The sweet scent from a beanfield beside the road caused me to linger one summer morning in a gateway under the elms. A gentle south wind came over the beans, bearing with it the odour of their black-and-white bloom. The Overboro' road ran through part of the Okebourne property (which was far too extensive to be enclosed in a ring fence), and the timber had therefore been allowed to grow so that there was an irregular avenue of trees for some distance. I faced the beanfield, which was on the opposite side, leaning back against the gate which led into some of Hilary's wheat. The silence of the highway, the soft wind, the alternate sunshine and shade as the light clouds passed over, induced a dreamy feeling; and I cannot say how long I had been there when something seemed as it were to cross the corners of my half-closed eyes.
Looking up I saw three stoats gallop across the road, not more than ten yards away. They issued from under the footpath, which was raised and had a drain through it to relieve the road of flood-water in storm. The drain was faced with a flat stone, with a small round hole cut in it. Coming from the wheat at my back, the stoats went down into the ditch; thence entered the short tunnel under the footpath, and out at its stone portal, over the road to the broad sward on the opposite side; then along a furrow in the turf to the other hedge, and so into the beanfield. They galloped like racehorses straining for the victory; the first leading, the second but a neck behind, and the third not half a length. The smooth road rising slightly in the centre showed them well; and thus, with the neck stretched out in front and the tail extended in the rear, the stoat appears much longer than on a mound or in the grass.
A second or so afterwards two more started from the same spot; but I was perhaps in the act to move, for before they had gone three yards they saw me and rushed back to the drain. After a few minutes the larger of these two, probably the male, ventured forth again and reached the middle of the road, when he discovered that his more timorous companion had not followed but was only just peeping out. He stopped and elevated his neck some five or six inches, planting the fore-feet so as to lift him up high to see round, while his hindquarters were flush with the road, quite flat in the dust in which his tail was trailing. His reddish body and white neck, the clear-cut head, the sharp ears, and dark eye were perfectly displayed in that erect attitude. As his companion still hesitated he cried twice, as if impatiently, 'check, check'--a sound like placing the tongue against the teeth and drawing it away. But she feared to follow, and he returned to her. Thinking they would attempt to cross again presently, I waited quietly.
A lark came over from the wheat, and, alighting, dusted herself in the road, hardly five yards from the mouth of the drain, and was there some minutes. A robin went still closer--almost opposite the hole; both birds apparently quite unconscious of the bloodthirsty creatures concealed within it. Some time passed, but the two stoats did not come out, and I saw no more of them: they probably retreated to the wheat as I left the gateway, and would remain there till the noise and jar of my footsteps had ceased in the distance. Examining the road, there was a trail where the first three had crossed in quick succession. In the thick white dust their swift feet had left a line drawn roughly yet lightly, the paws leaving not an exact but an elongated, ill-defined impression. But where the fourth stopped, elevated his neck, and cried to his mate, there was a perfect print of the fore-feet side by side. So slight a track would be obliterated by the first cart that came by.
Till that day I had never seen so many as five stoats together hunting in a pack. It would seem as if stoats and weasels had regular routes; for I now recollected that in the previous winter, when the snow was on the ground, I surprised two weasels almost exactly in the same spot. At other times, too, I have seen solitary stoats and weasels (which may have had companions in the hedge) hunting along that mound, both before and since. I was at first going to tell Hilary about the pack, but afterwards refrained, as he would at once proceed to set up gins in the run, while I thought I should like to see the animals again. But I got him to talk about stoats and weasels, and found that he had not himself seen so many together. There was, however, a man about the place who told a tale of some weasels he had seen. It was 'that rascal old Aaron;' but he could not listen to such a fellow. Hilary would tell me nothing further, having evidently a strong dislike to the man.
It seems there were two Aarons--uncle and nephew: old Aaron was the arch-poacher of the parish, young Aaron worked regularly at Lucketts' Place. This young labourer (the man who fell asleep on the milking-stool) was one of the best of his class--a great, powerful fellow, but good-natured, willing, and pleasant to speak to. He was a favourite with many, and with reason, for he had a gentleness of manner beyond his station; and, till you knew his weakness, you could not but take an interest in him. His vice was drink. He was always down at Lucketts' Place; and through him I made acquaintance with his disreputable uncle, who was at first rather shy of me, for he had seen me about with Hilary, and between the two there was a mortal feud. Old Aaron could not keep out of Okebourne Chace, and Hilary was 'down' upon him. Hilary was, indeed, keener than the keepers.
The old poacher saw the weasels in the 'Pitching.' This was a private lane, which ran through the recesses of the Chace where the wood was thickest and most secluded. It had been made for the convenience of communication between the upper and lower farms, and for hauling timber; the gates at each end being kept locked. In one place the lane descended the steepest part of the wooded hill, and in frosty weather it was not easy even to walk down it there. Sarsen stones, gathered out of the way of the plough in the arable fields, had been thrown down in it at various times with the object of making a firm bottom. Rounded and smooth and very hard, these stones, irregularly placed, with gaps and intervals, when slippery with hoar frost were most difficult to walk on. Once or twice men out hunting had been known to gallop down this hill: the extreme of headlong bravado; for if there was any frost it was sure to linger in that shady lane, and a slip of the iron-shod hoof could scarcely fail to result in a broken neck. It was like riding down a long steep flight of steps.
Aaron one day was engaged with his ferret and nets in the Pitching, just at the bottom of the hill, where there grew a quantity of brake-fern as tall as the shoulder. It was shrivelled and yellow, but thick enough to give him very good cover. Every now and then he looked out into the lane to see if any one was about, and on one of these occasions saw what he imagined at first to be a colony of rats migrating; but when they came near, racing down the lane, he found they were weasels. He counted fourteen, and thought there were one or two more.
Aaron also told me a curious incident that happened to him very early one morning towards the beginning of spring. The snow was on the ground and the moon was shining brightly as he got on the railway (a few miles from Okebourne) and walked some distance up it: he did not say what for, but probably as the nearest way to a cover. As he entered a deep cutting where the line came round a sharp curve he noticed strange spots upon the snow, and upon examination found it was blood. For the moment he thought there had been an accident; but shortly afterwards he picked up a hare's pad severed from the leg, and next a hare's head, and presently came on a quantity of similar fragments, all fresh. He collected them, and found they had belonged to six hares which had been cut to pieces by a passing train. The animals were so mutilated as not to be of the least use.
When I told Hilary of this, he at once pronounced it impossible, and nothing but one of Aaron's lies. On reflection, however, I am not so sure that it is impossible, nor can I see any reason why the old poacher should invent a falsehood of the kind. It was just a time of the year when hares are beginning to go 'mad,' and, as they were not feeding but playing together, they might have strayed up the line just as they do along roads. Most persons must have observed how quietly a train sometimes steals up--so quietly as to be inaudible: a fact that has undoubtedly been the death of many unfortunates. Now, just at this spot there was a sharp curve, and if the driver shut off steam as he ran round it the train very likely came up without a sound. The sides of the cutting being very steep, the hares, when at last they perceived their danger, would naturally rush straight away along the metals. Coming at great speed, the engine would overtake and destroy them: a miserable end for the poor creatures in the midst of their moonlight frolic. But what Aaron laid stress on was the fact that he could not even sell the skins, they were so cut to pieces.
The rooks' nests in the Chace were very numerous, and were chiefly built in elm trees, but some in tall spruce firs. It was easy to know when the birds had paired, as a couple of rooks could then be often seen perched gravely side by side upon an old nest in the midst of leafless boughs, deliberating about its repair. There were some poplars near a part of the rookery, and when the nests were fully occupied with young the old birds frequently alighted on the very top of an adjacent poplar. The slender brush-like tip of the tree bent with their weight, curving over like a whip, to spring up when they left.
The rooks were fond of maize, boldly descending among the poultry kept in a rickyard within a short distance of their trees. If any one has a clump of trees in which rooks seem inclined to build and it is desired to encourage them, it would appear a good plan to establish a poultry-yard in the same field. They are certain to visit the spot.
One day I watched a rook pursuing a swift and making every effort to overtake and strike it. The rook displayed great power of wing, twisting and turning, now descending or turning on one side to glide more rapidly, and uttering short 'caws' of eagerness or anger; but, just eluding the heavy rush of its pursuer, the swift doubled and darted away before it, as if tempting the enemy to charge, and then enjoying his disappointment. Several other swifts wheeled above at a distance, apparently watching. These evolutions lasted some minutes, rook and swift rising higher and higher into the air until, tired of being chased, the swift went straight away at full speed, easily outstripping the rook, which soon desisted from the attempt to follow.
When birds are thus combating, the chief aim of each is to get above the other, as any elevation gives an advantage. This may be continually noticed in spring, when fighting is always going on, and is as characteristic of the small birds as the larger. At first I thought it was a crow after the swift, but came to the conclusion that it must be a rook because the battle began over the rookery and afterwards the aggressor sailed away to where some rooks were feeding. Nor would a crow have exhibited such agility of wing. Swallows often buffet a crow; but this was a clear case of a rook attacking.
In the country rooks never perch on houses, and but seldom on sheds, unless fresh thatched, when they come to examine the straw, as also on the ricks. But in Brighton, which is a treeless locality, a rook may sometimes be seen on a chimney-pot in the midst of the town, and the pinnacles of the Pavilion are a favourite resort; a whole flock of rooks and jackdaws often wheel about the domes of that building. At the Chace a rook occasionally mounted on a molehill recently thrown up and scattered the earth right and left with his bill--striking now to one side and now to the other. Hilary admitted that rooks destroyed vast quantities of grubs and creeping things, but was equally positive that they feasted on grain; and indeed it could not be denied that a crop of wheat almost ripe is a very favourite resort of a flock. He had seen rooks carry away ears of wheat detached from the stalk to an open spot for better convenience. They would follow the dibbling machine, taking each grain of seed-wheat in succession, guided to the exact spot by the slight depression made by the dibble.
Every evening all the rooks of the neighbourhood gathered into vast flocks and returned to roost in the woods of the Chace. But one winter afternoon there came on the most dense fog that had been known for a length of time, and a flock of rooks on their way as usual to the Chace stopped all night in a clump of trees on the farm a mile from the roosting-place. This the oldest labourer had never known them do before. In the winter just past (1879-80) there were several very thick fogs during sharp frost. One afternoon I noticed a small flock of starlings which seemed unable to find their way home to the copse where I knew vast numbers of them roosted. This flock as it grew dusk settled in an elm by the roadside, then removed to another, shaking down the rime from the branches, and a third time wheeled round and perched in an oak. At that hour on ordinary days the starlings would all have been flying fast in a straight line for the copse, but these were evidently in doubt and did not know which direction to take.
Hilary disliked to see the wood-pigeons in his wheat-fields: the wood-pigeon beats the grains out of a wheat-ear with the bill, striking it while on the ground. The sparrows, again, clear the standing wheat-ears, which at a little distance look thin and disarranged, and when handled are empty.
There were many missel-thrushes about the Chace; they are fond of a wooded district. They pack together in summer and part in winter--just opposite in that respect to so many other birds, which separate in warm weather and congregate as it grows cold, so that the lower the temperature the larger the flock. In winter and spring the missel-thrushes fly alone or not more than two together. After their young have left the nest they go in small packs. I saw ten or twelve rise from an arable field on the 18th of June last year; there do not often seem to be more than a dozen together. I have counted ten in a pack on the 16th of September, and seven together as late as the 2nd of October. Soon after that they appear to separate and act on their individual wishes. Starlings in like manner pack after their young can fly, but then they do not separate in autumn.
It may be remarked that by autumn the young missel-thrushes would not only fly well, but would have been educated by the old birds, and would have come to maturity. Their natural independence might then come into play. But these are effects rather than causes, besides which I think birds and animals often act from custom rather than for advantage. Among men customs survive for centuries after the original meaning has been lost. I had always been told by country people that the missel-thrush was a solitary bird, and when I first observed a pack and mentioned it some incredulity was expressed. Very naturally in summer people do not see much but hay and wheat. It was noticed on the farms about the Chace in the springs of 1878 and 1879 that the corncrakes, which had formerly been so numerous and proclaimed their presence so loudly, were scarcely heard at all.
It is a little outside my subject, since it did not occur in the Chace, but the other day a friend was telling me how he had been hunted by bucks while riding a bicycle. He was passing through a forest in the summer, when he suddenly became aware of six or seven bucks coming down a glade after him. The track being rough he could not ride at full speed--probably they would have outstripped him even if he had been able to do so--and they were overtaking him rapidly. As they came up he saw that they meant mischief, and fearing a bad fall he alighted by a tree, behind which he thought to dodge them. But no sooner did he touch the ground than the bucks so furiously rushing after him stopped dead in their career; he stepped towards them, and directly they saw him walking they retreated hastily to a distance.
The first berries to go as the autumn approaches are those of the mountain-ash. Both blackbirds and thrushes began to devour the pale-red bunches hanging on the mountain-ashes as early as the 4th of September last year. Starlings are fond of elder-berries: a flock alighting on a bush black with ripe berries will clear the bunches in a very short time. Haws, or peggles, which often quite cover the hawthorn bushes, are not so general a food as the fruit of the briar. Hips are preferred; at least, the fruit of the briar is the first of the two to disappear. The hip is pecked open (by thrushes, redwings, and blackbirds) at the tip, the seeds extracted, and the part where it is attached to the stalk left, just as if the contents had been sucked out. Greenfinches, too, will eat hips.
Haws are often left even after severe frosts; sometimes they seem to shrivel or blacken, and may not perhaps be palatable then. Missel-thrushes and wood-pigeons eat them. Last winter in the stress of the sharp and continued frosts the greenfinches were driven in December to swallow the shrivelled blackberries still on the brambles. The fruity part of the berries was of course gone, and nothing remained but the seeds or pips, dry and hard as wood; they were reduced to feeding on this wretched food. Perhaps the last of the seeds available are those of the docks.
This is well known to bird-fowlers, and on a dry day in January they take two large bunches of docks--'red docks' they call them--tied round the centre like faggots and well smeared at the top with birdlime. These are placed on the ground, by a hedge, and near them a decoy goldfinch in a cage. Goldfinches eat dock-seed, and if any approach the decoy-bird calls. The wild bird descends from the hedge to feed on the dock-seed and is caught. Goldfinches go in pairs all the winter and work along the hedges together. In spring the young green buds upon the hawthorn are called 'cuckoo's bread and cheese' by the ploughboys.
[The end]
Richard Jefferies's essay: A Pack Of Stoats. Birds