But I Was There To Defy The
Weather, And So Instead Of Following The Bird In Search Of
Shelter I Sat Down Among Some Low Furze Bushes And Waited And
Watched.
By and by I caught sight of three magpies, rising
one by one at long intervals from the furze and flying
laboriously towards a distant hill-top grove of pines.
Then I
heard the wailing cry of a peewit, and caught sight of the
bird at a distance, and soon afterwards a sound of another
character - the harsh angry cry of a carrion crow, almost as
deep as the raven's angry voice. Before long I discovered the
bird at a great height coming towards me in hot pursuit of a
kestrel. They passed directly over me so that I had them a
long time in sight, the kestrel travelling quietly on in the
face of the wind, the crow toiling after, and at intervals
spurting till he got near enough to hurl himself at his enemy,
emitting his croaks of rage. For invariably the kestrel with
one of his sudden swallow-like turns avoided the blow and went
on as before. I watched them until they were lost to sight in
the coming blackness and wondered that so intelligent a
creature as a crow should waste his energies in that vain
chase. Still one could understand it and even sympathize with
him. For the kestrel is a most insulting creature towards the
bigger birds. He knows that they are incapable of paying him
out, and when he finds them off their guard he will drop down
and inflict a blow just for the fun of the thing. This
outraged crow appeared determined to have his revenge.
Then the storm broke on me, and so fiercely did the rain and
sleet thrash me that, fearing a cold soaking, I fled before it
to the rim of the plain, where the wheatear had vanished, and
saw a couple of hundred yards down on the smooth steep slope a
thicket of dwarf trees. It was, the only shelter in sight,
and to it I went, to discover much to my disgust that the
trees were nothing but elders. For there is no tree that
affords so poor a shelter, especially on the high open downs,
where the foliage is scantier than in other situations and
lets in the wind and rain in full force upon you.
But the elder affects me in two ways. I like it on account of
early associations, and because the birds delight in its
fruit, though they wisely refuse to build in its branches; and
I dislike it because its smell is offensive to me and its
berries the least pleasant of all wild fruits to my taste. I
can eat ivy-berries in March, and yew in its season, poison or
not; and hips and haws and holly-berries and harsh acorn, and
the rowan, which some think acrid; but the elderberry I can't
stomach.
How comes it, I have asked more than once, that this poor tree
is so often seen on the downs where it is so badly fitted to
be and makes so sorry an appearance with its weak branches
broken and its soft leaves torn by the winds?
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