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Compton Mackenzie
IN May, 1952, I was lucky enough to add a seventh to what I may call, -I hope without undue hyperbole, the wonders of nature which I have had the good fortune to see. This was a fight between an eagle and a peregrine falcon a few miles north of Gruinard in Wester Ross. Rising above the eagle time after time, the peregrine dived down as swiftly as a gannet upon what it evidently considered an intruder upon its territory by the sea. The eagle could only tilt clumsily to avoid the full force of those dives and after a couple of minutes of awkward manceuvring it lumbered off inland with the peregrine on its tail. This humiliation of the king of birds • was an impressive if rather melancholy spectacle. My com- panion James Robertson Justice said he had seen such a fight once or twice before and that the peregrine had always won with ease, but I have not met anybody else who has been lucky to see such an encounter.
How many readers have seen the stoat charm a circle of pop-eyed rabbits with its fatal dance ? I saw this once in the summer of 1898 when very early in the morning I was walking along a green lane to that exquisite little Norman church of the remote village of Wield in north Hampshire. The performance took place in a weedy strip of field between the green lane and a hazel brake. The stoat was a Nijinsky of incomparable litheness and grace, and the circle of at least a hundred fascinated rabbits closed in a yard or two nearer to the dancer every few seconds until the stoat was dancing in a space not more than a couple of square yards in extent. Suddenly all the rabbits turned and raced away, all but one, the chosen victim, which remained hypnotised to let the stoat spring upon it. There was a high squeal, and then silence under the pale blue sky of the morning.
At Capri I was once granted the vision of two kingfishers flying out to sea upon one of those halcyon days that from time immemorial have blessed the winter solstice with an azure calm. When Alcyone found the drowned body of her husband Ceyx upon the shore she threw herself into the sea, a myth grew that she and Ceyx were changed into kingfishers and that the wintry sea was stilled for them to brood upon their floating nest. Such a myth could not have obtained currency unless kingfishers in the Mediterranean had been observed flying out to sea in December like those two king- fishers I saw at Capri. Logan Pearsall Smith thought the word ' halcyon ' so beautiful that he wanted to substitute it for the ' anticyclone ' of weather forecasts. I always protested against this proposal, and I wish that people would not use halcyon days to describe a fine fortnight in summer, for they are consecrated to December and nobody who keeps in his heart a memory of such days desires to see their name profaned by the crowded noisy summer of the contemporary Mediterranean.
About five o'clock on an April afternoon in Capri I saw in the sky above Monte Solaro what appeared to be an aeroplane glittering in the sun like white paper. This was in 1920 when aeroplanes were still worth staring at. - The strange thing was that this aeroplane seemed to be stationary and an hour passed before the watchers saw it turn luminous and become the planet Venus dropping slowly down into the West. I do not know if the sight of Venus by daylight is a frequent phenomenon, but I have beheld it only once in my life.
Many people have seen lunar rainbows, but how many have seen a red rainbow ? On a thunder-heavy summer's evening I was walking round the cliffs on the east side of the isle of Herm looking at a perfect rainbow against a leaden cloud over Sark. To my amazement every colour gradually faded until the rainbow was entirely red. Looking toward the sun, I perceived that it had already set behind Guernsey but that- presumably it had not yet gone down into the sea and therefore the rainbow over Sark must be reflecting a sinking sun invisible from Herm but visible above Sark. I have never read anywhere about the phenomenon of a red rainbow at the moment of sunset and I have never met any- body who has seen such a rainbow. Two years ago in Berk- shire I saw the moon at twilight reflected in a cloud. This double moon was a novelty to me, and I should be glad to hear from others who have seen a red rainbow or a double moon.
Gilbert White refused to believe that the woodcock carried her young, because her bill was not suited to accomplish such a feat. The matter remained in doubt until about 1890 when it was established that the bird carried her young with her feet; probably by holding them pressed between her thighs with her bill. It was thought at first that she carried them off when alarmed but it now seems certain that she carries them to suitable feeding ground. W. H. Hudson, who has written more beautiful pages about birds than any I know in English, never had the luck to see a woodcock carrying her young. Yet I who deserved the sight so much less than he was granted it. The year was 1932: the place was Inverness-shire. A woodcock carrying the young bird flew over thy head within a yard of it, and no doubt she was going to fly down with her chick to the meadows beside the Beauly where the ground was soft and she could teach it to probe for grubs.
My last story will not be believed but I must testify. In the summer of 1897 I was sitting on a bare chalky slope in Hampshire covered with thyme and dotted here and there with stunted hawthorns when 1 saw an adder with about a dozen animated bodkins wriggling about round their mother. My Airedale which had been rushing all over the place looking for rabbits came tearing up at that moment, and I saw as I thought the bodkins disappear into their mother's mouth. I was ignorant of the country legend that in a moment of alarm the adder will swallow its young, and when on coming back to the village I told an old ploughman about the incident as a marvel I felt mortified by his treatment of it as a common- place. I ventured to tell this story many years later to my old friend Boulenger who was then in charge of reptiles, at the Zoo. He said firmly that it was impossible for any adder to swallow its young and that I had imagined the incident. Obviously I could not argue with a herpetologist of his renown, but I am convinced that the adder 1 saw did some- thing with those animated bodkins to conjure them out of sight. Perhaps she picked them up and put them underneath her. She was coiled in an attitude of fierce defence and I was not prepared to look more closely into the matter. It seems to me that the country legend could not have endured unless from time to time people had seen the young of an adder dis- appear mysteriously and unless they had seen the mother pick them up. I am bound to accept the expert opinion which declared the legend to be nonsense but at the back of my mind even to this day, nearly sixty years later, I still believe I saw that adder swallow her young. Then I remember how many people are convinced that they have seen flying saucers and I feel less sure about what I saw upon that thymy Hampshire slope in the year of the Diamond Jubilee. Some- how I must manage to see a flying-saucer, but if I am success- ful I shall believe that it arrived here from Venus and not from Mars.
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