The Chimney Swallows Had Been Absent Five Months All
But Five Days (Last Seen November 30), So That Reckoning The First And
The Last, They May Be Said To Stay In England Seven Months - Much Longer
Than One Would Think Without Taking The Dates.
Up till April 20 the
hedges seemed as bare as they were in January, a most dreary spectacle of
barren branches, and the great elms gaunt against the sky.
After that the
hedges gradually filled with leaf, and were fully coloured when the
turtle-dove began to sing, but still the elms were only just budding, and
but faintly tinted with green.
Chaucer was right in singing of the 'floures' of May notwithstanding the
northern winds and early frosts and December-like character of our Mays.
That the cycle of weather was warmer in his time is probably true, but
still even now, under all the drawbacks of a late and wintry season, his
description is perfectly accurate. If any one had gone round the fields
on old May-day, the 13th, - his - May-day, they might have found the deep
blue bird's-eye veronica, anemones, star-like stitchworts, cowslips,
buttercups, lesser celandine, daisies, white blackthorn, and gorse in
bloom - in short, a list enough to make a page bright with colour, though
the wind might be bitter. In the coldest and most exposed place I ever
lived in, and with a spring as cold as this, the May garlands included
orchids, and the meadows were perfectly golden with marsh-marigolds. For
some reason or other the flowers seem to come as near as they can to
their time, let the weather be as hard as it may. They are more regular
than the migrant birds, and much more so than the trees. The elm, oak,
and ash appear to wait a great deal on the sun and the atmosphere, and
their boughs give much better indications of what the weather has really
been than birds and flowers. The migrant birds try their hardest to keep
time, and some of them arrive a week or more before they are noticed.
Elm, oak, and ash are the surest indicators; the horse-chestnut is very
apt to put forth its broad succulent leaves too soon; the sycamore, too,
is an early tree in spite of everything. It has been said that of late
years we have not had any settled, soft, warm weather till after
midsummer. There has been a steady continual cold draught from the
northward till the sun reached the solstice, so that the summers, in
fact, have not commenced till the end of June. There is a good deal of
general truth in this observation; certainly we seem to have lost our
springs. I do not think I have heard it thunder this year up to the time
of writing. The absence of electrical disturbance shows a peculiar state
of atmosphere unfavourable to growth, so that the corn will not hide a
partridge, and in some places hardly a sparrow. Where did the painters
get their green leaves from this year in time for the galleries? Not from
the trees, for they had none.
A flock of rooks was waddling about in a thinly grown field of corn which
scarcely hid their feet, and a number of swallows, flying very low,
scarcely higher than the rooks' breasts, wound in and out among them. The
day was cloudy and cold, and probably the insects had settled on the
ground. The rooks' feet stirred them up, and as they rose they were taken
by the swallows. All over the field there were no other swallows, nor in
the adjacent fields, only in that one spot where the rooks were feeding.
On another occasion swallows flying low over a closely cropped grass
field alighted on the sward to try and catch their prey. There seems a
scarcity of some kinds of insect life, due doubtless to the wind. Out of
a dozen butterfly chrysalids collected, six were worthless; they were
stiff, and when opened were stuffed full of small white larvae, which had
eaten away the coming butterfly in its shell. They were the offspring of
a parasite insect, which thus provided for the sustenance of its young by
eating up other young, after the cruel way of nature. Why does one robin
carefully choose a thatched cave for its nest, out of reach except by a
ladder, and safe from all beasts of prey, and another place its nest on a
low grassy bank scarcely hidden by a plant of wild parsley, and easily
taken by the smallest boy? At first it looks like a great difference in
intelligence, but probably each bird acted as well as could be under the
circumstances. Each robin has to fight for his locality, and he has to
make the best of his territory; if he trespassed on another bird's
premises he would be driven away. You must build your house where you
happen to possess a plot of land. It is curious to see the male bird
feeding the female, not only while on the nest, but when she comes away
from it; the female perches on a branch and utters a little call, and the
male brings her food. He was feeding her the other evening on the bare
boughs of a fig tree some distance from the nest. The warmth of the sun,
although we could not feel it, must have penetrated into the earth some
time since, for a slowworm came forth on a mound for the first time on
April 16. He coiled up on the eastern side every morning for some hours,
but was never seen in the afternoon. His short, thick body and unfinished
tail, more like a punch or the neck of a stumpy bottle, was turned in a
loop, the head nearly touching the tail, like a pair of sugar-tongs.
Coming out from the stitchwort and grasses, the spiders often ran over
his shining dark brown surface, something the colour of glazed
earthenware.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 68 of 104
Words from 68569 to 69580
of 105669
