The Hills and the Vale Part 3

But just a word must be spared to notice one lovely spot where two village churches stand not a hundred yards apart, separated by a stream, both in the hands of one Vicar, whose 'cure' is, nevertheless, so scant of souls that service in the morning in one and in the evening in the other church is amply sufficient. And where is there a place where springtime possesses such a tender yet melancholy interest to the heart as in a village churchyard, where the budding leaves and flowers in the gra.s.s may naturally be taken as symbolical of a still more beautiful springtime yet in store for the soul?

BIRDS OF SPRING

The birds of spring come as imperceptibly as the leaves. One by one the buds open on hawthorn and willow, till all at once the hedges appear green, and so the birds steal quietly into the bushes and trees, till by-and-by a chorus fills the wood, and each warm shower is welcomed with varied song. To many, the majority of spring-birds are really unknown; the cuckoo, the nightingale, and the swallow, are all with which they are acquainted, and these three make the summer. The loud cuckoo cannot be overlooked by anyone pa.s.sing even a short time in the fields; the nightingale is so familiar in verse that everyone tries to hear it; and the swallows enter the towns and twitter at the chimney-top. But these are really only the princ.i.p.al representatives of the crowd of birds that flock to our hedges in the early summer; and perhaps it would be accurate to say that no other area of equal extent, either in Europe or elsewhere, receives so many feathered visitors. The English climate is the established subject of abuse, yet it is the climate most preferred and sought by the birds, who have the choice of immense continents.

Nothing that I have ever read of, or seen, or that I expect to see, equals the beauty and the delight of a summer spent in our woods and meadows. Green leaves and gra.s.s, and suns.h.i.+ne, blue skies, and sweet brooks--there is nothing to approach it; it is no wonder the birds are tempted to us. The food they find is so abundant, that after all their efforts, little apparent diminution can be noticed; to this fertile and lovely country, therefore, they hasten every year. It might be said that the spring-birds begin to come to us in the autumn, as early as October, when hedge-sparrows and golden-crested wrens, larks, blackbirds, and thrushes, and many others, float over on the gales from the coasts of Norway. Their numbers, especially of the smaller birds, such as larks, are immense, and their line of flight so extended that it strikes our sh.o.r.es for a distance of two hundred miles. The vastness of these numbers, indeed, makes me question whether they all come from Scandinavia. That is their route; Norway seems to be the last land they see before crossing; but I think it possible that their original homes may have been farther still. Though many go back in the spring, many individuals remain here, and rejoice in the plenty of the hedgerows. As all roads of old time led to Rome, so do bird-routes lead to these islands. Some of these birds appear to pair in November, and so have settled their courts.h.i.+p long before the crocuses of St. Valentine. Much difference is apparent in the dates recorded of the arrivals in spring; they vary year by year, and now one and now another bird presents itself first, so that I shall not in these notes attempt to arrange them in strict order.

One of the first noticeable in southern fields is the common wagtail. When his shrill note is heard echoing against the walls of the outhouses as he rises from the ground, the carters and ploughmen know that there will not be much more frost. If icicles hang from the thatched eaves, they will not long hang, but melt before the softer wind. The bitter part of winter is over. The wagtail is a house-bird, making the houses or cattle-pens its centre, and remaining about them for months. There is not a farmhouse in the South of England without its summer pair of wagtails--not more than one pair, as a rule, for they are not gregarious till winter; but considering that every farmhouse has its pair, their numbers must be really large.

Where wheatears frequent, their return is very marked; they appear suddenly in the gardens and open places, and cannot be overlooked.

Swallows return one by one at first, and we get used to them by degrees. The wheatears seem to drop out of the night, and to be showered down on the ground in the morning. A white bar on the tail renders them conspicuous, for at that time much of the surface of the earth is bare and dark. Naturally birds of the wildest and most open country, they yet show no dread, but approach the houses closely. They are local in their habits, or perhaps follow a broad but well-defined route of migration; so that while common in one place, they are rare in others. In two localities with which I am familiar, and know every path, I never saw a wheatear. I heard of them occasionally as pa.s.sing over, but they were not birds of the district. In Suss.e.x, on the contrary, the wheatear is as regularly seen as the blackbird; and in the spring and summer you cannot go for a walk without finding them. They change their ground three times: first, on arrival, they feed in the gardens and arable fields; next, they go up on the hills; lastly, they return to the coast, and frequent the extreme edge of the cliffs and the land by the sh.o.r.e. Every bird has its different manner; I do not know how else to express it. Now, the wheatears move in numbers, and yet not in concert; in spring, perhaps twenty may be counted in sight at once on the ground, feeding together and yet quite separate; just opposite in manner to starlings, who feed side by side and rise and fly as one. Every wheatear feeds by himself, a s.p.a.ce between him and his neighbour, dotted about, and yet they obviously have a certain amount of mutual understanding: they recognize that they belong to the same family, but maintain their individuality. On the hills in their breeding season they act in the same way: each pair has a wide piece of turf, sometimes many acres. But if you see one pair, it is certain that other pairs are in the neighbourhood. In their breeding-grounds they will not permit a man to approach so near as when they arrive, or as when the nesting is over. At the time of their arrival, anyone can walk up within a short distance; so, again, in autumn. During the nesting-time the wheatear perches on a molehill, or a large flint, or any slight elevation above the open surface of the downs, and allows no one to come closer than fifty yards.

The hedge-sparrows, that creep about the bushes of the hedgerow as mice creep about the banks, are early in spring joined by the whitethroats, almost the first hedge-birds to return. The thicker the undergrowth of nettles and wild parsley, rushes and rough gra.s.ses, the more the whitethroat likes the spot. Amongst this tangled ma.s.s he lives and feeds, slipping about under the brambles and ferns as rapidly as if the way was clear. Loudest of all, the chiff-chaff sings in the ash woods, bare and leafless, while yet the sharp winds rush between the poles, rattling them together, and bringing down the dead twigs to the earth. The violets are difficult to find, few, and scattered; but his clear note rings in the hushes of the eastern breeze, encouraging the flowers. It is very pleasant indeed to hear him. One's hands are dry, and the skin rough with the east wind; the trunks of the trees look dry, and the lichens have shrivelled on the bark; the brook looks dark; grey dust rises and drifts, and the grey clouds hurry over; but the chiff-chaff sings, and it is certainly spring. The first green leaves which the elder put forth in January have been burned up by frost, and the woodbine, which looked as if it would soon be entirely green then, has been checked, and remains a promise only. The chiff-chaff tells the buds of the coming April rains and the sweet soft intervals of warm sun.

He is a sure forerunner. He defies the bitter wind; his little heart is as true as steel. He is one of the birds in which I feel a personal interest, as if I could converse with him. The willow-wren, his friend, comes later, and has a gentler, plaintive song.

Meadow-pipits are not migrants in the sense that the swallows are; but they move about and so change their localities that when they come back they have much of the interest of a spring-bird. They rise from the ground and sing in the air like larks, but not at such a height, nor is the song so beautiful. These, too, are early birds.

They often frequent very exposed places, as the side of a hill where the air is keen, and where one would not expect to meet with so lively a little creature. The pond has not yet any of the growths that will presently render its margin green; the willow-herbs are still low, the aquatic gra.s.ses have not become strong, and the osiers are without leaf. If examined closely, evidences of growth would be found everywhere around it; but as yet the surface is open, and it looks cold. Along the brook the shoals are visible, as the flags have not risen from the stems which were cut down in the autumn. In the sedges, however, the first young shoots are thrusting up, and the reeds have started slender green stalks tipped with the first leaves. At the verge of the water, a thick green plant of marsh-marigold has one or two great golden flowers open. This is the appearance of his home when the sedge-reedling returns to it.

Sometimes he may be seen flitting across the pond, or perched for a moment on an exposed branch; but he quickly returns to the dry sedges or the bushes, or climbs in and out the willow-stoles. It is too bare and open for him at the pond, or even by the brookside. So much does he love concealment, that although to be near the water is his habit, for a while he prefers to keep back among the bushes. As the reeds and reed canary-gra.s.s come up and form a cover--as the sedges grow green and advance to the edge of the water--as the sword-flags lift up and expand, opening from a centre, the sedge-reedling issues from the bushes and enters these vigorous growths, on which he perches, and about which he climbs as if they were trees. In the pleasant mornings, when the sun grows warm about eleven o'clock, he calls and sings with scarcely a cessation, and is answered by his companions up and down the stream. He does but just interrupt his search for food to sing; he stays a moment, calls, and immediately resumes his prying into every crevice of the branches and stoles. The thrush often sits on a bough and sings for a length of time, apart from his food, and without thinking of it, absorbed in his song, and full of the sweetness of the day. These restless sedge-reedlings cannot pause; their little feet are for ever at work, climbing about the willow-stoles where the wands spring from the trunk; they never reflect; they are always engaged. This restlessness is to them a great pleasure; they are filled with the life which the sun gives, and express it in every motion; they are so joyful, they cannot be still. Step into the osier-bed amongst them gently; they will chirp--a note like a sparrow's--just in front, and only recede a yard at a time as you push through the tall gra.s.s, flags, and underwood. Stand where you can see the brook, not too near, but so as to see it through a fringe of sedges and willows. The pink lychnis or ragged robin grows among the gra.s.ses; the iris flowers higher on the sh.o.r.e. The water-vole comes swimming past, on his way to nibble the green weeds in the stream round about the great branch which fell two winters since, and remains in the water. Aquatic plants take root in its shelter. There, too, a moorhen goes, sometimes diving under the bough. A blackbird flies up to drink or bathe, never at the gra.s.sy edge, but always choosing a spot where he can get at the stream free from obstruction. The sound of many birds singing comes from the hedge across the meadow; it mingles with the rush of the water through a drawn hatch--finches and linnets, thrush and chiff-chaff, wren and whitethroat, and others farther away, whose louder notes only reach. The singing is so mixed and interwoven, and is made of so many notes, it seems as if it were the leaves singing--the countless leaves--as if they had voices.

A brightly-coloured bird, the redstart, appears suddenly in spring, like a flower that has bloomed before the bud was noticed. Red is his chief colour, and as he rushes out from his perch to take an insect on the wing, he looks like a red streak. These birds sometimes nest near farm-houses in the rickyards, sometimes by copses, and sometimes in the deepest and most secluded combes or glens, the farthest places from habitation; so that they cannot be said to have any preference, as so many birds have, for a particular kind of locality; but they return year by year to the places they have chosen. The return of the corncrake or landrail is quickly recognized by the noise he makes in the gra.s.s; he is the noisiest of all the spring-birds. The return of the goat-sucker is hardly noticed at first. This is not at all a rare, but rather a local bird, well known in many places, but in others unnoticed, except by those who feel a special interest. A bird must be common and plentiful before people generally observe it, so that there are many of the labouring cla.s.s who have never seen the goat-sucker, or would say so, if you asked them.

Few observe the migration of the turtle-doves, perhaps confusing them with the wood-pigeons, which stay in the fields all the winter.

By the time the sap is well up in the oaks all the birds have arrived, and the tremulous cooing of the turtle-dove is heard by those engaged in barking the felled trees. The sap rises slowly in the oaks, moving gradually through the minute interstices or capillary tubes of this close-grained wood; the softer timber-trees are full of it long before the oak; and when the oak is putting forth its leaves it is high spring. Doves stay so much at this time in the great hawthorns of the hedgerows and at the edge of the copses that they are seldom noticed, though comparatively large birds. They are easily seen by any who wish; the 'coo-coo' tells where they are; and in walking gently to find them, many other lesser birds will be observed. A wryneck may be caught sight of on a bough overhead; a black-headed bunting, in the hedge where there is a wet ditch and rushes; a blackcap, in the birches; and the 'zee-zee-zee' of the tree-pipit by the oaks just through the narrow copse.

This is the most pleasant and the best way to observe--to have an object, when so many things will be seen that would have been pa.s.sed unnoticed. To steal softly along the hedgerow, keeping out of sight as much as possible, pausing now and then to listen as the 'coo-coo'

is approached; and then, when near enough to see the doves, to remain quiet behind a tree, is the surest way to see everything else. The thrush will not move from her nest if pa.s.sed so quietly; the chaffinch's lichen-made nest will be caught sight of against the elm-trunk--it would escape notice otherwise; the whitethroat may be watched in the nettles almost underneath; a rabbit will sit on his haunches and look at you from among the bare green stalks of brake rising; mice will rustle under the ground-ivy's purple flowers; a mole perhaps may be seen, for at this time they often leave their burrows and run along the surface; and, indeed, so numerous are the sights and sounds and interesting things, that you will soon be conscious of the fact that, while you watch one, two or three more are escaping you. It would be the same with any other search as well as the dove; I choose the dove because by then all the other creatures are come and are busy, and because it is a fairly large bird with a distinctive note, and consequently a good guide.

But these are not all the spring-birds: there are the whinchats, fly-catchers, sandpipers, ring-ousels, and others that are occasional or rare. There is not a corner of the fields, woods, streams, or hills, which does not receive a new inhabitant: the sandpiper comes to the open sandy margins of the pool; the fly-catcher, to the old post by the garden; the whinchat, to the furze; the tree-pipit, to the oaks, where their boughs overhang meadow or cornfield; the sedge-reedling, to the osiers; the dove, to the thick hedgerows; the wheatear, to the hills; and I see I have overlooked the butcher-bird or shrike, as, indeed, in writing of these things one is certain to overlook something, so wide is the subject. Many of the spring-birds do not sing on their first arrival, but stay a little while; by that time others are here.

Gra.s.s-blade comes up by gra.s.s-blade till the meadows are freshly green; leaf comes forth by leaf till the trees are covered; and, like the leaves, the birds gently take their places, till the hedges are imperceptibly filled.

THE SPRING OF THE YEAR

'There's the cuckoo!' Everyone looked up and listened as the notes came indoors from the copse by the garden. He had returned to the same spot for the fourth time. The tallest birch-tree--it is as tall as an elm--stands close to the hedge, about three parts of the way up it, and it is just round there that the cuckoo generally sings.

From the garden gate it is only a hundred yards to this tree, walking beside the hedge which extends all the way, so that the very first time the cuckoo calls upon his arrival he is certain to be heard. His voice travels that little distance with ease, and can be heard in every room. This year (1881) he came back to the copse on April 27, just ten days after I first heard one in the fields by Worcester Park. The difference in time is usual; the bird which frequents this copse does not arrive there till a week or so after others in the neighbourhood may be heard calling. So marked is the interval that once or twice I began to think the copse would be deserted--there were cuckoos crying all round in the fields, but none came near. He has, however, always returned, and this difference in time makes his notes all the more remarked. I have, therefore, always two dates for the cuckoo: one, when I first hear the note, no matter where, and the second, when the copse bird sings. When he once comes he continues so long as he stays in this country, visiting the spot every day, sometimes singing for a few minutes, sometimes for an hour, and one season he seemed to call every morning and all the morning long. In the copse the ring of the two notes is a little toned down and lost by pa.s.sing through the boughs, which hold and check the vibration of the sound. One year a detached ash in Cooper's Field, not fifty yards from the houses, was a favourite resort, and while perched there the notes echoed along the buildings, one following the other as waves roll on the summer sands. Flying from the ash to the copse, or along the copse hedge, the cuckoo that year was as often seen as the sparrows, and as little notice was taken of him. Several times cuckoos have flown over this house, but just clearing the roof, and descending directly they were over to the copse. He has not called so much this year yet, but on the evening of May 8 he was crying in the copse at half-past eight while the moon was s.h.i.+ning.

On the morning of May 2, standing in the garden, or at the window of any of the rooms facing south, you could hear five birds calling together. The cuckoo was calling not far from the tallest birch; there was a turtle-dove cooing in the copse much closer; and a wood-pigeon overpowered the dove's soft voice every two or three minutes--the pigeon was not fifty yards distant; a wryneck was perched up in an oak at the end of the garden, and uttered his peculiar note from time to time, and a nightingale was singing on Tolworth Common, just opposite the house, though on the other side.

These were all audible, sometimes together, sometimes alternately; and if you went to the northern windows or the front door, looking towards the common, then you might also hear the chatter of a brook-sparrow. The dove has a way of gurgling his coo in the throat.

The wryneck's 'kie-kie-kie,' the last syllable plaintively prolonged, is not like the call or songs of other birds; it reminds one of the peac.o.c.k's strange scream, not in its actual sound, but its singularity. When it is suddenly heard from the midst of the thick green hedges of a summer's day, the bird itself unseen, it has a weird sound, which does not accord, like the blackbird's whistle, with our trees; it seems as if some tropical bird had wandered hither. I have heard the wryneck calling in the oak at the end of the garden every morning this season before rising, and suspect, from his constant presence, that a nest will be built close by. Last year the wryneck was a scarce bird in this neighbourhood; in all my walks I heard but two or three, and at long intervals. This year there are plenty; I hear them in almost every walk I take. There is one in the orchard beside the Red Lion Inn; another frequents the hedges and trees behind St. Matthew's Church; up Claygate Lane there is another--the third or fourth gateway on the left side is the place to listen. One year a pair built, I am sure, close to the cottage which stands by itself near the road on Tolworth Common. I saw them daily perched on the trees in front, and heard them every time I pa.s.sed. There were not many, or we did not notice them, at home, and therefore I have observed them with interest. Now there is one every morning at the end of the garden. This nightingale, too, that sings on Tolworth Common just opposite, returns there every year, and, like the cuckoo to the copse, he is late in his arrival--at least a week later than other nightingales whose haunts are not far off. His cover is in some young birch-trees, which form a leafy thicket among the furze. On the contrary, the brook-sparrow, or sedge-reedling, that sings there is the first, I think, of all his species to return in this place. He comes so soon that, remembering the usual date in other districts, I have more than once tried to persuade myself that I was mistaken, and that it was not the sedge-bird, but some other. But he has a note that it is not possible to confuse, and as it has happened several seasons running, this early appearance, there can be no doubt it is a fixed period with him. These two, the sedge-bird and the nightingale, have their homes so near together that the one often sings in the branches above, while the other chatters in the underwood beneath.

Besides these, before I get up I hear now a wren regularly. Little as he is, his notes rise in a crescendo above all; he sings on a small twig growing from the trunk of an oak--a bare twig which gives him a view all round. There is a bold ring in some of the notes of the wren which might give an idea to a composer desirous of producing a merry tune. The chirp of sparrows, of course, underlies all. I like sparrows. The chirp has a tang in it, a sound within a sound, just as a piece of metal rings; there is not only the noise of the blow as you strike it, but a sound of the metal itself. Just now the c.o.c.k birds are much together; a month or two since the little bevies of sparrows were all hens, six or seven together, as if there were a partial separation of the s.e.xes at times. I like sparrows, and am always glad to hear their chirp; the house seems still and quiet after this nesting-time, when they leave us for the wheatfields, where they stay the rest of the summer. What happy days they have among the ripening corn!

But this year the thrushes do not sing: I have listened for them morning after morning, but have not heard them. They used to sing so continuously in the copse that their silence is very marked: I see them, but they are silent--they want rain. Nor have our old missel-thrushes sung here this spring. One season there seem more of one kind of bird, and another of another species. None are more constant than the turtle-dove: he always comes to the same place in the copse, about forty yards from the garden gate.

The wood-pigeons are the most prominent birds in the copse this year. In previous seasons there were hardly any--one or two, perhaps; sometimes the note was not heard for weeks. There might have been a nest; I do not think so; the pigeons that come seemed merely to rest _en route_ elsewhere--occasional visitors only. But last autumn (1880) a small flock of seven or eight took up their residence here, and returned to roost every evening. They remained the winter through, and even in the January frosts, if the sun shone a little, called now and then. Their hollow cooing came from the copse at midday on January 1, and it was heard again on the 2nd.

During the deep snows they were silent, but I constantly saw them flying to and fro, and immediately it became milder they recommenced to call. So that the wood-pigeon's notes have been heard in the garden--and the house--with only short intervals ever since last October, and it is now May. In the early spring, while walking up the Long Ditton road towards sunset, the place from whence you can get the most extended view of the copse, they were always flying about the tops of the trees preparatory to roosting. The bare slender tips of the birches on which they perched exposed them against the sky. Once six alighted on a long birch-branch, bending it down with their weight, not unlike a heavy load of fruit. As the stormy sunset flamed up, tinting the fields with momentary red, their hollow voices sounded among the trees.

Now, in May, they are busy; they have paired, and each couple has a part of the copse to themselves. Just level with the gardens the wood is almost bare of undergrowth; there is little to obstruct the sight but the dead hanging branches, and one couple are always up and down here. They are near enough for us to see the dark marking at the end of the tail as it is spread open to a.s.sist the upward flight from the ground to the tree. Outside the garden gate, about twenty yards distant, there stand three or four young spruce-firs; they are in the field, but so close as to touch the copse hedge. To the largest of these one of the pigeons comes now and then; he is half inclined to choose it for his nest, and yet hesitates. The noise of their wings, as they rise and thresh their strong feathers together over the tops of the trees, may often be heard in the garden; or you may see one come from a distance, swift as the wind, suddenly half close two wings, and, shooting forward, alight among the branches. They seem with us like the sparrows, as much as if the house stood in the midst of the woods at home. The coo itself is not tuneful in any sense; it is hoa.r.s.e and hollow, yet it has a pleasant sound to me--a sound of the woods and the forest. I can almost feel the gun in my hand again. They are pre-eminently the birds of the woods. Other birds frequent them at times, and then quit the trees: but the ring-dove is the wood-bird, always there some part of the day. So that the sound soothes by its a.s.sociations.

Coming down the Long Ditton road on May 1, at the corner of the copse, where there are some hornbeams, I heard some low sweet notes that came from the trees, and, after a little difficulty, discovered a blackcap perched on a branch, humped up. Another answered within ten yards, and then they sang one against the other. The foliage of the hornbeam was still pale, and the blackcaps' colours being so pale also (with the exception of the poll), it was not easy to see them. The song is sweet and cultured, but does not last many seconds. In its beginning it something resembles that of the hedge-sparrow--not the pipe, but the song which the hedge-sparrows are now delivering from the top sprays of the hawthorn hedges. It is sweet indeed and cultured, and it is a pleasure to welcome another arrival, but I do not feel enraptured with the blackcap's notes. One came into the garden, visiting some ivy on the wall, but they are not plentiful just now. By these hornbeam trees a little streamlet flows out from the copse and under the road by a culvert. At the hedge it is crossed by a pole (to prevent cattle straying in), and this pole is the robin's especial perch. He is always there, or near; he was there all through the winter, and is there now.

Beneath, where there are a few inches of sand beside the water, a wagtail comes now and then; but the robin does not like the intrusion, and drives him away.

The same oak at the end of the garden, where the wryneck calls, is also the favourite tree of a c.o.c.k chaffinch, and every morning he sings there for at least two hours at a stretch. I hear him first between waking and sleeping, and listen to his song before my eyes are open. No starlings whistle on the house-tops this year; I am disappointed that they have not returned; last year, and the year before that--indeed, since we have been here--a pair built under the eaves just above the window of the room I then used. Last spring, indeed, they filled the gutter with the materials of their nest, and long after they had left a storm descended, and the rain, unable to escape, flooded the corner. It cost eight s.h.i.+llings to repair the damage; but it did not matter, they had been happy. It is a disappointment not to hear their whistle again this spring, and the flutter of their wings as they vibrate them superbly while hovering a moment before entering their cavern. A pair of house-martins built under the eaves near by one season; they, too, have disappointed me by not returning, though their nest was not disturbed. Some fate has probably overtaken late starlings and house-martins.

Then in the sunny mornings, too, there is the twittering of the swallows. They were very late this spring at Surbiton. The first of the species was a bank-martin flying over the Wandle by Wimbledon on April 25; the first swallow appeared at Surbiton on April 30. As the bank-martins skim the surface of the Thames--there are plenty everywhere near the osier-beds and eyots, as just below Kingston Bridge--their brown colour, and the black mark behind the eye, and the thickness of the body near the head, cause them to bear a resemblance to moths. A fortnight before the first swallow the large bats were hawking up and down the road in the evenings. They seem to prefer to follow the course of the road, flying straight up it from the copse to the pond, half-way to Red Lion Lane, then back again, and so to and fro, sometimes wheeling over the Common, but usually resuming their voyaging above the highway. Pa.s.sing on a level with the windows in the dusk, their wings seem to expand nine or ten inches. Bats are sensitive to heat and cold. When the north or east wind blows they do not come out; they like a warm evening.

A shrike flew down from a hedge on May 9, just in front of me, and alighted on a dandelion, bending the flower to the ground and clasping the stalk in his claws. There must have been an insect on the flower: the bright yellow disk was dashed to the ground in an instant by the ferocious bird, who came with such force as almost to lose his balance. Though small, the butcher-bird's decision is marked in every action, in his very outline. His eagle-like head sweeps the gra.s.s, and in a second he is on his victim. Perhaps it was a humble-bee. The humble-bees are now searching about for the crevices in which they make their nests, and go down into every hole or opening, exploring the depressions left by the hoofs of horses on the sward when it was wet, and peering under stones and flints beside the way. Wasps, too, are about with the same purpose, and wild bees hover in the suns.h.i.+ne. The shrikes are numerous here, and all have their special haunts, to which they annually return. The bird that darted on the dandelion flew from the hedge by the footpath, through the meadow where the stag is generally uncarted, beside the Hogsmill brook. A pair frequent the bushes beside the Long Ditton road, not far from the milestone; another pair come to the railway arch at the foot of c.o.c.krow Hill. In Claygate Lane there are several places, and in June and July, when they are feeding their young, the 'chuck-chucking' is incessant.

Beside the copse on the sward by the Long Ditton road is a favourite resort of peac.o.c.k b.u.t.terflies. On sunny days now one may often be seen there floating over the gra.s.s. White b.u.t.terflies go flutter-flutter, continually fanning; the peac.o.c.k spreads his wide wings and floats above the bennets. Yellow or sulphur b.u.t.terflies are almost rare--things common enough in other places. I seldom see one here, and, unless it is fancy, fewer the last two seasons than previously.

In the ploughed field by Southborough Park, towards the Long Ditton road, partridges sometimes call now as the sun goes down. The corn is yet so short and thin that the necks of partridges stand up above it. One stole out the other evening from the hedge of a field beside the Ewell road into the corn; his head was high over the green blades. The meadow close by, the second past the turn, is a favourite with partridges, though so close to the road and to Tolworth Farm. Beside Claygate Lane, where the signpost points to Hook, there is a withybed which is a favourite cover for hares.

There is a gateway (on the left of the lane) just past the signpost, from which you can see all one side of the osiers; the best time is when the clover begins to close its leaves for the evening. On May 3, looking over the gate there, I watched two hares enjoying themselves in the corn; they towered high above it--it was not more than four or five inches--and fed with great unconcern, though I was not concealed. A nightingale sang in the bushes within a few yards, and two cuckoos chased each other, calling as they flew across the lane; once one pa.s.sed just overhead. The cuckoo has a note like 'chuck, chuck,' besides the well-known cry, which is uttered apparently when the bird is much exerted. These two were quite restless; they were to and fro from the fields on one side of the lane to those on the other, now up the hedge, now in a tree, and continually scolding each other with these 'chuck-chucking' sounds.

Chaffinches were calling from the tops of the trees; the chaffinches now have a note much like one used by the yellow-hammer, different from their song and from their common 'fink tink.' I was walking by the same place, on April 24, when there was suddenly a tremendous screaming and threatening, and, glancing over the fields bordering on the Waffrons, there were six jays fighting. They screamed at and followed each other in a fury, real or apparent, up and down the hedge, and then across the fields out of sight. There were three jays together in a field by the Ewell road on May 1.

Just past the bridge over the Hogsmill brook at Tolworth Court there begins, on the left-hand side of the road, a broad mound, almost a cover in itself. At this time, before the underwood is up, much that goes on in the mound can be seen. There are several nightingales here, and they sometimes run or dart along under the trailing ivy, as if a mouse had rushed through it. The rufous colour of the back increases the impression; the hedgerows look red in the suns.h.i.+ne.

Whitethroats are in full song everywhere: they have a twitter sometimes like swallows. A magpie flew up from the short green corn to a branch low down an elm, his back towards me, and as he rose his tail seemed to project from a white circle. The white tips of his wings met--or apparently so--as he fluttered, both above and beneath his body, so that he appeared encircled with a white ring.

The swifts have not come, up to the 10th, but there are young thrushes about able to fly. There was one at the top of the garden the other day almost as large as his parent. Nesting is in the fullest progress. I chanced on a hedge-sparrow's lately, the whole groundwork of which was composed of the dry vines of the wild white convolvulus. All the birds are come, I think, except the swift, the chat, and the redstart: very likely the last two are in the neighbourhood, though I have not seen them. In the furze on Tolworth Common--a resort of chats--the land-lizards are busy every sunny day. They run over the bunches of dead, dry gra.s.s--quite white and blanched--grasping it in their claws, like a monkey with hands and prehensile feet. They are much swifter than would be supposed. There was one on the sward by the Ewell road the other morning, quite without a tail; the creature was as quick as possible, but the gra.s.s too short to hide under till it reached some nettles.

The roan and white cattle happily grazing in the meadows by the Hogsmill brook look as if they had never been absent, as if they belonged to the place, like the trees, and had never been shut up in the yards through so terrible a winter. The water of the Hogsmill has a way of escaping like that of larger channels, and has made for itself a course for its overflow across a corner of the meadow by the road. A thin place in the rather raised bank lets it through in flood-time (like a bursting loose of the Mississippi), and down it rushes towards the moat. Beside the furrows thus soaked now and then, there are bunches of marsh-marigold in flower, and though the field is bright with dandelions and b.u.t.tercups, the marigolds are numerous enough to be visible on the other side of it, 300 yards or more distant, and are easily distinguished by their different yellow. White cuckoo-flowers (_Cardamine_) are so thick in many fields that the green tint of the gra.s.s is lost under their silvery hue. Bluebells are in full bloom. There are some on the mound between Claygate and the Ewell road; the footpath to Chessington from Roxby Farm pa.s.ses a copse on the left which s.h.i.+mmers in the azure; on the mound on the right of the lane to Horton they are plentiful this year--the hedge has been cut, and consequently more have shot up. Cowslips innumerable. The pond by the Ewell road, between this and Red Lion Lane, is dotted with white water-crowfoot.

The first that flowered were in the pond in the centre of Tolworth Common. The understalks are long and slender, and with a filament rather than leaves--like seaweed--but when the flower appears these larger leaves float on the surface. Quant.i.ties of this ranunculus come floating down the Hogsmill brook, at times catching against the bridge. A little pond by the lane near Bone's Gate was white with this flower lately, quite covered from bank to bank, not a spare inch without its silver cup. Vetches are in flower; there are always some up the Long Ditton road on the bank by Swaynes-Thorp.

Shepherd's purse stands up in flower in the waste places, and on the side of the ditches thick branches of hedge-mustard lift their white petals. The delicate wind anemones flowered thickly in Claygate Lane this year. On April 24 the mound on the right-hand side was dotted with them. They had pushed up through the dead dry oak-leaves of last autumn. The foliage of the wind anemone is finely cut and divided, so that it casts a lovely shadow on any chance leaf that lies under it: it might suggest a design. The anemones have not flowered there like this since I have known the lane before. They were thicker than I have ever seen them there. Dog-violets, barren strawberry, and the yellowish-green spurge are in flower there now.

The pine in front of my north window began to put forth its catkins some time since; those up the Long Ditton road are now covered thick with the sulphur farina or dust. I fancy three different sets of fruit may sometimes be seen on pines: this year's small and green, last year's ripe and mature, and that of the year before dry and withered. The trees are all in leaf now, except the Turkey oaks--there are some fine young Turkey oaks by Oak Hill Path--and the black poplars. Oaks have been in leaf some time, except those that flower and are now garlanded with green. Ash, too, is now in leaf, and beech. The bees have been humming in the sycamores; the limes are in leaf, but their flower does not come yet. There were round, rosy oak-apples on the oak by the garden in the copse on the 9th. This tree is singular for bearing a crop of these apples every year. Its top was snapped by the snow that fell last October while yet the leaf was on. I think the apples appear on this oak earlier than on any about here. As for the orchards, now they are beautiful with bloom; walking along the hedges, too, you light once now and then on a crab or a wild apple, with its broad rosy petals showing behind the hawthorn. On the 7th I heard a corncrake in the meadow over Thames, opposite the Promenade, a hundred yards below Messenger's Eyot. It is a favourite spot with the corncrake--almost the only place where you are nearly sure to hear him. Crake! crake!

So it is now high May, and now midnight. Antares is visible--the summer star.

VIGNETTES FROM NATURE

I.--SPRING

The soft sound of water moving among thousands of gra.s.s-blades is to the hearing as the sweetness of spring air to the scent. It is so faint and so diffused that the exact spot whence it issues cannot be discerned, yet it is distinct, and my footsteps are slower as I listen. Yonder, in the corners of the mead, the atmosphere is full of some ethereal vapour. The suns.h.i.+ne stays in the air there as if the green hedges held the wind from brus.h.i.+ng it away. Low and plaintive comes the notes of a lapwing; the same notes, but tender with love.

On this side by the hedge the ground is a little higher and dry, hung over with the lengthy boughs of an oak which give some shade. I always feel a sense of regret when I see a seedling oak in the gra.s.s. The two green leaves--the little stem so upright and confident, and though but a few inches high, already so completely a tree--are in themselves beautiful. Power, endurance, grandeur are there; you can grasp all with your hand and take a s.h.i.+p between the finger and thumb. Time, that sweeps away everything, is for a while repelled: the oak will grow when the time we know is forgotten, and when felled will be mainstay and safety of a generation in a future century. That the plant should start among the gra.s.s to be severed by the scythe, or crushed by cattle, is very pitiful; I cannot help wis.h.i.+ng that it could be transplanted and protected. O! the countless acorns that drop in autumn not one in a million is permitted to become a tree: a vast waste of strength and beauty.

From the bushes by the stile on the left hand (which I have just pa.s.sed) follows the long whistle of a nightingale. His nest is near; he sings night and day. Had I waited on the stile, in a few minutes, becoming used to my presence, he would have made the hawthorn vibrate, so powerful is his voice when heard close at hand. There is not another nightingale along this path for at least a mile, though it crosses meadows and runs by hedges to all appearance equally suitable. But nightingales will not pa.s.s their limits; they seem to have a marked-out range as strictly defined as the line of a geological map. They will not go over to the next hedge, hardly into the field on one side of a favourite spot, nor a yard farther along the mound. Opposite the oak is a low fence of serrated green. Just projecting above the edges of a brook, fast-growing flags have thrust up their bayonet-tips. Beneath, these stalks are so thick in the shallow places that a pike can scarcely push a way between them.

Over the brook stand some high maple-trees: to their thick foliage wood-pigeons come. The entrance to a combe--the widening mouth of a valley--is beyond, with copses on the slopes.

Again the plover's notes, this time in the field immediately behind; repeated, too, in the field on the right hand. One comes over, and as he flies he jerks a wing upwards and partly turns on his side in the air, rolling like a vessel in a swell. He seems to beat the air sideways, as if against a wall, not downwards. This habit makes his course appear so uncertain: he may go there, or yonder, or in a third direction, more undecided than a startled snipe. Is there a little vanity in that wanton flight? Is there a little consciousness of the spring-freshened colours of his plumage and pride in the dainty touch of his wings on the sweet wind? His love is watching his wayward course. He prolongs it. He has but a few yards to fly to reach the well-known feeding-ground by the brook where the gra.s.s is short; perhaps it has been eaten off by sheep. It is a straight and easy line--as a starling would fly. The plover thinks nothing of a straight line: he winds first with the curve of the hedge, then rises, uttering his cry, aslant, wheels, and returns; now this way, direct at me, as if his object was to display his snowy breast; suddenly rising aslant again, he wheels once more, and goes right away from his object over above the field whence he came. Another moment and he returns, and so to and fro, and round and round, till, with a sidelong, unexpected sweep, he alights by the brook. He stands a minute, then utters his cry, and runs a yard or so forward.