A fox-trapping shepherd—Gamekeepers and foxes—Fox and stoat—A gamekeeper off his guard—Pheasants and foxes—Caleb kills a fox—A fox-hunting sheep-dog—Two varieties of foxes—Rabbits playing with little foxes—How to expel foxes—A playful spirit in the fox—Fox-hunting a danger to sheep
Caleb related that his friend Shepherd Gathergood was a great fox-killer and, as with hares, he took them in a way of his own. He said that the fox will always go to a heap of ashes in any open place, and his plan was to place a steel trap concealed among the ashes, made fast to a stick about three feet high, firmly planted in the middle of the heap, with a piece of strong-smelling cheese tied to the top. The two attractions of an ash-heap and the smell of strong cheese was more than any fox could resist. When he caught a fox he killed and buried it on the down and said "nothing to nobody" about it. He killed them to protect himself from their depredations; foxes, like Old Gaarge and his son in Caleb's case, went round at night to rob him of the rabbits he took in his snares.
Caleb never blamed him for this; on the contrary, he greatly admired him for his courage, seeing that if it had been found out he would have been a marked man. It was perhaps intelligence or cunning rather than courage; he did not believe that he would be found out, and he never was; he told Caleb of these things because he was sure of his man. Those who were interested in the hunt never suspected him, and as to gamekeepers, they hardly counted. He was helping them; no one hates a fox more than they do. The farmer gets compensation for damage, and the hen-wife is paid for her stolen chickens by the hunt, The keeper is required to look after the game, and at the same time to spare his chief enemy, the fox. Indeed, the keeper's state of mind with regard to foxes has always been a source of amusement to me, and by long practice I am able to talk to him on that delicate subject in a way to make him uncomfortable and self-contradictory. There are various, quite innocent questions which the student of wild life may put to a keeper about foxes which have a disturbing effect on his brain. How to expel foxes from a covert, for example; and here is another: Is it true that the fox listens for the distressed cries of a rabbit pursued by a stoat and that he will deprive the stoat of his captive? Perhaps; Yes; No, I don't think so, because one hunts by night, the other by day, he will answer, but you see that the question troubles him. One keeper, off his guard, promptly answered, "I've no doubt of it; I can always bring a fox to me by imitating the cry of a rabbit hunted by a stoat." But he did not say what his object was in attracting the fox.
I say that the keeper was off his guard in this instance, because the fiction that foxes were preserved on the estate was kept up, though as a fact they were systematically destroyed by the keepers. As the pheasant-breeding craze appears to increase rather than diminish, notwithstanding the disastrous effect it has had in alienating the people from their lords and masters, the conflict of interest between fox-hunter and pheasant-breeder will tend to become more and more acute, and the probable end will be that fox-hunting will have to go. A melancholy outlook to those who love the country and old country sports, and who do not regard pheasant-shooting as now followed as sport at all. It is a delusion of the landlords that the country people think most highly of the great pheasant-preserver who has two or three big shoots in a season, during which vast numbers of birds are slaughtered—every bird "costing a guinea," as the saying is. It brings money into the country, he or his apologist tells you, and provides employment for the village poor in October and November, when there is little doing. He does not know the truth of the matter. A certain number of the poorer people of the village are employed as beaters for the big shoots at a shilling a day or so, and occasionally a labourer, going to or from his work, finds a pheasant's nest and informs the keeper and receives some slight reward. If he "keeps his eyes open" and shows himself anxious at all times to serve the keeper he will sometimes get a rabbit for his Sunday dinner.
This is not a sufficient return for the freedom to walk on the land and in woods, which the villager possessed formerly, even in his worst days of his oppression, a liberty which has now been taken from him. The keeper is there now to prevent him; he was there before, and from of old, but the pheasant was not yet a sacred bird, and it didn't matter that a man walked on the turf or picked up a few fallen sticks in a wood. The keeper is there to tell him to keep to the road and sometimes to ask him, even when he is on the road, what is he looking over the hedge for. He slinks obediently away; he is only a poor labourer with his living to get, and he cannot afford to offend the man who stands between him and the lord and the lord's tenant. And he is inarticulate; but the insolence and injustice rankle in his heart, for he is not altogether a helot in soul; and the result is that the sedition-mongers, the Socialists, the furious denouncers of all landlords, who are now quartering the country, and whose vans I meet in the remotest villages, are listened to, and their words—wild and whirling words they may be—are sinking into the hearts of the agricultural labourers of the new generation.
To return to foxes and gamekeepers. There are other estates where the fiction of fox-preserving is kept up no longer, where it is notorious that the landlord is devoted exclusively to the gun and to pheasant-breeding. On one of the big estates I am familiar with in Wiltshire the keepers openly say they will not suffer a fox, and every villager knows it and will give information of a fox to the keepers, and looks to be rewarded with a rabbit. All this is undoubtedly known to the lord of the manor; his servants are only carrying out his own wishes, although he still subscribes to the hunt and occasionally attends the meet. The entire hunt may unite in cursing him, but they must do so below their breath; it would have a disastrous effect to spread it abroad that he is a persecutor of foxes.
Caleb disliked foxes, too, but not to the extent of killing them. He did once actually kill one, when a young under-shepherd, but it was accident rather than intention.
One day he found a small gap in a hedge, which had been made or was being used by a hare, and, thinking to take it, he set a trap at the spot, tying it securely to a root and covering it over with dead leaves. On going to the place the next morning he could see nothing until his feet were on the very edge of the ditch, when with startling suddenness a big dog fox sprang up at him with a savage snarl. It was caught by a hind-leg, and had been lying concealed among the dead leaves close under the bank. Caleb, angered at finding a fox when he had looked for a hare, and at the attack the creature had made on him, dealt it a blow on the head with his heavy stick—just one blow given on the impulse of the moment, but it killed the fox! He felt very bad at what he had done and began to think of consequences. He took it from the trap and hid it away under the dead leaves beneath the hedge some yards from the gap, and then went to his work. During the day one of the farm hands went out to speak to him. He was a small, quiet old man, a discreet friend, and Caleb confided to him what he had done. "Leave it to me," said his old friend, and went back to the farm. In the afternoon Caleb was standing on the top of the down looking towards the village, when he spied at a great distance the old man coming out to the hills, and by and by he could make out that he had a sack on his back and a spade in his hand. When half-way up the side of the hill he put his burden down and set to work digging a deep pit. Into this he put the dead fox, and threw in and trod down the earth, then carefully put back the turf in its place, then, his task done, shouldered the spade and departed. Caleb felt greatly relieved, for now the fox was buried out on the downs, and no one would ever know that he had wickedly killed it.
Subsequently he had other foxes caught in traps set for hares, but was always able to release them. About one he had the following story. The dog he had at that time, named Monk, hated foxes as Jack hated adders, and would hunt them savagely whenever he got a chance. One morning Caleb visited a trap he had set in a gap in a hedge and found a fox in it. The fox jumped up, snarling and displaying his teeth, ready to fight for dear life, and it was hard to restrain Monk from flying at him. So excited was he that only when his master threatened him with his crook did he draw back and, sitting on his haunches, left him to deal with the difficult business in his own way. The difficulty was to open the steel trap without putting himself in the way of a bite from those "tarrable sharp teeth." After a good deal of manoeuvring he managed to set the butt end of his crook on the handle of the gin, and forcing it down until the iron teeth relaxed their grip, the fox pulled his foot out, and darting away along the hedge side vanished into the adjoining copse. Away went Monk after him, in spite of his master's angry commands to him to come back, and fox and dog disappeared almost together among the trees. Sounds of yelping and of crashing through the undergrowth came back fainter and fainter, and then there was silence. Caleb waited at the spot full twenty minutes before the disobedient dog came back, looking very pleased. He had probably succeeded in overtaking and killing his enemy.
About that same Monk a sad story will have to be told in another chapter.
When speaking of foxes Caleb always maintained that in his part of the country there were two sorts: one small and very red, the larger one of a lighter colour with some grey in it. And it is possible that the hill foxes differed somewhat in size and colour from those of the lower country. He related that one year two vixens littered at one spot, a deep bottom among the downs, so near together that when the cubs were big enough to come out they mixed and played in company; the vixens happened to be of the different sorts, and the difference in colour appeared in the little ones as well.
Caleb was so taken with the pretty sight of all these little foxes, neighbours and playmates, that he went evening after evening to sit for an hour or longer watching them. One thing he witnessed which will perhaps be disbelieved by those who have not closely observed animals for themselves, and who still hold to the fable that all wild creatures are born with an inherited and instinctive knowledge and dread of their enemies. Rabbits swarmed at that spot, and he observed that when the old foxes were not about the young, half-grown rabbits would freely mix and play with the little foxes. He was so surprised at this, never having heard of such a thing, that he told his master of it, and the farmer went with him on a moonlight night and the two sat for a long time together, and saw rabbits and foxes playing, pursuing one another round and round, the rabbits when pursued often turning very suddenly and jumping clean over their pursuer.
The rabbits at this place belonged to the tenant, and the farmer, after enjoying the sight of the little ones playing together, determined to get rid of the foxes in the usual way by exploding a small quantity of gunpowder in the burrows. Four old foxes with nine cubs were too many for him to have. The powder was duly burned, and the very next day the foxes had vanished.
In Berkshire I once met with that rare being, an intelligent gamekeeper who took an interest in wild animals and knew from observation a great deal about their habits. During an after-supper talk, kept up till past midnight, we discussed the subject of strange, erratic actions in animals, which in some cases appear contrary to their own natures. He gave an instance of such behaviour in a fox that had its earth at a spot on the border of a wood where rabbits were abundant. One evening he was at this spot, standing among the trees and watching a number of rabbits feeding and gambolling on the green turf, when the fox came trotting by and the rabbits paid no attention. Suddenly he stopped and made a dart at a rabbit; the rabbit ran from him a distance of twenty to thirty yards, then suddenly turning round went for the fox and chased it back some distance, after which the fox again chased the rabbit, and so they went on, turn and turn about, half a dozen times. It was evident, he said, that the fox had no wish to catch and kill a rabbit, that it was nothing but play on his part, and that the rabbits responded in the same spirit, knowing that there was nothing to fear.
Another instance of this playful spirit of the fox with an enemy, which I heard recently, is of a gentleman who was out with his dog, a fox-terrier, for an evening walk in some woods near his house. On his way back he discovered on coming out of the woods that a fox was following him, at a distance of about forty yards. When he stood still the fox sat down and watched the dog. The dog appeared indifferent to its presence until his master ordered him to go for the fox, whereupon he charged him and drove him back to the edge of the wood, but at that point the fox turned and chased the dog right back to its master, then once more sat down and appeared very much at his ease. Again the dog was encouraged to go for him and hunted him again back to the wood, and was then in turn chased back to its master, After several repetitions of this performance, the gentleman went home, the fox still following, and on going in closed the gate behind him, leaving the fox outside, sitting in the road as if waiting for him to come out again to have some more fun.
This incident serves to remind me of an experience I had one evening in King's Copse, an immense wood of oak and pine in the New Forest near Exbury. It was growing dark when I heard on or close to the ground, some twenty to thirty yards before me, a low, wailing cry, resembling the hunger-cry of the young, long-eared owl. I began cautiously advancing, trying to see it, but as I advanced the cry receded, as if the bird was flitting from me. Now, just after I had begun following the sound, a fox uttered his sudden, startlingly loud scream about forty yards away on my right hand, and the next moment a second fox screamed on my left, and from that time I was accompanied, or shadowed, by the two foxes, always keeping abreast of me, always at the same distance, one screaming and the other replying about every half-minute. The distressful bird-sound ceased, and I turned and went off in another direction, to get out of the wood on the side nearest the place where I was staying, the foxes keeping with me until I was out.
What moved them to act in such a way is a mystery, but it was perhaps play to them.
Another curious instance of foxes playing was related to me by a gentleman at the little village of Inkpen, near the Beacon, in Berkshire. He told me that when it happened, a good many years ago, he sent an account of it to the "Field." His gamekeeper took him one day "to see a strange thing," to a spot in the woods where a fox had a litter of four cubs, near a long, smooth, green slope. A little distance from the edge of the slope three round swedes were lying on the turf. "How do you think these swedes came here?" said the keeper, and then proceeded to say that the old fox must have brought them there from the field a long distance away, for her cubs to play with. He had watched them of an evening, and wanted his master to come and see too. Accordingly they went in the evening, and hiding themselves among the bushes near waited till the young foxes came out and began rolling the swedes about and jumping at and tumbling over them. By and by one rolled down the slope, and the young foxes went after it all the way down, and then, when they had worried it sufficiently, they returned to the top and played with another swede until that was rolled down, then with the third one in the same way. Every morning, the keeper said, the swedes were found back on top of the ground, and he had no doubt that they were taken up by the old fox again and left there for her cubs to play with.
Caleb was not so eager after rabbits as Shepherd Gathergood, but he disliked the fox for another reason. He considered that the hunted fox was a great danger to sheep when the ewes were heavy with lambs and when the chase brought the animal near if not right into the flock. He had one dreadful memory of a hunted fox trying to lose itself in his flock of heavy-sided ewes and the hounds following it and driving the poor sheep mad with terror. The result was that a large number of lambs were cast before their time and many others were poor, sickly things; many of the sheep also suffered in health. He had no extra money from the lambs that year. He received but a shilling (half a crown is often paid now) for every lamb above the number of ewes, and as a rule received from three to six pounds a year from this source.
Great bustard—Stone curlew—Big hawks—Former abundance of the raven—Dogs fed on carrion—Ravens fighting—Ravens' breeding-places in Wilts—Great Ridge Wood ravens—Field-fare breeding in Wilts—Pewit—Mistle-thrush—Magpie and turtledove—Gamekeepers and magpies—Rooks and farmers—Starling, the shepherd's favourite bird—Sparrowhawk and "brown thrush"
Wiltshire, like other places in England, has long been deprived of its most interesting birds—the species that were best worth preserving. Its great bustard, once our greatest bird—even greater than the golden and sea eagles and the "giant crane" with its "trumpet sound" once heard in the land—is now but a memory. Or a place name: Bustard Inn, no longer an inn, is well known to the many thousands who now go to the mimic wars on Salisbury Plain; and there is a Trappist monastery in a village on the southernmost border of the county, which was once called, and is still known to old men as, "Bustard Farm." All that Caleb Bawcombe knew of this grandest bird is what his father had told him; and Isaac knew of it only from hearsay, although it was still met with in South Wilts when he was a young man.
The stone curlew, our little bustard with the long wings, big, yellow eyes, and wild voice, still frequents the uncultivated downs, unhappily in diminishing numbers. For the private collector's desire to possess British-taken birds' eggs does not diminish; I doubt if more than one clutch in ten escapes the searching eyes of the poor shepherds and labourers who are hired to supply the cabinets. One pair haunted a flinty spot at Winterbourne Bishop until a year or two ago; at other points a few miles away I watched other pairs during the summer of 1909, but in every instance their eggs were taken.
The larger hawks and the raven, which bred in all the woods and forests of Wiltshire, have, of course, been extirpated by the gamekeepers. The biggest forest in the county now affords no refuge to any hawk above the size of a kestrel. Savernake is extensive enough, one would imagine, for condors to hide in, but it is not so. A few years ago a buzzard made its appearance there—just a common buzzard, and the entire surrounding population went mad with excitement about it, and every man who possessed a gun flew to the forest to join in the hunt until the wretched bird, after being blazed at for two or three days, was brought down. I heard of another case at Fonthill Abbey. Nobody could say what this wandering hawk was—it was very big, blue above with a white breast barred with black—a "tarrable" fierce-looking bird with fierce, yellow eyes. All the gamekeepers and several other men with guns were in hot pursuit of it for several days, until some one fatally wounded it, but it could not be found where it was supposed to have fallen. A fortnight later its carcass was discovered by an old shepherd, who told me the story. It was not in a fit state to be preserved, but he described it to me, and I have no doubt that it was a goshawk.
The raven survived longer, and the Shepherd Bawcombe talks about its abundance when he was a boy, seventy or more years ago. His way of accounting for its numbers at that time and its subsequent, somewhat rapid disappearance greatly interested me.
We have seen his account of deer-stealing, by the villagers in those brave, old, starvation days when Lord Rivers owned the deer and hunting rights over a large part of Wiltshire, extending from Cranborne Chase to Salisbury, and when even so righteous a man as Isaac Bawcombe was tempted by hunger to take an occasional deer, discovered out of bounds. At that time, Caleb said, a good many dogs used for hunting the deer were kept a few miles from Winterbourne Bishop and were fed by the keepers in a very primitive manner. Old, worn-out horses were bought and slaughtered for the dogs. A horse would be killed and stripped of his hide somewhere away in the woods, and left for the hounds to batten on its flesh, tearing at and fighting over it like so many jackals. When only partially consumed the carcass would become putrid; then another horse would be killed and skinned at another spot perhaps a mile away, and the pack would start feeding afresh there. The result of so much carrion lying about was that ravens were attracted in numbers to the place and were so numerous as to be seen in scores together. Later, when the deer-hunting sport declined in the neighbourhood, and dogs were no longer fed on carrion, the birds decreased year by year, and when Caleb was a boy of nine or ten their former great abundance was but a memory. But he remembers that they were still fairly common, and he had much to say about the old belief that the raven "smells death," and when seen hovering over a flock, uttering its croak, it is a sure sign that a sheep is in a bad way and will shortly die.
One of his recollections of the bird may be given here. It was one of those things seen in boyhood which had very deeply impressed him. One fine day he was on the down with an elder brother, when they heard the familiar croak and spied three birds at a distance engaged in a fight in the air. Two of the birds were in pursuit of the third, and rose alternately to rush upon and strike at their victim from above. They were coming down from a considerable height, and at last were directly over the boys, not more than forty or fifty feet from the ground; and the youngsters were amazed at their fury, the loud, rushing sound of their wings, as of a torrent, and of their deep, hoarse croaks and savage, barking cries. Then they began to rise again, the hunted bird trying to keep above his enemies, they in their turn striving to rise higher still so as to rush down upon him from overhead; and in this way they towered higher and higher, their barking cries coming fainter and fainter back to earth, until the boys, not to lose sight of them, cast themselves down flat on their backs, and, continuing to gaze up, saw them at last no bigger than three "leetle blackbirds." Then they vanished; but the boys, still lying on their backs, kept their eyes fixed on the same spot, and by and by first one black speck reappeared, then a second, and they soon saw that two birds were swiftly coming down to earth. They fell swiftly and silently, and finally pitched upon the down not more than a couple of hundred yards from the boys. The hunted bird had evidently succeeded in throwing them off and escaping. Probably it was one of their own young, for the ravens' habit is when their young are fully grown to hunt them out of the neighbourhood, or, when they cannot drive them off, to kill them.
There is no doubt that the carrion did attract ravens in numbers to this part of Wiltshire, but it is a fact that up to that date—about 1830—the bird had many well-known, old breeding-places in the county. The Rev. A. C. Smith, in his "Birds of Wiltshire," names twenty-three breeding-places, no fewer than nine of them on Salisbury Plain; but at the date of the publication of his work, 1887, only three of all these nesting-places were still in use: South Tidworth, Wilton Park, and Compton Park, Compton Chamberlain. Doubtless there were other ancient breeding-places which the author had not heard of: one was at the Great Ridge Wood, overlooking the Wylye valley, where ravens bred down to about thirty-five or forty years ago. I have found many old men in that neighbourhood who remember the birds, and they tell that the raven tree was a great oak which was cut down about sixty years ago, after which the birds built their nest in another tree not far away. A London friend of mine, who was born in the neighbourhood of the Great Ridge Wood, remembers the ravens as one of the common sights of the place when he was a boy. He tells of an unlucky farmer in those parts whose sheep fell sick and died in numbers, year after year, bringing him down to the brink of ruin, and how his old head-shepherd would say, solemnly shaking his head, "'Tis not strange—master, he shot a raven."
There was no ravens' breeding-place very near Winterbourne Bishop. Caleb had "never heared tell of a nestie"; but he had once seen the nest of another species which is supposed never to breed in this country. He was a small boy at the time, when one day an old shepherd of the place going out from the village saw Caleb, and calling to him said, "You're the boy that likes birds; if you'll come with me, I'll show 'ee what no man ever seed afore"; and Caleb, fired with curiosity, followed him away to a distance from home, out from the downs, into the woods and to a place where he had never been, where there were bracken and heath with birch and thorn-trees scattered about. On cautiously approaching a clump of birches they saw a big, thrush-like bird fly out of a large nest about ten feet from the ground, and settle on a tree close by, where it was joined by its mate. The old man pointed out that it was a felt or fieldfare, a thrush nearly as big as the mistle-thrush but different in colour, and he said that it was a bird that came to England in flocks in winter from no man knows where, far off in the north, and always went away before breeding-time. This was the only felt he had ever seen breeding in this country, and he "didn't believe that no man had ever seed such a thing before." He would not climb the tree to see the eggs, or even go very near it, for fear of disturbing the birds.
This man, Caleb said, was a great one for birds: he knew them all, but seldom said anything about them; he watched and found out a good deal about them just for his private pleasure.
The characteristic species of this part of the down country, comprising the parish of Winterbourne Bishop, are the pewit, magpie, turtledove, mistle-thrush, and starling. The pewit is universal on the hills, but will inevitably be driven away from all that portion of Salisbury Plain used for military purposes. The mistle-thrush becomes common in summer after its early breeding season is ended, when the birds in small flocks resort to the downs, where they continue until cold weather drives them away to the shelter of the wooded, low country.
In this neighbourhood there are thickets of thorn, holly, bramble, and birch growing over hundreds of acres of down, and here the hill-magpie, as it is called, has its chief breeding-ground, and is so common that you can always get a sight of at least twenty birds in an afternoon's walk. Here, too, is the metropolis of the turtledove, and the low sound of its crooning is heard all day in summer, the other most common sound being that of magpies—their subdued, conversational chatter and their solo-singing, the chant or call which a bird will go on repeating for a hundred times. The wonder is how the doves succeed in such a place in hatching any couple of chalk-white eggs, placed on a small platform of sticks, or of rearing any pair of young, conspicuous in their blue skins and bright yellow down!
The keepers tell me they get even with these kill-birds later in the year, when they take to roosting in the woods, a mile away in the valley. The birds are waited for at some point where they are accustomed to slip in at dark, and one keeper told me that on one evening alone assisted by a friend he had succeeded in shooting thirty birds.
On Winterbourne Bishop Down and round the village the magpies are not persecuted, probably because the gamekeepers, the professional bird-killers, have lost heart in this place. It is a curious and rather pretty story. There is no squire, as we have seen; the farmers have the rabbits, and for game the shooting is let, or to let, by some one who claims to be lord of the manor, who lives at a distance or abroad. At all events he is not known personally to the people, and all they know about the overlordship is that, whereas in years gone by every villager had certain rights in the down—to cut furze and keep a cow, or pony, or donkey, or half a dozen sheep or goats—now they have none; but how and why and when these rights were lost nobody knows. Naturally there is no sympathy between the villagers and the keepers sent from a distance to protect the game, so that the shooting may be let to some other stranger. On the contrary, they religiously destroy every nest they can find, with the result that there are too few birds for anyone to take the shooting, and it remains year after year unlet.
This unsettled state of things is all to the advantage of the black and white bird with the ornamental tail, and he flourishes accordingly and builds his big, thorny nests in the roadside trees about the village.
The one big bird on these downs, as in so many other places in England, is the rook, and let us humbly thank the gods who own this green earth and all the creatures which inhabit it that they have in their goodness left us this one. For it is something to have a rook, although he is not a great bird compared with the great ones lost—bustard and kite and raven and goshawk, and many others. His abundance on the cultivated downs is rather strange when one remembers the outcry made against him in some parts on account of his injurious habits; but here it appears the sentiment in his favour is just as strong in the farmer, or in a good many farmers, as in the great landlord. The biggest rookery I know on Salisbury Plain is at a farm-house where the farmer owns the land himself and cultivates about nine hundred acres. One would imagine that he would keep his rooks down in these days when a boy cannot be hired to scare the birds from the crops.
One day, near West Knoyle, I came upon a vast company of rooks busily engaged on a ploughed field where everything short of placing a bird-scarer on the ground had been done to keep the birds off. A score of rooks had been shot and suspended to long sticks planted about the field, and there were three formidable-looking men of straw and rags with hats on their heads and wooden guns under their arms. But the rooks were there all the same; I counted seven at one spot, prodding the earth close to the feet of one of the scarecrows. I went into the field to see what they were doing, and found that it was sown with vetches, just beginning to come up, and the birds were digging the seed up.
Three months later, near the same spot, on Mere Down, I found these birds feasting on the corn, when it had been long cut but could not be carried on account of the wet weather. It was a large field of fifty to sixty acres, and as I walked by it the birds came flying leisurely over my head to settle with loud cawings on the stocks. It was a magnificent sight—the great, blue-black bird-forms on the golden wheat, an animated group of three or four to half a dozen on every stock, while others walked about the ground to pick up the scattered grain, and others were flying over them, for just then the sun was shining on the field and beyond it the sky was blue. Never had I witnessed birds so manifestly rejoicing at their good fortune, with happy, loud caw-caw. Or rather haw-haw! what a harvest, what abundance! was there ever a more perfect August and September! Rain, rain, by night and in the morning; then sun and wind to dry our feathers and make us glad, but never enough to dry the corn to enable them to carry it and build it up in stacks where it would be so much harder to get at. Could anything be better!
But the commonest bird, the one which vastly outnumbers all the others I have named together, is the starling. It was Caleb Bawcombe's favourite bird, and I believe it is regarded with peculiar affection by all shepherds on the downs on account of its constant association with sheep in the pasture. The dog, the sheep, and the crowd of starlings—these are the lonely man's companions during his long days on the hills from April or May to November. And what a wise bird he is, and how well he knows his friends and his enemies! There was nothing more beautiful to see, Caleb would say, than the behaviour of a flock of starlings when a hawk was about. If it was a kestrel they took little or no notice of it, but if a sparrowhawk made its appearance, instantly the crowd of birds could be seen flying at furious speed towards the nearest flock of sheep, and down into the flock they would fall like a shower of stones and instantly disappear from sight. There they would remain on the ground, among the legs of the grazing sheep, until the hawk had gone on his way and passed out of sight.
The sparrowhawk's victims are mostly made among the young birds that flock together in summer and live apart from the adults during the summer months after the breeding season is over.
When I find a dead starling on the downs ranged over by sparrowhawks, it is almost always a young bird—a "brown thrush" as it used to be called by the old naturalists. You may know that the slayer was a sparrowhawk by the appearance of the bird, its body untouched, but the flesh picked neatly from the neck and the head gone. That was swallowed whole, after the beak had been cut off. You will find the beak lying by the side of the body. In summertime, when birds are most abundant, after the breeding season, the sparrowhawk is a fastidious feeder.
Starlings' singing—Native and borrowed sounds—Imitations of sheep-bells—The shepherd on sheep-bells—The bells for pleasure, not use—A dog in charge of the flock—Shepherd calling his sheep—Richard Warner of Bath—Ploughmen singing to their oxen in Cornwall—A shepherd's loud singing
The subject of starlings associating with sheep has served to remind me of something I have often thought when listening to their music. It happens that I am writing this chapter in a small village on Salisbury Plain, the time being mid-September 1909, and that just outside my door there is a group of old elder-bushes laden just now with clusters of ripe berries on which the starlings come to feed, filling the room all day with that never-ending medley of sounds which is their song. They sing in this way not only when they sing—that is to say, when they make a serious business of it, standing motionless and a-shiver on the tiles, wings drooping and open beak pointing upwards, but also when they are feasting on fruit—singing and talking and swallowing elderberries between whiles to wet their whistles. If the weather is not too cold you will hear this music daily, wet or dry, all the year round. We may say that of all singing birds they are most vocal, yet have no set song. I doubt if they have more than half a dozen to a dozen sounds or notes which are the same in every individual and their very own. One of them is a clear, soft, musical whistle, slightly inflected; another a kissing sound, usually repeated two or three times or oftener, a somewhat percussive smack; still another, a sharp, prolonged hissing or sibilant but at the same time metallic note, compared by some one to the sound produced by milking a cow into a tin pail—a very good description. There are other lesser notes: a musical, thrush-like chirp, repeated slowly, and sometimes rapidly till it runs to a bubbling sound; also there is a horny sound, which is perhaps produced by striking upon the edges of the lower mandible with those of the upper. But it is quite unlike the loud, hard noise made by the stork; the poor stork being a dumb bird has made a sort of policeman's rattle of his huge beak. These sounds do not follow each other; they come from time to time, the intervals being filled up with others in such endless variety, each bird producing its own notes, that one can but suppose that they are imitations. We know, in fact, that the starling is our greatest mimic, and that he often succeeds in recognizable reproductions of single notes, of phrases, and occasionally of entire songs, as, for instance, that of the blackbird. But in listening to him we are conscious of his imitations; even when at his best he amuses rather than delights—he is not like the mocking-bird. His common starling pipe cannot produce sounds of pure and beautiful quality, like the blackbird's "oboe-voice," to quote Davidson's apt phrase: he emits this song in a strangely subdued tone, producing the effect of a blackbird heard singing at a considerable distance. And so with innumerable other notes, calls, and songs—they are often to their originals what a man's voice heard on a telephone is to his natural voice. He succeeds best, as a rule, in imitations of the coarser, metallic sounds, and as his medley abounds in a variety of little, measured, tinkling, and clinking notes, as of tappings on a metal plate, it has struck me at times that these are probably borrowed from the sheep-bells of which the bird hears so much in his feeding-grounds. It is, however, not necessary to suppose that every starling gets these sounds directly from the bells; the birds undoubtedly mimic one another, as is the case with mocking-birds, and the young might easily acquire this part of their song language from the old birds without visiting the flocks in the pastures.
The sheep-bell, in its half-muffled strokes, as of a small hammer tapping on an iron or copper plate, is, one would imagine, a sound well within the starling's range, easily imitated, therefore specially attractive to him.
But—to pass to another subject—what does the shepherd himself think or feel about it; and why does he have bells on his sheep?
He thinks a great deal of his bells. He pipes not like the shepherd of fable or of the pastoral poets, nor plays upon any musical instrument, and seldom sings, or even whistles—that sorry substitute for song; he loves music nevertheless, and gets it in his sheep-bells; and he likes it in quantity. "How many bells have you got on your sheep—it sounds as if you had a great many?" I asked of a shepherd the other day, feeding his flock near Old Sarum, and he replied, "Just forty, and I wish there were eighty." Twenty-five or thirty is a more usual number, but only because of their cost, for the shepherd has very little money for bells or anything else. Another told me that he had "only thirty," but he intended getting more. The sound cheers him; it is not exactly monotonous, owing to the bells being of various sizes and also greatly varying in thickness, so that they produce different tones, from the sharp tinkle-tinkle of the smallest to the sonorous klonk-klonk of the big, copper bell. Then, too, they are differently agitated, some quietly when the sheep are grazing with heads down, others rapidly as the animal walks or trots on; and there are little bursts or peals when a sheep shakes its head, all together producing a kind of rude harmony—a music which, like that of bagpipes or of chiming church-bells, heard from a distance, is akin to natural music and accords with rural scenes.
As to use, there is little or none. A shepherd will sometimes say, when questioned on the subject, that the bells tell him just where the flock is or in which direction they are travelling; but he knows better. The one who is not afraid to confess the simple truth of the matter to a stranger will tell you that he does not need the bells to tell him where the sheep are or in which direction they are grazing. His eyes are good enough for that. The bells are for his solace or pleasure alone. It may be that the sheep like the tinkling too—it is his belief that they do like it. A shepherd said to me a few days ago: "It is lonesome with the flock on the downs; more so in cold, wet weather, when you perhaps don't see a person all day—on some days not even at a distance, much less to speak to. The bells keep us from feeling it too much. We know what we have them for, and the more we have the better we like it. They are company to us."
Even in fair weather he seldom has anyone to speak to. A visit from an idle man who will sit down and have a pipe and talk with him is a day to be long remembered and even to date events from. "'Twas the month—May, June, or October—when the stranger came out to the down and talked to I."
One day, in September, when sauntering over Mere Down, one of the most extensive and loneliest-looking sheep-walks in South Wilts—a vast, elevated plain or table-land, a portion of which is known as White Sheet Hill—I passed three flocks of sheep, all with many bells, and noticed that each flock produced a distinctly different sound or effect, owing doubtless to a different number of big and little bells in each; and it struck me that any shepherd on a dark night, or if taken blindfolded over the downs, would be able to identify his own flock by the sound. At the last of the three flocks a curious thing occurred. There was no shepherd with it or anywhere in sight, but a dog was in charge; I found him lying apparently asleep in a hollow, by the side of a stick and an old sack. I called to him, but instead of jumping up and coming to me, as he would have done if his master had been there, he only raised his head, looked at me, then put his nose down on his paws again. I am on duty—in sole charge—and you must not speak to me, was what he said. After walking a little distance on, I spied the shepherd with a second dog at his heels, coming over the down straight to the flock, and I stayed to watch. When still over a hundred yards from the hollow the dog flew ahead, and the other jumping up ran to meet him, and they stood together, wagging their tails as if conversing. When the shepherd had got up to them he stood and began uttering a curious call, a somewhat musical cry in two notes, and instantly the sheep, now at a considerable distance, stopped feeding and turned, then all together began running towards him, and when within thirty yards stood still, massed together, and all gazing at him. He then uttered a different call, and turning walked away, the dogs keeping with him and the sheep closely following. It was late in the day, and he was going to fold them down at the foot of the slope in some fields half a mile away.
As the scene I had witnessed appeared unusual I related it to the very next shepherd I talked with.
"Oh, there was nothing in that," he said. "Of course the dog was behind the flock."
I said, "No, the peculiar thing was that both dogs were with their master, and the flock followed."
"Well, my sheep would do the same," he returned. "That is, they'll do it if they know there's something good for them—something they like in the fold. They are very knowing." And other shepherds to whom I related the incident said pretty much the same, but they apparently did not quite like to hear that any shepherd could control his sheep with his voice alone; their way of receiving the story confirmed me in the belief that I had witnessed something unusual.
Before concluding this short chapter I will leave the subject of the Wiltshire shepherd and his sheep to quote a remarkable passage about men singing to their cattle in Cornwall, from a work on that county by Richard Warner of Bath, once a well-known and prolific writer of topographical and other books. They are little known now, I fancy, but he was great in his day, which lasted from about the middle of the eighteenth to about the middle of the nineteenth century—at all events, he died in 1857, aged ninety-four. But he was not great at first, and finding when nearing middle age that he was not prospering, he took to the Church and had several livings, some of them running concurrently, as was the fashion in those dark days. His topographical work included Walks in Wales, in Somerset, in Devon, Walks in many places, usually taken in a stage-coach or on horseback, containing nothing worth remembering except perhaps the one passage I have mentioned, which is as follows:—
"We had scarcely entered Cornwall before our attention was agreeably arrested by a practice connected with the agriculture of the people, which to us was entirely novel. The farmers judiciously employ the fine oxen of the country in ploughing, and other processes of husbandry, to which the strength of this useful animal can be employed"—the Rev. Richard Warner is tedious, but let us be patient and see what follows—"to which the strength of this useful animal can be employed; and while the hinds are thus driving their patient slaves along the furrows, they continually cheer them with conversation, denoting approbation and pleasure. This encouragement is conveyed to them in a sort of chaunt, of very agreeable modulation, which, floating through the air from different distances, produces a striking effect both on the ear and imagination. The notes are few and simple, and when delivered by a clear, melodious voice, have something expressive of that tenderness and affection which man naturally entertains for the companions of his labours, in apastoral stateof society, when, feeling more forcibly his dependence upon domesticated animals for support, he gladly reciprocates with them kindness and protection for comfort and subsistence. This wild melody was to me, I confess, peculiarly affecting. It seemed to draw more closely the link of friendship between man and the humbler tribes offellow mortals. It solaced my heart with the appearance of humanity, in a world of violence and in times of universal hostile rage; and it gladdened my fancy with the contemplation of those days of heavenly harmony, promised in the predictions of eternal truth, when man, freed at length from prejudice and passion, shall seek his happiness in cultivating the mild, the benevolent, and the merciful sensibilities of his nature; and when the animal world, catching the virtues of its lord and master, shall soften into gentleness and love; when the wolf"....
And so on, clause after clause, with others to be added, until the whole sentence becomes as long as a fishing-rod. But apart from the fiddlededee, is the thing he states believable? It is a charming picture, and one would like to know more about that "chaunt," that "wild melody." The passage aroused my curiosity when in Cornwall, as it had appeared to me that in no part of England are the domestic animals so little considered by their masters. The R.S.P.C.A. is practically unknown there, and when watching the doings of shepherds or drovers with their sheep the question has occurred to me, What would my Wiltshire shepherd friends say of such a scene if they had witnessed it? There is nothing in print which I can find to confirm Warner's observations, and if you inquire of very old men who have been all their lives on the soil they will tell you that there has never been such a custom in their time, nor have they ever heard of it as existing formerly. Warner's Tour through Cornwall is dated 1808.
I take it that he described a scene he actually witnessed, and that he jumped to the conclusion that it was a common custom for the ploughman to sing to his oxen. It is not unusual to find a man anywhere singing to his oxen, or horses, or sheep, if he has a voice and is fond of exercising it. I remember that in a former book—"Nature in Downland"—I described the sweet singing of a cow-boy when tending his cows on a heath near Trotton, in West Sussex; and here in Wiltshire it amused me to listen, at a vast distance, to the robust singing of a shepherd while following his flock on the great lonely downs above Chitterne. He was a sort of Tamagno of the downs, with a tremendous voice audible a mile away.