Now, having briefly sketched his general manner, let us return and examine the details. In the first place, he usually rises slightly, with outstretched wings, as if about to soar at the moment of commencing hovering. The planes of the wings are then inclined, and meet the air. At the instant of stopping, the tail is depressed. It appears reasonable to conjecture that the slight soaring is to assist the tail in checking his onward course, and to gain a balance. Immediately the wings beat rapidly, somewhat as they do in ordinary flight but with a more forward motion, and somewhat as birds do when about to perch on an awkward ledge, as a swallow at an incomplete nest under an eave. The wings look more, in front, as if attached to his neck. In an exaggerated way ducks beat the air like this, with no intention of rising at all, merely to stretch their wings. The duck raises himself as he stands on the ground, stretches himself to his full height, and flaps his wings horizontally. The kestrel’s wings strike downwards and a very little forwards, for his natural tendency is to slip forwards, and the object of slightly reversing his vanes is to prevent this and yet at the same time to support him. His shape is such that if he were rigid with outstretched wings he would glide ahead, just as a ship in a calm slowly forges ahead because of her lines, which are drawn for forward motion. The kestrel’s object is to prevent his slip forwards, and the tail alone will not do it. It is necessary for him to ‘stroke’ the air in order to keep up at all; because the moment he pauses gravitation exercises a force much greater than when he glides.
While hovering there are several forces balanced: first, the original impetus onwards; secondly, that of the depressed tail dragging and stopping that onward course; thirdly, that of the wing beating downwards; and fourthly, that of the wing a very little reversed beating forwards, like backing water with a scull. When used in the ordinary way the shape of the wing causes it to exert a downward and backward pressure. His slip is when he loses balance: it is most obviously a loss of balance; he quite oscillates sometimes when it occurs; and now and then I have seen a kestrel unable to catch himself, and obliged to proceed some distance before he could hover again. Occasionally, in the slip he loses a foot or so of elevation, but not always. While actually hovering, his altitude does not vary an inch. All and each of these movements and the considerations to which they give rise show conclusively that the act of hovering is nothing more or less than an act of balancing; and when he has his balance he will rest a moment with outstretched wings kept still. He uses his wings with just sufficient force neither to rise nor fall, and prevents progress by a slightly different stroke.
The next point is, Where does he hover? He hovers any and everywhere, without the slightest choice. He hovers over meadows, cornfields; over the tops of the highest Downs, sometimes at the very edge of a precipice or above a chalk quarry; over gardens, waste ground; over the highway; over summer and other ricks and thatched sheds, from which he sometimes takes his prey; over stables, where mice abound. He has no preference for one side of a hedge or grove, and cares not the least on which the wind blows. His hovering is entirely determined by his judgment as to the chance of prey. I have seen a kestrel hover over every variety of dry ground that is to be found.
Next, as to the wind. If any one has read what has preceded upon his manner of preserving his balance, it must be at once apparent that, supposing a kestrel were hovering in a calm and a wind arose, he would at once face it, else his balance could not be kept. Even on the ground almost all birds face the wind by choice; but the hovering kestrel has no choice. He must hover facing the wind, or it would upset him: just as you may often see a rook flung half aback by a sudden gust. Hence has arisen the supposition that a kestrel cannot hover without a wind. The truth is, he can hover in a perfect calm, and no doubt could do so in a room if it were large enough. He requires no current of any kind, neither a horizontal breeze nor an ascending current. A kestrel can and does hover in the dead calm of summer days, when there is not the faintest breath of wind. He will and does hover in the still, soft atmosphere of early autumn, when the gossamer falls in showers, coming straight down as if it were raining silk. If you puff up a ball of thistledown it will languish on your breath and sink again to the sward. The reapers are sweltering in the wheat, the keeper suffocates in the wood, the carter walks in the shadow cast by his load of corn, the countryside stares all parched and cracked and gasps for a rainy breeze. The kestrel hovers just the same. Could he not do so, a long calm would half starve him, as that is his manner of preying. Having often spent hours in trees for the purpose of a better watch upon animals and birds, I can vouch for it that ascending currents are not frequent – rare, in fact, except in a gale. In a light air or calm there is no ascending current, or it is imperceptible and of no use to the kestrel. Such currents, when they do exist, are very local; but the kestrel’s hover is not local: he can hover anywhere. He can do it in the face of a stiff gale, and in a perfect calm. The only weather he dislikes is heavy thunder, rain, or hail, during which he generally perches on a tree; but he can hover in all ordinary rain. He effects it by sheer power and dexterity of wing. Therefore if the fact has any bearing upon the problem of flight, the question of currents may be left out altogether. His facing the wind is, as has been pointed out, only a proof that he is keeping his balance.
The kestrel is not the only bird that hovers. The sparrowhawk can. So can all the finches, more or less, when taking seeds from a plant which will not bear their weight or which they cannot otherwise get at; also when taking insects on the wing. Sparrows do the same. Larks hover in their mating season, uttering a short song, not the same as when they soar. Numerous insects can hover: the great dragon-fly will stop dead short in his rapid flight, and stay suspended till it suits him to advance. None of these require any current or wind. I do not think that hovering requires so much strength of wing or such an exercise of force as when birds rise almost straight up. Snipes do it, and woodcocks; so also pheasants, rocketing with tremendous effort; so also a sparrow in a confined court, rising almost straight to the slates. Evidently this needs great power. Hovering is very interesting; but not nearly so mysterious as at least one other power possessed by birds.
Out of Doors in February
First published in Good Words, February 1882
First collected in The Open Air, 1885
The cawing of the rooks in February shows that the time is coming when their nests will be re-occupied. They resort to the trees, and perch above the old nests to indicate their rights; for in the rookery possession is the law, and not nine-tenths of it only. In the slow dull cold of winter even these noisy birds are quiet, and as the vast flocks pass over, night and morning, to and from the woods in which they roost, there is scarcely a sound. Through the mist their black wings advance in silence, the jackdaws with them are chilled into unwonted quiet, and unless you chance to look up the crowd may go over unnoticed. But so soon as the waters begin to make a sound in February, running in the ditches and splashing over stones, the rooks commence the speeches and conversations which will continue till late into the following autumn.
The general idea is that they pair in February, but there are some reasons for thinking that the rooks, in fact, choose their mates at the end of the preceding summer. They are then in large flocks, and if only casually glanced at appear mixed together without any order or arrangement. They move on the ground and fly in the air so close, one beside the other, that at the first glance or so you cannot distinguish them apart. Yet if you should be lingering along the by-ways of the fields as the acorns fall, and the leaves come rustling down in the warm sunny autumn afternoons, and keep an observant eye upon the rooks in the trees, or on the fresh-turned furrows, they will be seen to act in couples. On the ground couples alight near each other, on the trees they perch near each other, and in the air fly side by side. Like soldiers each has his comrade. Wedged in the ranks every man looks like his fellow, and there seems no tie between them but a common discipline. Intimate acquaintance with barrack or camp lif
e would show that every one had his friend. There is also the mess, or companionship of half a dozen, a dozen, or more, and something like this exists part of the year in the armies of the rooks. After the nest time is over they flock together, and each family of three or four flies in concert. Later on they apparently choose their own particular friends, that is the young birds do so. All through the winter after, say October, these pairs keep together, though lost in the general mass to the passing spectator. If you alarm them while feeding on the ground in winter, supposing you have not got a gun, they merely rise up to the nearest tree, and it may then be observed that they do this in pairs. One perches on a branch and a second comes to him. When February arrives, and they resort to the nests to look after or seize on the property there, they are in fact already paired, though the almanacs put down St Valentine’s day as the date of courtship.
There is very often a warm interval in February, sometimes a few days earlier and sometimes later, but as a rule it happens that a week or so of mild sunny weather occurs about this time. Released from the grip of the frost, the streams trickle forth from the fields and pour into the ditches, so that while walking along the footpath there is a murmur all around coming from the rush of water. The murmur of the poets is indeed louder in February than in the more pleasant days of summer, for then the growth of aquatic grasses checks the flow and stills it, whilst in February, every stone, or flint, or lump of chalk divides the current and causes a vibration. With this murmur of water, and mild time, the rooks caw incessantly, and the birds at large essay to utter their welcome of the sun. The wet furrows reflect the rays so that the dark earth gleams, and in the slight mist that stays farther away the light pauses and fills the vapour with radiance. Through this luminous mist the larks race after each other twittering, and as they turn aside, swerving in their swift flight, their white breasts appear for a moment. As while standing by a pool the fishes come into sight, emerging as they swim round from the shadow of the deeper water, so the larks dart over the low hedge, and through the mist, and pass before you, and are gone again. All at once one checks his pursuit, forgets the immediate object, and rises, singing as he soars. The notes fall from the air over the dark wet earth, over the dank grass, and broken withered fern of the hedges, and listening to them it seems for a moment spring. There is sunshine in the song: the lark and the light are one. He gives us a few minutes of summer in February days. In May he rises before as yet the dawn is come, and the sunrise flows down to us under through his notes. On his breast, high above the earth, the first rays fall as the rim of the sun edges up at the eastward hill. The lark and the light are as one, and wherever he glides over the wet furrows the glint of the sun goes with him. Anon alighting he runs between the lines of the green corn. In hot summer, when the open hillside is burned with bright light, the larks are then singing and soaring. Stepping up the hill laboriously, suddenly a lark starts into the light and pours forth a rain of unwearied notes overhead. With bright light, and sunshine, and sunrise, and blue skies the bird is so associated in the mind, that even to see him in the frosty days of winter, at least assures us that summer will certainly return.
Ought not winter, in allegorical designs, the rather to be represented with such things that might suggest hope than such as convey a cold and grim despair? The withered leaf, the snowflake, the hedging bill that cuts and destroys, why these? Why not rather the dear larks for one? They fly in flocks, and amid the white expanse of snow (in the south) their pleasant twitter or call is heard as they sweep along seeking some grassy spot cleared by the wind. The lark, the bird of the light, is there in the bitter short days. Put the lark then for winter, a sign of hope, a certainty of summer. Put, too, the sheathed bud, for if you search the hedge you will find the buds there, on tree and bush, carefully wrapped around with the case which protects them as a cloak. Put, too, the sharp needles of the green corn; let the wind clear it of snow a little way, and show that under cold clod and colder snow the green thing pushes up, knowing that summer must come. Nothing despairs but man. Set the sharp curve of the white new moon in the sky: she is white in true frost, and yellow a little if it is devising change. Set the new moon as something that symbols an increase. Set the shepherd’s crook in a corner as a token that the flocks are already enlarged in number. The shepherd is the symbolic man of the hardest winter time. His work is never more important than then. Those that only roam the fields when they are pleasant in May, see the lambs at play in the meadow, and naturally think of lambs and May flowers. But the lamb was born in the adversity of snow. Or you might set the morning star, for it burns and burns and glitters in the winter dawn, and throws forth beams like those of metal consumed in oxygen. There is nought that I know by comparison with which I might indicate the glory of the morning star, while yet the dark night hides in the hollows. The lamb is born in the fold. The morning star glitters in the sky. The bud is alive in its sheath; the green corn under the snow; the lark twitters as he passes. Now these to me are the allegory of winter.
These mild hours in February check the hold which winter has been gaining, and as it were, tear his claws out of the earth, their prey. If it has not been so bitter previously, when this Gulf stream or current of warmer air enters the expanse it may bring forth a butterfly and tenderly woo the first violet into flower. But this depends on its having been only moderately cold before, and also upon the stratum, whether it is backward clay, or forward gravel and sand. Spring dates are quite different according to the locality, and when violets may be found in one district, in another there is hardly a woodbine-leaf out. The border line may be traced, and is occasionally so narrow, one may cross over it almost at a step. It would sometimes seem as if even the nut-tree bushes bore larger and finer nuts on the warmer soil, and that they ripened quicker. Any curious in the first of things, whether it be a leaf, or flower, or a bird, should bear this in mind, and not be discouraged because he hears some one else has already discovered or heard something.
A little note taken now at this bare time of the kind of earth may lead to an understanding of the district. It is plain where the plough has turned it, where the rabbits have burrowed and thrown it out, where a tree has been felled by the gales, by the brook where the bank is worn away, or by the sediment at the shallow places. Before the grass and weeds, and corn and flowers have hidden it, the character of the soil is evident at these natural sections without the aid of a spade. Going slowly along the footpath – indeed you cannot go fast in moist February – it is a good time to select the places and map them out where herbs and flowers will most likely come first. All the autumn lies prone on the ground. Dead dark leaves, some washed to their woody frames, short grey stalks, some few decayed hulls of hedge fruit, and among these the mars or stocks of the plants that do not die away, but lie as it were on the surface waiting. Here the strong teazle will presently stand high; here the ground-ivy will dot the mound with bluish-purple. But it will be necessary to walk slowly to find the ground-ivy flowers under the cover of the briers. These bushes will be a likely place for a blackbird’s nest; this thick close hawthorn for a bullfinch; these bramble thickets with remnants of old nettle stalks will be frequented by the whitethroat after a while. The hedge is now but a lattice-work which will before long be hung with green. Now it can be seen through, and now is the time to arrange for future discovery. In May everything will be hidden, and unless the most promising places are selected beforehand, it will not be easy to search them out. The broad ditch will be arched over, the plants rising on the mound will meet the green boughs drooping, and all the vacancy will be filled. But having observed the spot in winter you can almost make certain of success in spring.
It is this previous knowledge which invests those who are always on the spot, those who work much in the fields or have the care of woods, with their apparent prescience. They lead the new comer to a hedge, or the corner of a copse, or a bend of the brook, announcing beforehand that they feel assured something will be found there; and so
it is. This, too, is one reason why a fixed observer usually sees more than one who rambles a great deal and covers ten times the space. The fixed observer who hardly goes a mile from home is like the man who sits still by the edge of a crowd, and by-and-by his lost companion returns to him. To walk about in search of persons in a crowd is well known to be the worst way of recovering them. Sit still and they will often come by. In a far more certain manner this is the case with birds and animals. They all come back. During a twelvemonth probably every creature would pass over a given locality: every creature that is not confined to certain places. The whole army of the woods and hedges marches across a single farm in twelve months. A single tree – especially an old tree – is visited by four-fifths of the birds that ever perch in the course of that period. Every year, too, brings something fresh, and adds new visitors to the list. Even the wild sea birds are found inland, and some that scarce seem able to fly at all are cast far ashore by the gales. It is difficult to believe that one would not see more by extending the journey, but, in fact, experience proves that the longer a single locality is studied the more is found in it. But you should know the places in winter as well as in tempting summer, when song and shade and colour attract every one to the field. You should face the mire and slippery path. Nature yields nothing to the sybarite. The meadow glows with buttercups in spring, the hedges are green, the woods lovely; but these are not to be enjoyed in their full significance unless you have traversed the same places when bare, and have watched the slow fulfilment of the flowers.
The moist leaves that remain upon the mounds do not rustle, and the thrush moves among them unheard. The sunshine may bring out a rabbit, feeding along the slope of the mound, following the paths or runs. He picks his way, he does not like wet. Though out at night in the dewy grass of summer, in the rain-soaked grass of winter, and living all his life in the earth, often damp nearly to his burrows, no time, and no succession of generations can make him like wet. He endures it, but he picks his way round the dead fern and the decayed leaves. He sits in the bunches of long grass, but he does not like the drops of rain or dew on it to touch him. Water lays his fur close, and mats it, instead of running off and leaving him sleek. As he hops a little way at a time on the mound he chooses his route almost as we pick ours in the mud and pools of February. By the shore of the ditch there still stand a few dry, dead dock stems, with some dry reddish-brown seed adhering. Some dry brown nettle stalks remain; some grey and broken thistles; some teazles leaning on the bushes. The power of winter has reached its upmost now, and can go no farther. These bines which still hang in the bushes are those of the greater bindweed, and will be used in a month or so by many birds as conveniently curved to fit about their nests. The stem of wild clematis, grey and bowed, could scarcely look more dead. Fibres are peeling from it, they come off at the touch of the fingers. The few brown feathers that perhaps still adhere where the flowers once were are stained and discoloured by the beating of the rain. It is not dead: it will flourish again ere long. It is the sturdiest of creepers, facing the ferocious winds of the hills, the tremendous rains that blow up from the sea, and bitter frost, if only it can get its roots into soil that suits it. In some places it takes the place of the hedge proper and becomes itself the hedge. Many of the trunks of the elms are swathed in minute green vegetation which has flourished in the winter, as the clematis will in the summer. Of all, the brambles bear the wild works of winter best. Given only a little shelter, in the corner of the hedges or under trees and copses they retain green leaves till the buds burst again. The frosts tint them in autumn with crimson, but not all turn colour or fall. The brambles are the bowers of the birds; in these still leafy bowers they do the courting of the spring, and under the brambles the earliest arum, and cleaver, or avens, push up. Round about them the first white nettle flowers, not long now; latest too, in the autumn. The white nettle sometimes blooms so soon (always according to locality), and again so late, that there seems but a brief interval between, as if it flowered nearly all the year round. So the berries on the holly if let alone often stay till summer is in, and new berries begin to appear shortly afterwards. The ivy, too, bears its berries far into the summer. Perhaps if the country be taken at large there is never a time when there is not a flower of some kind out, in this or that warm southern nook. The sun never sets, nor do the flowers ever die. There is life always, even in the dry fir-cone that looks so brown and sapless.
Landscape with Figures Page 21
