Birds And Beasts In Winter.--The Owl And The Weasel

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Title:     Birds And Beasts In Winter.--The Owl And The Weasel
Author: Gordon Stables [More Titles by Stables]

"O! Nature, a' thy shows and forms
To feeling pensive hearts have charms,
Whether the summer kindly warms
Wi' life and light,
Or winter howls in gusty storms
The lang dark night."

Burns.

Our birds out of doors had all a pitiful tale to tell next morning. Not that they had any reason to complain of the boisterousness of the weather, for the wind, after blowing the snow into the most fantastic of wreaths that blocked the roads and walks, and shut us quite up and away from the village, had retired to the cave of its slumber, wherever that may be. The sun, moreover, was shining from a sky of brightest blue, and the trees were like trees of coral, yet the frost was intense.

So while Buttons proceeded to feed the dogs--always an interesting operation--and I stood by looking on, the birds came round us in flocks. The robin, of course, was the tamest; he would almost eat from my hand: later on he did.

This was our own particular robin, who had come backwards and forwards for years, and knew every one of us, I verily believe, by name.

"It is terrible weather, isn't it," he said to me confidentially; "there is nothing to eat; everything is covered up, and the worms have all gone down a yard beneath the earth to keep themselves cosy. My feet are almost frozen!"

"That is right," he added; "I cannot live without a little animal food, and this shredded morsel of sheep's-head is delicious. Some feed their birds in winter on crumbs alone. They ought to study their habits, and add a bit of meat now and then. There, don't go away till I finish my breakfast, because, the moment you are off, down comes Mr Thrush and gobbles up the lot."

"But," I said, "you're not afraid of the sparrows."

"I'm not afraid of a few of them, though five is more than I can fight, and often ten come. They are cowardly creatures in the main."

"Now, Buttons," I said, "as soon as you have fed the dogs give them all a romp in the snow; then set up the birds' sheaf."

I alluded to a custom we have at our place of giving the birds a Christmas-tree, whenever there is snow on the ground. It is a plan taught us by the Norwegians, and I would rejoice to think it was universally adopted; for surely we ought to feed well in winter the birds that amuse and delight us when summer days are fine.

The Christmas-tree is simply a little sheaf of oats or wheat tied to the top of a small spruce-fir. It is positively a treat to see with what delight they cluster round it.

Another good plan--which gives much amusement, as witnessed from the dining-room window--is to tie up a little sheaf of oats by a string to the branch of a tree.

Tie also up some scraps of meat, and, if you have it, a few poppy-heads for the tits. The poppy-heads must be gathered and garnered in autumn, being cut down before they are too ripe, and with long stalks attached to them.

I am not sure that the seeds are not almost capable of intoxicating the birds, but they do so luxuriate in them, that I have not the heart to deny them the delight.

Here is an excerpt from my diary of this winter before the snowstorm came on:

"December 19.--It is a bright beautiful day. The garden-paths are hard. The grass on lawns and borders is crisp and white with the hoar-frost that has fallen during the night. Though it is past midday, the sun makes no impression on it. There isn't the slightest breath of wind, nor is there a leaf left on the lofty trees to stir if it did blow. A still, quiet, lovely winter's day.

"But I do not think the birds are at all unhappy yet. The blackbirds and the thrushes are still wild. They have not come near the door yet to beg for food. But the sparrows have, and eke cock-robin. The latter has just eaten about a yard of cold boiled macaroni, and now sits on an apple-tree and sings loud and clearly a ringing joyous song of thanksgiving. I cannot help believing that he looks upon poor me as only an instrument in the hands of the kind Providence, who seeth even the sparrow fall.

"Perhaps even the sparrows are thankful, though music is not much in their line. These gentry are not particular what they eat, and it is surprising how soon they make away with a soaked dog's biscuit, if one be left in their way, or a pound or two of the boiled liver that Hurricane Bob is so very fond of. The old nests of these birds are still up in the wistaria-trees that cover the front, or one of the fronts, of the cottage. Those nests are crowded with the birds at night. They have used them now for two seasons, simply re-lining them. Memo: to pull them all down as soon as the days get warmer; laziness should not be encouraged even in sparrows.

"December 21.--The weather is still hard and calm. Cock-robin had a sad story to tell me this morning. He looked all wet and draggled and wretched, quite a little mop of a robin.

"'Whatever have you been doing, Cockie?' I asked. 'Have you had an accident?'

"'Accident, indeed!' replied Cockie. 'No, it was no accident, but a daring premeditated attempt at parricide.'

"'Parricide,' I cried, 'you don't mean to say that your son--'

"'O! but I do though,' interrupted Cockie. 'You know, sir, that he follows me to the door, and attempts to take the bit out of my mouth, and you've seen me fling him a piece of meat.'

"'Yes,' I replied, 'and then try to chase him away, and the young rascal runs backwards, and sings defiance in your face.'

"'True, sir; and to-day, when I tried to reason with him, he flew right at me--at his father, sir--and toppled me heels over head into the water-vat, and I'm sure I've caught a frightful cold already.'

"'There's a fire in my study, Cockie, if you care to go in.'

"'No, thank you, sir, I'll sit in the sun.'

"December 22.--The weather gets colder and colder. I interviewed a speckle-breasted thrush to-day, who had come to the garden-room-door to be fed.

"'On winter nights,' I asked, 'do you not suffer very much from the cold?'

"The bird looked at me for a moment with one big bright eye and said:

"'No, not as a rule. You see we retire early, always seeking shelter at sunset, and generally going to the self-same spot night after night, for weeks or months; for all the winter through we can do with quite a deal of sleep. Yes, as you say, we make up for it in spring and early summer, when we sing all the livelong day and seldom have more than four hours of rest. We rest in winter under the shelter of a hedge or tree, or eave, away from the prevailing wind.

"'In winter we are more warmly feathered all over, though our garments are less gay than in summer, when we have to appear on the stage, as it were. Even our heads are well clad, and when perched on a bough our toes are covered, and we hardly feel the cold a bit.

"'But at times in winter it is bad enough, for when the snow covers the frozen ground we get but little warmth-giving food. This alone prevents us from sleeping soundly; and sometimes the wind gets high and rages through the trees, and we get blown right off our perches. Then, as it is all dark, we are glad to huddle in anywhere, and many of us get snowed up, and never see the glad sunshine any more.

"'Wet is even worse than snow, and if there is wind as well as wet we are very numbed and wretched. Then the night seems so long, and we are so glad when day breaks at last, and the warm sunshine streams in through the bushes.'"

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Our little village was so truly small and so unsophisticated, that with the exception of the clergyman and doctor it could boast of nothing at all in the shape of society, while the families in the country districts were mostly honest farmer-folk, who had seen but little of the outside world, and only heard of it by reading the weekly paper. Their talk was chiefly about growing crops and live stock, so that, interesting though this might be, neither my friend Frank nor myself had much temptation to leave home on winter evenings.

But we had plenty to talk about nevertheless, and I cannot help saying that it would be a blessing to themselves if the thousands of country families, situated as we were, would cultivate the art of instructive conversation and story-telling. Science gossip is infinitely to be preferred to fireside tattle about one's neighbours, to say nothing of its being free from ill-nature, and elevating to the mind instead of depressing.

About a week before Christmas, my wife was busy one evening trimming an opera-cloak for Maggie May--would she ever wear it, I wonder--with some kind of grebe.

"Is it grebe?"

"Yes, it is the skin of a grebe of some kind," was the reply; "but there are so many different kinds, in this country find America."

"A kind of duck, isn't it?"

"Or a kind of gull?"

"Betwixt and between, one might say. Grebes are nearly allied to the great Northern Diver, but their feet are not, like his, quite webbed. They frequent the seashore and rivers by the sea, and live on fish, frogs, and molluscs of any sort. Their nests are often built to float among the reeds, and to rise and fall with the tide."

"When I get an opela-cloak," said Ida, "I'll have it tlimmed with elmine."

"Why with ermine, Ida?"

"Because the Queen had elmine on, in the waxwork."

"Yes; and the ermine is only a weasel after all, and all summer it wears a dress of red-brown fur, which speedily gets bleached to white, when the thermometer stands below zero."

"No, Frank, I haven't seen my weasel for some time. He is dozing in some snug corner, you may be sure; and really, Frank, I believe the subject of hibernation is but very imperfectly understood. I don't want to go into the matter at present physiologically, except to say that it seems to be a provision of Nature for the protection of species; and that a variety of animals and creatures of all kinds that we little wot of, hibernate, more or less completely. We see sometimes, in the dead of winter, a beautiful butterfly--a red Admiral, perhaps--suddenly appear and dance about on a pane of glass. We wonder at it. It is not a butterfly's ghost at all, but a real butterfly, who had gone to sleep in a snug corner of the room, and has now awakened probably only to die.

"I found an immense knot of garden worms, the other day, deep down in garden mould. They were sleeping away the cold season.

"But, talking about weasels, I'll tell you a story, Ida."

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THE OWL AND THE WEASEL

"From yonder ivy-mantled tower,
The moping owl doth to the moon complain,
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign."

"By what you tell me," I said, "I can now guess where all my wild rabbits have gone."

I was talking to a weasel. And indeed the weasel seemed talking to me, for he stood upon his hind-legs, on the balcony, staring in at me through the French window that opens from my study on to the long shady lawn. As I did not move, he had a good look at me, and I think he felt satisfied that I was not likely to harm him.

"Yes," I continued; "under that verandah, under the wooden balcony where you now stand, used to dwell six wild rabbits, and did I not delight to see them gambolling on the grass on the early summer mornings, the while the blackbirds, the thrush, and the mavis enjoyed the bath placed on purpose for them under the shade of the scented syringas."

"Well," replied the weasel, with a little toss of the head, "I dwell there now, and very comfortable I find the quarters."

"And the rabbits?" I inquired.

"Good morning!" said the weasel, and it departed.

The weasel often came to see me in this fashion, and sometimes, when I took my chair outside of an evening, he would suddenly appear at the far end of the balcony.

"O, you're there, are you?" he would seem to say, quite saucily. "Well, don't trouble yourself getting up; I sha'n't stop."

I had often wished to have a tame weasel; but though my present visitor was not afraid of me, and I know it took the milk I used to put down for it in a small bit of broken basin, I could never make a real pet of it.

But one bright lovely day I was passing along in the country on my tricycle. It was a lonesome upland, where I was travelling, with neither hedge nor ditch on either side of the road, only green grass and trees, with here and there a bush of golden furze. I was going along at no extra speed, but thoroughly enjoying myself; still, I put on all the power I could after a time, and seemed to fly towards what appeared to be an immense black snake hurrying across the broad pathway. This snake, however, on a nearer inspection, resolved itself into one mother weasel and five young ones, all in a row. Seeing me dismount, the old mother hurriedly snatched up one of her little ones, perhaps her favourite, and in a few moments they were out of sight, far away in the thicket. Nay, not all of them, for here was one entangled in the rank grass by the pathway. What should I do with it? If its mother did not return it would very likely be left to perish. "Ah! I have it," I thought, "I will take it home and tame it and keep it as a pet." It needed some taming, too, young as it was; this I soon found when I commenced to capture it, but not without considerable risk to my fingers; but at last I had it secure in my tricycle basket.

I must at once confess that I was not successful in my endeavours to domesticate this poor wee weasel. As far as a cage could be, its abode was palatial; it had the warmest and softest of nests, and everything to tempt its palate that I could think of; but although it came to know and not fear me in a very few weeks, yet it never seemed perfectly content, and seemed to long for the wild woods--and its mother.

And at last the poor little mite died, and I buried it in a tiny box under a bush, and vowed to myself as I did so that I would never take any wild thing away from its mother again.

Some people would tell you that you ought to destroy stoats and weasels whenever you see them. I myself think you ought not, because, although they do sometimes treat themselves to a young leveret, or even a duckling or chicken, they should be forgiven for this when we consider the amount of good they do, by destroying such grain-eating animals as rats and mice, to say nothing of our garden-pests, the moles.

Even the owl is a very useful bird of prey, because he works by night, when hawks have gone to sleep. Like many human thieves and robbers, mice like to ply their pilfering avocation after nightfall, and they might do so with impunity were it not for those members of the feathered vigilance committee--the owls.

Now, so long as an owl does his duty, I think he has a right to live, and even to be protected; but even an owl may forget himself sometimes, and be guilty of indiscretion. When he does so, he has only himself to blame if evil follow.

There was once a particularly well-to-do and overweeningly ambitious owl, who lived in an old castle, not far from the lovely village of Fern Dene.

"Oh!" he said to himself one bright moonlight night, as he sat gazing down on the drowsy woodland and the little village with its twinkling lights; "I should like a repetition of last night's feast--a tasty young weasel. Oh! I would never eat mouse again, if I could always have weasel." And he half closed his old eyes with delight as he spoke.

"And why not?" he continued, brightening up; "there were five of them, and I only had one. So here I go."

And away flew the owl out of the topmost window of the tower, and flapping his great lazy wings in the air, made directly over the trees to the spot where the weasel had her nest.

"I shouldn't wonder," said one bat to another, "if our friend Mr Owl finds more than his match to-night."

Farmer Hodge, plodding wearily homewards through the moonlight, about half an hour after, was startled by a prolonged and mournful shriek that seemed close to his ear, while at the same time he saw something dark rising slowly into the sky. He watched it for many minutes; there was another scream, but a fainter one higher up in the air; then the something dark grew darker and larger, and presently fell at his feet with a dull thud. "What could it be?" he wondered as he stooped to examine it. Why a great barn-owl with a weasel fast to its neck. Were they dead? Yes, both were dead; but one had died bravely doing its duty and defending its homestead; the other was a victim to unlawful ambition.

[The end]
Gordon Stables's short story: Birds And Beasts In Winter

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