F.L.S. John Watson

“ Phil leads his own life, and is contemplative as becomes his craft. Nature's every sight and sound he has, as it were, by heart, and he makes friends even with the creeping things. As we watch, a salmon, fresh from the sea, leaps from the silvery foam and flashes in the moonlight.
One of the greatest night-helps to the gamekeeper in staying the depredations of poachers is the lapwing. It is the lightest sleeper of the fields, starting up from the fallows and screaming upon the slightest alarm. Poachers dread the detection of this bird, and the keeper closely follows its cry. ”

“ Just as the eagle is the largest, so the merlin is the smallest British bird of prey, and to see this miniature falcon rush past on the breast of a mountain storm gives an idea of its almost marvellous velocity of flight. Within the whole range of animate nature, nowhere is the adaptation of means to an end more strikingly exhibited than among the raptors—the plunderers. The furred poachers are not less appropriately fitted with their weapons of destruction; and so perfectly adapted is the otter to its environment that its movements in the water are as the very poetry of motion. ”

“ A crash! the underwood is rudely torn, and a form disappears in the darkness. The crackling of boughs and dead sticks mark on the stillness of night the poacher's sinuous path through the woods. Soon his old black bitch slinks by the hedge, clears the fence at a bound, and doggedly follows her master's footsteps. Crake answers crake from the meadows as they have done through the night. Now they are at our feet, now far out yonder. The night call of the partridge comes from the gorse, and the first pheasant crows from the larch branches. ”

“ The barn-owl, when she has young, brings to her nest a mouse every twelve minutes, and, as she is actively employed both at evening and dawn, and both male and female hunt, forty mice a day is the lowest computation we can make. How soft is the plumage of the owl, and how noiseless her flight! Watch her as she floats past the ivy tod, down by the ricks, and silently over the old wood. Then away over the meadows, through the open door and out of the loop-hole in the barn, round the lichened tower, along the course of the brook. ”

“ Once again we are enjoying the pleasure of wild shooting in winter, but now in the open glades. Again there has been a slight fall of snow, and, sure, morning was never more beautiful. The feathered rain is crisp to the tread, and the warm sun converts the air to that of summer. The sea is blue, the hills rose-tinted, and the snow-crystals make the landscape gloriously, dazzlingly bright. A coating of snow will always arrest the eye of the observant sportsman, more especially if he have a penchant for natural history. ”

“ Numerous small waterfalls, the gauze and film veils of which, when the wind blows, and dripping moss, have attracted the dippers. Kingfishers, too, in their green flight, dash over the still water. The remote pines have lost their light, and stand black against the sky. Sundown has come, and it is the hour of vesper hymns. The woods are loud swelling volumes of sound. Behind us is a woodland enchanted, though with no sadder spirits than blackbirds and thrushes that whistle to cheer it. ”

“ We "rush" the last slope, and at last stand three thousand feet above sea level—upon the topmost jag of the mighty Helvellyn!
The grandeur of a mountain is always enhanced by a storm; and as by the wave of a wizard's wand the sun is suddenly shut out by black, inky clouds. A couple of ominous ravens rise slowly uttering a dismal croak, croak, croak; and a merlin rushes past on the wings of the storm. Mists gather, roll up the mountain-side, and far-off mutterings are heard in the hills. As a cold plash strikes the face, we seek a cairn, drawing closer our wraps. Suddenly the storm bursts. ”

“ Their paths would seem soon to have converged, for the night is torn by a piteous cry, the road is enveloped in dust, and in the midst of the confusion the dogs dash over the fence. They must have found their game near the middle of the field, and driven the hares—for there are two—so hard that they carried the net right before them. Every struggle wraps another mesh about them, and soon their screams are quieted. By a quick movement the poacher wraps the long net about his arm, and, taking the noiseless sward, gets hastily away from the spot. These are the common methods of hare-poaching. ”

“ During the summer we have tramped through the coppice woods. These will be felled when autumn comes round, having grown their fifteen years. And to one unaccustomed to such rapid growth the progress made would be somewhat astonishing. The trees are spindle high. The ash-poles are straight and smooth, the young oaks radiant in rich chestnut, the hazels catkin-covered, and the frail birch—the lady of the woods—towers her silvery stem afar up. Of course, when cut, each species of tree has some special virtue—some quality in which it most excels. ”

“ When almost the whole of the insect-world has folded its wings in sleep, there is a class of night-flyers whose hours of activity are those of darkness. Among the more interesting of these is the male glow-worm—the English lantern-fly—whose light may be plainly seen as he flits past, pale and ghostly against the dark background of some deeply-foliaged bank or shadowy wood. Then there is the great army of night-flying moths, whose nocturnal wanderings present such a weird appearance in the darkness, and whose life-history contrasts so sharply with the sunny dalliance of their butterfly cousins. ”

“ Whenever an owner dies, say the menials at the Hall, a great bough is riven from the giant oak; whenever a new heir comes to the estate, a white fawn is born. Under the dark slabs by the river the otters breed; but it is impossible to dislodge them. Iron-sinewed, shaggy otter-hounds have tried, but never with success. The fishermen complain of the quantity of fish which the otter destroys. Trout are found dead on the rocks; salmon are there bitten in the shoulder, but only partially eaten. The evolutions of the otter in its native element are the poetry of motion minus only the metre. ”

“ As we proceed, a splash comes from the river, and some large-winged fly has been sucked under. The night food comes on, and the reach boils. Water-rats, voles, and shrews are busy among the stones searching for insect larvæ, or gnawing the stalks of water-plants. The wafting of wings overhead betokens a curlew flying through the darkness to its feeding ground. The peculiarly lonely wail of the summer-snipe comes down stream, and a teal stretches her neck low over the sand. ”

“ Swallows have built beneath the rafters of the miners' sheds, at evening bats fly in and out at the open doors, and a pair of screech-owls that have taken up their abode declare the place as desolate. There is only one person in the country-side who has yet any lingering faith in the railway, the mine, or the mountain. This is an old miner, himself like a nugget of iron ore. He has infinite faith in a deep compensating future, and bides his time. When mellowed by ale and the soothing fumes of a short black pipe, he assures you that he will stand by the mountain through fair weather or foul. ”

“ Just as the twilight of a summer evening is deepening into darkness, and a soft, warm wind stirs the foliage of the woods, the ghost moth comes abroad. The observer sees a fitful apparition which suddenly vanishes into space. First a large insect with long wings is seen advancing, it comes straight on, then flutters in the air—and is gone. Whilst endeavouring to discover the mysterious retreat of the moth, it will suddenly reappear, and even whilst the eye closely follows its flight, will again vanish. This effect is produced by the different colour of the wings on their upper and lower sides. ”

“ The night grows dark, the wind rises and is cold, and the tide changes, so does the luminosity of the sea. The pale spectres sink deeper and are lost to sight, but the increasing waves are tinged here and there with green and white, and often along a line, where the fresh water is mixing with the salt in an estuary, there is brightness so intense that boats and shores are visible. But if such sights are to be seen on the surface, what must not be the phosphorescence of the depths! Every sea-pen is glorious in its light ”

“ There was one other track which it would be long and devious to follow—one which had been abroad under the moon and stars, and from its trail would seem to have known the ways and the haunts of both furred and feathered game by heart—and that was the old poacher. The snow is a great tell-tale, but it causes the poacher's eye to grow keen and his step firm; and nothing but the gaol walls will prevent his being a snow-walker. His life has been one long protest against the game laws; and whatever he is, or is not, he believes them to be unjust. ”

“ The beams will not long stay, for the sun dips in the western woods. From the mouth of our recess we take in a silent river reach. It is thickly embowered and overhung. Long drooping racemes of green tree flowers attract innumerable insects, especially those of the lime, and intent upon these a flycatcher sits lengthwise upon a branch. How beautiful are its short flights, the iridescence of its plumage, its white eye-lines, and barred forehead! ”

“ If the cuckoo tells her name to all the hills, so does the sedge-warbler to the fluted reeds. And, like that wandering voice, our little bird seems dispossessed of a corporeal existence, and on through summer is "still longed for, never seen"—and this though common enough, for you may wander long among the willows, with a bird in every bush, without one showing outside its corral of boughs. Wherever vegetation grows tall and luxuriant, there the "reed-wren" may be found. ”

“ But the barn-owl is only the precursor of new life—life as animate under the night, as that of the birds and butterflies under the day. We follow the path by the river, and on through the meadows. Among the nut-bush tops a bat is hawking for night-flying insects. Great white moths get up from the grass and go looming away through the darkness. ”

“ They swing on the willow spray, and dash with lightning velocity at a piece of floating bark, tumble with it, wrestle with it, and go through a hundred wonderful movements. They are motionless, then begin to play, and so continue for nearly an hour, when, as if suddenly alarmed, they rush down stream to their fishing grounds, and leave us cold and benumbed. We plod through the meadow beneath the moon and stars, chilled to the marrow by the falling dew. ”

“ The wheatears love to haunt the old wall, and in summer are never far from it. In one of its niches they have their pale blue eggs. The wall runs by the side of the fells. The grass on its side is green as the water runs down them from the crags. The wall has a fauna and a flora all its own. In the interstices of the stones spleenwort and the parsley-fern grow; there are mosses and lichens too, and stone-crop. A few grasses wave airily on the scant mound at the top. A foxglove with its purple fingers grows solitary. ”

“ Wordsworth often used to sit, she invariably had a thick sod of purple heather in full bloom. To the stream many anglers came, and drew from their holds the pink-spotted trout. The dipper and kingfisher darted by the door, and those who drank in the quiet and pastoral peace of Duddon never forgot it. The woman of the cottage, by great industry and exertion, had reared and settled comfortably in life a large family. ”