Hardy birches, too, will grow in thin soil. Just compare the delicate drooping boughs of birch – they could not have been more delicate if sketched with a pencil – compare these with the gaunt planes!
Of all the foreign shrubs that have been brought to these shores, there is not one that presents us with so beautiful a spectacle as the bloom of the common old English hawthorn in May. The mass of blossom, the pleasant fragrance, its divided and elegant leaf, place it far above any of the importations. Besides which, the traditions and associations of the May give it a human interest.
The hawthorn is a part of natural English life – country life. It stands side by side with the Englishman, as the palm tree is pictured side by side with the Arab. You cannot pick up an old play, or book of the time when old English life was in the prime, without finding some reference to the hawthorn. There is nothing of this in the laurel, or any shrub whatever that may be thrust in with a ticket to tell you its name; it has a ticket because it has no interest, or else you would know it.
For use there is nothing like hawthorn; it will trim into a thick hedge, defending the enclosure from trespassers, and warding off the bitter winds; or it will grow into a tree. Again, the old hedge-crab – the common, despised crab-apple – in spring is covered with blossom, such a mass of blossom that it may be distinguished a mile. Did any one ever see a plane or a laurel look like that?
How pleasant, too, to see the clear white flower of the blackthorn come out in the midst of the bitter easterly breezes! It is like a white handkerchief beckoning to the sun to come. There will not be much more frost; if the wind is bitter to-day, the sun is rapidly gaining power. Probably, if a blackthorn bush were by any chance discovered in the semi-parks or enclosures alluded to, it would at once be rooted out as an accursed thing. The very brambles are superior; there is the flower, the sweet berry, and afterwards the crimson leaves – three things in succession.
What can the world produce equal to the June rose? The common briar, the commonest of all, offers a flower which, whether in itself, or the moment of its appearance at the juncture of all sweet summer things, or its history and associations, is not to be approached by anything a millionaire could purchase. The labourer casually gathers it as he goes to his work in the field, and yet none of the rich families whose names are synonymous with wealth can get anything to equal it if they ransack the earth.
After these, fill every nook and corner with hazel, and make filbert walks. Up and down such walks men strolled with rapiers by their sides while our admirals were hammering at the Spaniards with culverin and demi-cannon, and looked at the sun-dial and adjourned for a game at bowls, wishing that they only had a chance to bowl shot instead of peaceful wood. Fill in the corners with nut-trees, then, and make filbert walks. All these are like old story books, and the old stories are always best.
Still, there are others for variety, as the wild guelder rose, which produces heavy bunches of red berries; dogwood, whose leaves when frost-touched take deep colours; barberry, yielding a pleasantly acid fruit; the wayfaring tree; not even forgetting the elder, but putting it at the outside, because, though flowering, the scent is heavy, and because the elder was believed of old time to possess some of the virtue now attributed to the blue gum, and to neutralize malaria by its own odour.
For colour add the wild broom and some furze. Those who have seen broom in full flower, golden to the tip of every slender bough, cannot need any persuasion, surely, to introduce it. Furze is specked with yellow when the skies are dark and the storms sweep around, besides its prime display. Let wild clematis climb wherever it will. Then laurels may come after these, put somewhere by themselves, with their thick changeless leaves, unpleasant to the touch; no one ever gathers a spray.
Rhododendrons it is unkind to attack, for in themselves they afford a rich flower. It is not the rhododendron, but the abuse of it, which must be protested against. Whether the soil suits or not – and, for the most part, it does not suit – rhododendrons are thrust in everywhere. Just walk in amongst them – behind the show – and look at the spindly, crooked stems, straggling how they may, and then look at the earth under them, where not a weed even will grow. The rhododendron is admirable in its place, but it is often overdone and a failure, and has no right to exclude those shrubs that are fitter. Most of the foreign shrubs about these semi-country seats look exactly like the stiff and painted little wooden trees that are sold for children’s toys, and, like the toys, are the same colour all the year round.
Now, if you enter a copse in spring the eye is delighted with cowslips on the banks where the sunlight comes, with bluebells, or earlier with anemones and violets, while later the ferns rise. But enter the semi-parks of the semi-country seat, with its affected assumption of countryness, and there is not one of these. The fern is actually purposely eradicated – just think! Purposely! Though indeed they would not grow, one would think, under rhododendrons and laurels, cold-blooded laurels. They will grow under hawthorn, ash, or beside the bramble bushes.
If there chance to be a little pond or ‘fountain’, there is no such thing as a reed, or a flag, or a rush. How the rushes would be hastily hauled out and hurled away with execrations!
Besides the greater beauty of English trees, shrubs, and plants, they also attract the birds, without which the grandest plantation is a vacancy, and another interest, too, arises from watching the progress of their growth and the advance of the season. Our own trees and shrubs literally keep pace with the stars which shine in our northern skies. An astronomical floral almanac might almost be constructed, showing how, as the constellations marched on by night, the buds and leaves and flowers appeared by day.
The lower that brilliant Sirius sinks in the western sky after ruling the winter heavens, and the higher that red Arcturus rises, so the buds thicken, open, and bloom. When the Pleiades begin to rise in the early evening, the leaves are turning colour, and the seed vessels of the flowers take the place of the petals. The coincidences of floral and bird life, and of these with the movements of the heavens, impart a sense of breadth to their observation.
It is not only the violet or the anemone, there are the birds coming from immense distances to enjoy the summer with us; there are the stars appearing in succession, so that the most distant of objects seems brought into connection with the nearest, and the world is made one. The sharp distinction, the line artificially drawn between things, quite disappears when they are thus associated.
Birds, as just remarked, are attracted by our own trees and shrubs. Oaks are favourites with rooks and wood-pigeons; blackbirds whistle in them in spring; if there is a pheasant about in autumn he is sure to come under the oak; jays visit them. Elms are resorted to by most of the larger birds. Ash plantations attract wood-pigeons and turtle-doves. Thrushes are fond of the ash, and sing much on its boughs. The beech is the woodpecker’s tree so soon as it grows old – birch one of the missel-thrush’s.
In blackthorn the long-tailed tit builds the domed nest every one admires. Under the cover of brambles whitethroats build. Nightingales love hawthorn, and so does every bird. Plant the hawthorn, and almost every bird will come to it, from the wood-pigeon down to the wren. Do not clear away the fallen branches and brown leaves, sweeping the plantation as if it were the floor of a ball-room, for it is just the tangle and the wilderness that brings the birds, and they like the disarray.
If evergreens are wanted, there are the yew, the box, and holly – all three well sanctioned by old custom. Thrushes will come for the yew berries, and birds are fond of building in the thick cover of high box hedges. Notwithstanding the prickly leaves, they slip in and out of the holly easily. A few bunches of rushes and sedges, with some weeds and aquatic grasses, allowed to grow about a pond, will presently bring moorhens. Bare stones – perhaps concrete – will bring nothing.
If a bough falls into the water, let it stay; sparrows will perch on it to drink. If a sandy drinking-place can be made for them the number of birds that will co
me in the course of the day will be surprising.
Kind-hearted people, when winter is approaching, should have two posts sunk in their grounds, with planks across at the top; a raised platform with the edges projecting beyond the posts, so that cats cannot climb up, and of course higher than a cat can spring. The crumbs cast out upon this platform would gather crowds of birds; they will come to feel at home, and in spring-time will return to build and sing.
Nightingales
First published in the St James’s Gazette, 10 April 1886
First collected in Chronicles of the Hedges, 1948
The nightingales have arrived. They have already been heard, and early notice of the fact has been duly and promptly made. There is always some one ready to chronicle this event, and many who believe that the precise period is of importance. Scientific men seem now to have decided that no peculiar significance is to be attached to early or late arrivals. Head winds are quite sufficient to explain a delay of a few days, which is the greatest interval between an early and a very early return. A family of the name of Massham, living in the neighbourhood of Norwich, kept for four generations a chronicle of the dates of arrival. The first entry was made in the spring of 1736, and the series was left unbroken till April 1810, after which it was allowed to drop. It was, however, resumed in 1836, and the returns duly entered up to 1874. These 110 cases give every variety of premature and belated arrival of the nightingales, and showed that the dates were quite useless as a weather guide.
As a general rule the nightingales reach us about the middle of April, and the cocks come first. A fantastic idea was once cherished that the males started first and sang day and night until the females arrived. The truth seems to be that they all start together; but the cocks, being the stronger, arrive first. The fact, as a fact, obtained curious commercial recognition. It is hard to tell a hen-bird from a cock; for there is not much difference either in size or in plumage. A few years ago, before the Wild Birds Protection Act had been passed, the first nightingales of the season were sold for considerably more than the later arrivals; the presumption being that they were of the singing sex. Scarcely any bird that visits us and breeds in our country is more shy and at the same time more stupid. In the ‘good old days of bird-catching’ it was child’s play to snare them. A couple of roughs would come down from town and silence a whole grove. The nightingale would watch the trap being laid, and pounce on the alluring meal-worm as soon as the trapper was out of sight. It would be quite as much curiosity as gluttony that led to its fate; and the fate was a sad one. These birds are so shy that it is nearly impossible to keep them alive. They literally beat themselves to death against their prison wires. So for the first fortnight of captivity the wings were tied, and the bird was kept caged in the dark. Light was gradually let in – at first by a few pinholes in the paper that covered the cage. The captive would peck and peck at these till a rent was made and in time the paper could come away. The mortality was pitiable. Seventy per cent of these little creatures that were singing a week before in full-throated ease in the Surrey lanes would be flung out into the gutters of Seven Dials or Whitechapel. You might buy a fresh-caught bird for two or three shillings; a few weeks later the same bird, if alive, would be worth thirty. Now, of course, by the Act of 1880, they are protected through April, May, and June; and, in fact, such nightingales as can be bought in London are for the most part imports from Germany.
In the nightingale nothing is more remarkable than its constancy and its caprice. Year after year it will return to the same copse, and be heard at the end of each succeeding April, though it will have spent the winter in Africa or the Holy Land. The French naturalist Maupertuis mentions that in 1736 he discovered a nest on Arusaxa, a hill in Finland notable as the most southern point where the midnight sun could be seen. Birds were found in the same spot again in 1799 by Skjoldebrand; and from 1835 to 1865 they continued to breed there without any interval. But though it is faithful to the district it selects, its caprice in making choice is really quite incalculable. The bird is as capricious as a prima donna. It seems, for instance, to have as great a dislike to Scotland as Dr Johnson himself. This is not on account of the cold; for it visits much colder countries. Indeed, climate has much less influence with it than one might expect in the case of the summer immigrant. It chooses rather to ignore Devonshire and Cornwall, and seems to hold, with the great lexicographer, that Ireland is worth seeing but not worth going to see. It rarely goes there, though it is not correct to say that it is never to be met with. Its appreciation of Yorkshire is extremely arbitrary. In some parts it is often to be met with; in others its occurrence is very rare. A few years ago a nightingale came to a wood in the neighbourhood of one of the large manufacturing towns. The intelligence was soon noised about, and the wood got to be so popular that an enterprising omnibus proprietor started a vehicle that took passengers ‘to the Nightingale’, at sixpence a head. The bird soon left that wood, and a little boy who got up into a tree and imitated it, was very near being stoned in the moonlight by some angry passengers who were disappointed at the failure of their excursion.
Sir John Sinclair tried to overcome the bird’s antipathy to Scotland and failed. He knew that in its case, as in that of most immigrants, there is a persistency of return to old breeding places. Accordingly, a London dealer had directions to procure as many nightingale’s eggs as he could at the liberal terms of twelve shillings a dozen. A considerable quantity was obtained, and they were packed in wool and sent up by mail to Scotland. In the meantime, all the robin’s nests in the district had been discovered and protected. As the batches of eggs arrived the robin’s nests were robbed and refurnished with nightingale’s eggs. The experiment was carried out over a wide area. The hen robins reared these precious foster-children, and so far the experiment succeeded. For that year there were plenty of nightingales in that part of the country. Then came September, the time of migration. The young birds all flew away, and they never returned.
It is curious that there does not seem to be any appreciable increase in the number of nightingales since the Act of 1880. No doubt, however, its operation must have largely assisted their preservation. Even before the Act, England – considering its latitude and the density of its population – was a very favourite breeding-place with the bird; but this was owing partly to the character of the English landscape. The nightingale, with all its shyness, seems to love the neighbourhood of man, or the homes of man. It is not so much a bird of the woods as of the shrubbery. It is mentioned in the Spectator that Sir Roger de Coverley stopped to listen to the nightingales in Vauxhall. They were heard last year in Kensington Gardens, and till lately – again this year for aught we know – they sang regularly within half-a-dozen yards of the highway that passes the Star and Garter at Richmond.
The Hovering of the Kestrel
First published in the St James’s Gazette, 22 February 1883
First collected in The Life of the Fields, 1884
There has lately been some discussion about the hovering of kestrels: the point being whether the bird can or cannot support itself in the air while stationary, without the assistance of one or more currents of air. The kestrel is the commonest hawk in the southern parts of England, so that many opportunities occur to observe his habits; and there ought not to be any doubt in the matter. It is even alleged that it will go far to decide the question of the possibility of flight or of the construction of an aerial machine. Without entering into this portion of the discussion, let us examine the kestrel’s habits.
This hawk has a light easy flight, usually maintaining an altitude a little lower than the tallest elms, but higher than most trees. He will keep this particular altitude for hours together, and sweep over miles of country, with only occasional variations – excluding, of course, descents for the purpose of taking mice. It is usually at this height that a kestrel hovers, though he is capable of doing it at a much greater elevation. As he comes gliding through the atmosphere, suddenly he shoots
up a little (say, roughly, two or three feet), and then stops short. His tail, which is broader than it looks, is bent slightly downwards; his wings beat the air, at the first glance, just as if he was progressing. Sometimes he seems to oscillate to one side, sometimes to the other; but these side movements do not amount to any appreciable change of position. If there be little or no wind (note this) he remains beating the air, to the eye at least perfectly stationary, perhaps as much as half a minute or more. He then seems to slip forward about half a yard, as if a pent-up force was released, but immediately recovers himself and hovers again. This alternate hovering and slipping forward may be repeated two or three times: it seems to depend on the bird’s judgment as to the chance of prey. If he does not think a mouse is to be had, at the first slip he allows himself to proceed. If the spot be likely, or (what is still more tempting) if it is near a place where he has taken prey previously, he will slip and bring up several times. Now and then he will even fetch a half-circle when his balance or impetus (or both) is quite exhausted, and so return to the same spot and recommence. But this is not often, as a rule, after two or three slips he proceeds on his voyage. He will repeat the same round day after day, if undisturbed, and, if the place be at all infested with mice, he will come to it three or four times a day. There is, therefore, every chance of watching him, if you have once found his route. Should he spy a mouse, down he comes, quick but steady, and very nearly straight upon it. But kestrels do not always descend upon prey actually in view. Unless I am much mistaken, they now and then descend in a likely spot and watch like a cat for a minute or two for mice or beetles. For rest they always seek a tree.
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