scene, before we knew it the sun himself shone from the brilliant masses of clouds, and all the hillsides woke to life. For some time longer we sat in silence, admiring the beauty of the scene and the fresh, sweet air ; bub our thoughts soon turned to the object of the expedition, and being on likely ground, we at once proceeded in search of sport. It has always appeared to me that the blackcock is a very early bird ; to shoot him the start cannot be made too soon after sunrise. He rarely rises so well or seems so active later in the day, differing in this from the grouse ; and should the sportsman wish to find the birds easily, and to see them on the move in all directions, he must adapt himself to their ideas of "catching the early worm." No sooner are we started, and the spaniels " hied " on, than they begin, after a few casts to right and left, to draw ahead, with tails swinging nervously, and noses sniffing the GROUSE. 123 ground. My companion nods significantly to me, and we close up with a dog, who, giving a hasty glance in the most sagacious manner, to assure himself that we are at hand, plunges forward, and out of a clump of bracken hurtles into the air a large bird, all black, who, with noisy wings, shoots fifteen or twenty feet upwards, and makes off up at the glen at a great pace. We recover our composure as rapidly as may be, and I take the bird as he tops a stunted birch thirty yards off, listening with satisfaction to the heavy thud of his fall, when a motion of the hands sends a dog off at a gallop to retrieve him. We are following, when another cock gets up, and, rising high, tries to fly over us towards the opposite side of the valley ; but this is the height of rashness, for we have already had eight days at the grouse, and are " in the swing." The other gun takes the shot, and the big bird comes down back first, with a long trail of feathers behind him. We cannot help admiring them for a couple of minutes. Mine is wanting a feather or two of his neck a common occur- rence at this time of the year, when the moulting season is on; but the other is quite perfect, and, as the first of the season, his twisted lyre-like tail has been promised to grace a highland bonnet on a certain fair Saxon head. The blue gleams of light on the back contrast beautifully with the delicate white of the slender feathers under the wings, the exposing of which as he rises makes him so conspicuous a mark against the green of the bracken ferns ; but, to my mind, the finest thing about him is the bold build of his head the strong black bill, slightly hooked and sharp edged, the thick neck set with glossy black feathers, and the bright eyes, with their curious overlay of close scarlet wattles, giving him a bold domineering expression that fits well with his disposition and habitat. In size there can be no comparison between the lordly blackgame (the cocks of which reach as much as four or four and a half pounds, and the hens over two) and the smaller 124 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. and lighter grouse, nor are they alike in habits. The grouse is a bird of great attachment to its mate. If, unlike the eagle, he does not remain faithful to her until death decrees a divorce, he yet keeps troth for a year and a day, doing some share of domestic duties, and taking part in beating back the pillaging hawks when they swoop down on the young broods. The blackcock is a roisterer of different habits, with affections so unstable that they only serve to make him " daft " and contemptible to all respectable birddoni for a few weeks in the spring. It is he who comes down in the earliest mornings of the new year from his perch among the pine branches where he retires overnight, to be out of the way of prowling vermin, and to keep his body of which he is very careful (the result of being a bachelor nine months out of the twelve) out of the cold ; and, winging his way through the thin mists of early dawn to some quiet open spot, alights, and commences that ridiculous love dance that has been so often described by naturalists and sportsmen. How any reasonable gray-hen can admire such a strutting, puffed up, and excitable wooer as he then shows himself to be, it is difficult to understand ; . but doubtless she knows it is all for her sake, and that, in the female mind, is excuse broad enough, no doubt, to cover any folly. There every morning the cocks strut and crow, pacing round in well-worn circles with every variety of style; now and then fighting terrible combats with glossy black-armoured rivals, who come at their challenge from other ridges and slopes, and carry on the conflict before Store of ladies whose bright eyes Kain influence, and adjudge the prize. But as soon as the frosts of winter have grown thinner on the hill-tops, and no longer, even at earliest dawn, turn to ice beads the dew on the burn-side bents, the blackcock re- tires to sober bachelor life, and for the rest of the year attends strictly to his own affairs ; in pleasant weather haunting the highest ground he can find, and roaming hither and thither GfiOUSE. 125 with a few other " good fellows " on the light wings of fancy; but coming down to the more sheltered hollows, where the hens assiduously sit or tend their chicks, when storms break above and grey mist sweeps backward and forward in a dull, damp sea of vapour along the mountain summits. To-day, as soon as the sun was well up, we found the birds thickly upon the elevated ground we were now beating, which at another time, after a period of wind or rain, would have been useless for our purpose ; but a little practice soon makes one familiar with such matters, and before long we brought ourselves to believe that we were as knowing judges of likely localities for the birds as they themselves were in selecting good feeding grounds. Soon we approach a place where the land dips suddenly out of sight, obviously the deep bed of a mountain torrent, worn by countless ages of fretting; and here J makes a sign to me to approach with caution ; so, waving back the dogs, who at once come to heel, we walk slowly to the brink and look over. Nothing ! Yes, but there is ! And down below us, perhaps fifty feet, are five blackcock on a little patch of green sward under a dead lightning-withered rowan bush. For a moment or two, during which we are unnoticed, we watch the slow, leisurely way in which they are picking the seeds from the tall grass and rushes, and their self-satisfied air as they walk daintily about. It is a pretty sight, but very brief, for soon a bright eye is turned on us with doubt and hesitation for an instant, and then, when the danger in its full force bursts on the discoverer, and he recognizes the hated Saxon at arm's length, a hoarse cry escapes him, throwing the whole covey into a panic. With hardly a glance at the foe, they follow their leader's example, tossing themselves into the air and dashing off as fast as muscular wings can carry them. Forthwith our guns open fire, and, as the smoke clears away, a victim or two lie amongst the ferns and ling. These are followed by others that we come upon suddenly, 126 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. still making their early morning meal in the soft ground among the sedges, or in pleasant alleys between the banks of bracken, just gaining its autumn tints of brown and amber lovely enough, though somewhat melancholy, as marking the downward steps of the glorious summer. We have as many varieties of shots as we could wish, and, in places where the broken rock masses are piled numerous and thickly, with overhanging brushwood, the shooting is very difficult. Now a bird will slip quietly off a ledge of such a pile of stones, and, gliding down hawklike with out- stretched wings, will, unless we are very sharp, be out of sight before our gun can be brought to position. Other birds will rise from among the thick tangle of vegetation and debris underneath fallen trees as the shooter approaches, stealing away on the far side with most aggra- vating expedition. To show, however, how close the game will sometimes lie in such places, I may mention that on one occasion we came to a spot where some fallen timber was in confusion amongst the ferns under a clump of birches. We halted, and, not seeing any game in the neighbourhood, lit our pipes, and while resting for a few minutes, made, as usual, a fire, the smoke of which blew about in every direction ; and yet, when we once more moved forward, our guns carried idly under our arms, up sprang a blackcock, followed by four of his boon companions, from a little island of bracken that we had looked upon with contempt. We were so aston- ished and taken aback that a couple of charges of shot sent after them did not touch a feather. With such varied adventures sometimes, by blunders or lost chances, going down deeply in our own estimation ; and, again, soothing our ruffled spirits by a brilliant snap- shot, or good piece of luck the bag all the time grew heavier and heavier, until the finishing touch was put to our endurance by a gigantic blue hare, which, getting up between us, was fired at so exactly on the same moment that the two GEOUSE. 127 reports were merged in one, and he rolled over very dead into the dry basin of a little streamlet. " I think you shot him," said my companion, dubiously lifting the heavy beast with some effort ; but, remembering that we each carried our own game, I modestly tried to persuade him that it was his victim. But that would not do, so we forthwith built a hollow cairn of stones on a con- spicuous ledge, and consigned our game to it until we could send a keeper up for them. By this time we had worked our way to the crest of the range, and a fair prospect of hill and dale lay below us, a chequered plain of land and water as far as the eye could reach lochs without end or number, so numerous they seemed, and at our feet the noble reaches of one made famous for ever by a touch of the magic wand of the great "Wizard of the North," " Loch Katrine's mirror blue." " Let's try the locklet for teal," said the energetic gun at my elbow, for ever disturbing me when my attention is absorbed in the sublime ; so we turned down a grassy slope on the plateau top, and, crossing some bare peat bogs, where the water, brown and dark, stood in the holes and ditches left by the subsidence of the surface, we walked in silence for half a mile, till a rugged hillock rose before us, and behind it lay an oft-visited mountain tarn, marking the water-shed. This spot was in general a sure find at this hour of the morning for teal or duck. We divided our force so as to take the enemy in front and rear. Who is there that has seen one of these wild, unknown, unnamed sheets of water can forget the weird spot ? More lonely places it would be hard to find upon the face of the earth. The hot sands of the desert, the dense, gloomy depth of a tropical jungle, never conveyed to my mind half the sense of loneliness that one of these little lakes does. All around their borders the gaunt, uncanny rushes wave and tremble as though at their roots lay some worse secret than that of the Asiatic king; and heavy, sodden 128 BIED LIFE IN ENGLAND. mosses, green, yellow, and red as blood, stretch out on every side in a palpitating, aqueous flooring, fringing here and there unwholesome pools and dykes, where the water sits, wondering to what ocean it shall flow. Melancholy, pre- historic water-plants hug themselves with the idea that the world is back again in the Miocene period of its existence ; and then, worse than all, killing the tender flowers, and ruling the region with endless tyranny, the mountain wind sweeps for ever over the morasses, chill and cutting even when the sun is at its highest, shaking the reeds and cotton grass, and ruffling the surface of the waters that lap per- petually with discontented mournfulness on the peaty margins of their prisons. Yet the ducks like such places, rearing their families in security, and we must suppose equal contentment, amongst the deep beds of rank water weeds. Here we hoped to find them ; nor were we dis- appointed. Creeping round the sheltering knoll, and timing our walk so well that we both came in reach of the pool at the same moment, we examined its surface, and saw with great satisfaction a flight of widgeon riding in the centre on the miniature surf ; some teal feeding on the mud with much satisfaction, if we might judge by their deep absorp- tion ; a brood of flappers under the care of an old duck, and a couple of mallards performing their morning toilets on a tufty island of coarse grass ; in fact, our only wish was that there had been some more guns at hand to help in the foray. According to agreement, I crawled slowly forward again, after a minute's rest, in order to get as near as possible before they rose; but it is always the unexpected that happens. I had gone some distance down a rather wet peat channel, much marked with the " spoor " of sheep and mountain hares, till, thinking it might be as well to have another look at the locklet, I raised my head with the utmost caution, and was about to take a view of my sur- roundings, when a cluster of brown bodies in the stunted heather, not five yards away, caught my eyes ; and there, GEOUSE. 129 close crouched, was a covey of red grouse, totally unconscious of my presence, but entirely absorbed in watching the move- ments of my companion a hundred paces off, who in his turn had both eyes fixed on the ducks, from whose sight he was well sheltered by a fallen rock. Such cases must often occur in the field. Every sportsman probably passes over much game that is well aware of his presence, though he may be totally ignorant of theirs ; but it is not often that a third person gets a chance of witnessing unobserved the process. Needless to say, I was seen almost instantly, and the whole covey rose on the wing like one bird at the alarm cry of the old cock. The ducks also heard the cry, and, knowing by that curious freemasonry which exists amongst birds that it meant more than an ordinary summons to seek new feeding grounds, the "flappers" melted from sight into the sedges like shadows, while the widgeon and teal flew up, and, taking a wide circle, came directly over us with " loud whispering wings." J had already fired both barrels at the grouse, which he declared had gone by like a whirlwind not more than a dozen yards overhead, and had brought down (tell it not in Gath) three birds. So the widgeon were left to me, my first shot being an unexplainable miss, though the next one mended matters by stopping the hindermost of the flight just as he was passing out of reach. By the time we had reloaded, the teal, according to custom, came round again in a wide circle over the bog, and three of their number fell as they passed over us ; but the mallards and other ducks had gone straight away down the valley. Then we went down to the pond, where, after a brief bit of paddling, the dog came upon the brood of flappers, and put them up beautifully two at a time, and we got six out of eight with seven shots. By this time the sun was well up, and we were very conscious of the lightness of the early morning meal we had taken; so, distributing the game, we took a u bee-line " for the encampment, and twenty minutes afterwards we came in sight of the camp fire and a fine K 130 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. breakfast spread on the heather, already seated beside which were the other guns, who were to join us in the serious work of the day, after some much-needed refreshment had been taken. Many and various were the jokes attempted at our cost, but we treated them with the lofty derision we could so well afford, and never, not even late in the afternoon, when we were conscious of a certain stiffness about the knees, the result of early rising, did we regret the night in the open and the marvellous beauty of a highland sunrise. There is more sweetness in the early hours of this sea-begirt kingdom than perhaps one in a thousand of its inhabitants knows. CAPERCAILZIE SHOOTING. Cunning and strong while alive, and by no means a bad table bird dead, the capercailzie lives amongst the finest of natural scenery, as we have said ; to stalk and shoot him is fairly good sport with the additional attraction of glorious exercise. Driving the great grouse over previously hidden gunners is, however, little less than a shame. He does not lend himself kindly to this latter sport, and his bulk is so large that the simplest bungler who can pull a trigger gets more than a fair chance, as the mass of feathers, borne on broad wings, sweeps through the glades of the forest. With this theory in mind, I on one occasion made a quiet raid upon the "cock of the woods " in his native fastnesses, before deeper snow than that already fallen on the hills round our Scotch lodge rendered his haunts inaccessible. Thus one morning, when all necessary preparations had been seen to overnight, cartridges loaded, boots greased, etc., we were ready for a start immediately an early breakfast was over "we," on this occasion, being myself and a useful retriever, as fond of rough sport as his master, and possessing a keen nose, an admirable temper, and a thick coat, all GROUSE. 131 essential requisites for the species of hunting we were going to undertake. Forthwith we set out, climbing the wire fence that separated the civilization of the grounds from the wilderness of the woods beyond, and walking quickly- over the crisp white snow, frozen as dry as sand by north winds blowing it hither and thither all night, until a shrubbery of pines iindergrown by furze bushes was reached. Disregarding the rabbits that peopled this region and were skipping about amongst the roots in scores, I reserved my fire for a moment or two, as just ahead, at top of the little burn coming tinkling down the hill through a channel rugged with icicles, lay a reedy marsh surrounded by larches and overhung by willows a likely spot for ducks on such a day as this ; so we moved slowly up, taking advantage of thick patches of snow to deaden all sound of our footfalls, with increasing caution as we drew near the spot whence the surface of the ponds could be seen. A few yards further the willows rose above the gorge bushes ahead, and from the last sheltering bush the weed-grown surface of the partially frozen tarn could be observed. The first glance round was not promising, but a second and more careful scrutiny showed a bunch of .ducks feeding quietly at the far end of the water. Despatching a handy stable boy, watching the proceeding Avith vast interest from a neighbouring lane, to make a detour and take th'em in rear, I repressed the ardour of the dog, who was trembling in every limb with cold and excite- ment, and waited with eyes on the birds and finger on the triggers. For a few minutes they continued their methodical feeding, coasting along the half-frozen edges of the reeds, and now and again tipping themselves up to explore the mud of the bottom. But soon they get an uneasy fancy that something is approaching them from the far side, and up go their heads, and they crowd together, turning this way and that in nervousness, which comes to a climax as the form of our boy breaks through the bushes. A second afterwards, 132 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. kicking the water into foam behind them, they rise as though lifted by one pair of wings, and bear straight down for me y sweeping over the pointed tops of the snow-laden firs, about thirty yards distant, with the early sunlight showing up th& white feathers lining their wings. The leader gets a charge of No. 5, and comes down unmistakably to the dry ferns, and another bird has the other barrel, which results in it dropping both legs and falling in. a long incline "grounds'* about fifty yards away. This is too much for " Jack," who y with a yelp of delight breaks loose and returns in a few seconds with the mallard in his jaws. Picking up the birds and slipping in two more cartridges r we go on again under the firs through a gap in a stone wall r and enter upon a tract of rather wild ground, where the rabbits were lying out in their snow couches in great numbers, to the intense delight of the dog, who chivied them hither and thither bad form of course on his part and mine to allow it, but what can you expect from a dog who has not been out for a week ? So I let him ran riot for a time, but when ten minutes' tramping brought us to the slope of the great hill, and the long shadows of the pines fell on the snow above us, "Jack" was called up, and put in an appearance from a distant field with his tongue hanging out, panting- prodigiously, and a general air of abashment. Matters were then pointed oat to him, and he was instructed to restrain undue zeal and keep to heel, he at once taking up that position. We scrambled over a tumble- down stone dyke, and entered the pleasant shade of pine woods. Wha.t can be more lonely, yet what more attractive in its solitude to a lover of nature than a great pine barren ? Once fairly in, the sky is only to be seen directly overhead. All round on every side, as the wanderer turns hither and thither, stretch the long silent vistas of the wood, scores and hundreds of fir stems, grey with lichens and long pendent mosses, stretching away to the remote parts, where they are blended into a confused mass that appears impenetrable GROUSE. 133 until approached when the spaces open out, giving fresh views of new aisles. Here and there the monotony of grey is broken by the low thick branches of a spruce fir coming down to the ground, where they spread in an ever green canopy, forming snug hiding-places against chance showers ; or perhaps one of these trees has been blown completely over, and, lying along the ground, forms just such a sort of shelter as the capercailzie loves. Amidst such a forest of stems we found ourselves now, nothing to guide us to our direction but the slope of the land, which was, it must be confessed, very decided," and we were soon scrambling upwards hand over hand through broken masses of rocks, tumbled about like the ruins of a great city, the spaces between them filled up with deep snow, through which here and there appeared the tall stalk of a withered foxglove and masses of amber and golden fern. Scrambling over such stuff in the semi-twilight, with a heavy gun, a game bag, and supply of cartridges is decidedly warm work, tending to make the climber a little careless as to where he is going. Thus it was that the best chance of this morning was lost, a young roebuck upon which I came suddenly in a little natural hollow, vanishing almost as silently as a ghost before I could get my gun ready, leaving me not a memento but his spoor 011 the fresh snow, and the remembrance of his tawny hide as he glided down the valley. We did not pursue, being but too well aware of the uselessness of such a proceeding. These roebuck are most fascinating little deer, and many a bright summer morning when the blackcock have been calling and fighting all round, and the world has been wringing wet with dew, have I been after them. They are much harder to find than red deer, owing to close keeping to the shelter of coppices and forest glades, where a chance shot is all that can be got now and again. The only sure way of obtaining a shot is to lie up outside a plantation, long before dawn, and wait patiently for their coming out to feed ; and they won't do that if you 134 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. " stand between the wind and their nobility," or if they catch the smallest sound or the faintest movement from behind your screen. However, to return to our capercailzie. After the mis- adventure with the buck, strict attention to business was the order of the day, and being 1 so high up the mountain side that a vast extent of snow-laden fir-tops were visible below, I struck along the slope decidedly better walking and proceeded with due caution. Everywhere round about the white covering of the ground was pitted with marks of the mountain rabbits which abound in these wilds, and were skipping hither and thither in tempting style, which would certainly have brought retribution on them had I not been after better game. These hill conies are as different as can be from their cousins of the lowlands ; their fur is much greyer more like that of the badger, their limbs are shorter, and their build altogether closer and more compact. It might have been feared that naturalists, in bestowing Latin names on the group, would have taken note of these facts and made the variety into a species ; but it is well it has not chanced so, for such dividing where Nature has made no division is not to be commended there are already only too many instances of it. A minute or two and a fallen pine tree appears lying' in a vast mass of green confusion across the rocks a little above us. "Just the place!" I mutter, and scramble towards it with gun ready this time, and then pause about fifteen yards off. A moment of silence succeeds, and the dog- is on the point of being sent in, when a mighty flutter takes place spontaneously, and a brown mass