COUNTRY LIFE
Food of the Grouse
The red grouse, as behoves the one bird that is the exclusive gift of this island to ornithology, has flourished in defiance of all the evil things said of the weather of the year. One reason for its successful struggle for life simultaneously in Scotland, North England and Wales is that it is much more adaptable than was once thought. Doubtless few birds are more faithful to a single plant, but older opinion exaggerated its need for heather. Some of them wrote as if heather were as exclusive a food for the grouse as the water dock for the great copper butterfly. Recently a considerable advance has been made in the knowledge of the feeding habits of birds, and it is found that the grouse, in spite of its need of young heather, has a fairly'catholic taste in food. It will on occasion eat a good many sorts of plant. So with the partridge. The young partridge, like most young birds, has an absolute need of insect food, and is peculiarly partial to ant grubs ; but the older birds—it is now said by the research-workers- subsist very much more on vegetable food in the summer than sportsmen believed. It is not only in the winter that they subsist largely on salad. Perhaps for this reason drought may do them almost as much harm as July thunderstorms.
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Heather-beetle Foes
Of all the thousands of species of beetles in the British list not more than two or three have won any popular favour and very few have a popular name. The most notable exception is the. ladybird. It owes a good deal to its odd appearance, which is individual and quaint, both in the grub stage and in the perfect insect, but as scientific psychology advances, it is found to have more and more solid virtues, as our estimates go. Recent research into the ways of the heather-beetle, which two years ago devastated great tracts of moorland, both in the Lake country and in Scotland, has brought out the fact that this destructive beetle's most efficient enemy is a species of ladybird. It has a taste for the grubs of the heather beetle, even more exclusive than the- commoner ladybird of our gardens for greenfly and other sorts of Aphis. Why should not ladybirds be bred artificially ? There is now a regular business in breeding parasites on destructive insects.
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A Flight Observer All people interested at all in birds must have heard with pleasure a short broadcast given by one of the observers in recent air manoeuvres. His post of observation was in the Norfolk flats which have made a naturalist of every other man, woman and child in their neighbourhood. He saw no aeroplanes, but the evening and night and morning were bright with the sound or sight of birds. There is no place in England where birds so belong to the landscape : the tall herons standing in the shallow waters, the flighting duck and geese overhead, the marvellous wail and whistle of the redshanks that seem to be the very voice of the darkening air. No other district compares with it for observation; not of flying but of flighting birds. How the verb " flight " took on the special meaning I do not know, but the nature .of the birds' diurnal journeys to and from the feeding grounds is like no other migration. Flighting as a form of sport has, I know, charms belonging to no other form of shooting, but I cannot but feel that if pursued often it is the least justifiable. It drives the birds from their natural life. It may be as much a " sin in the soul " as shooting birds during the nesting season, and less senti- mentally it may drive birds clean away from a native district. The ambush is a ruse de guerre to be sparingly used. When the enemy is a flock or birds, humanity as well as wisdom forbid its frequent repetition.
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Owls and Mice
The mystery of the number of birds that tap at windows and flutter against. them has puzzled many observers ; and now and again the secret cause has been discovered. For example : not long since an owl was observed to nourish a fondness for one corner of the house and would on occasion come to a particular window sill. A piece of nibbled biscuit gave the explanation. When night came the mice gathered to devour what food the birds had left from the abundance supplied; and the owl discovering this visited the same place as a hunting ground of his favourite prey. Nature is " red in tooth and claw." I once knew a suburban resident who delighted to feed birds on the little lawn but was forced to desist because a cat used to ambush the birds from the shelter of a convenient bush. The town mouse has a yet harder time than when the fable was written, not only because cats are plenty, but because the brown owl has of late become more urban in habit.
The "Sixth Sense"
Most people, whether bird watchers or not, must have been interested in a recent account from France of homer pigeons being attracted to a great heap of scrap iron, on which they were, as it seemed, forced to land, to the interruption of their proper journey. Its influence seemed to daze their wits. This curious observation follows on the heels of several others that may be of a like kind. There is no reason to doubt (though more scientific trials are needed) that the homing flight of pigeons is disturbed by the bigger radio centres, such as Daventry. Birds that pass over lose direction and find themselves literally at their wits' end. Such facts are complete evidence perhaps that the birds are sensitive to ethereal vibra- tions imperceptible by our grosser senses ; and it is a natural inference that the marvellous homing instinct is in some way aided by what one may call electrical perceptions. All the talk about a " sixth sense " does not carry us much farther ; but it is quite certain that the migration movements are directed by some influence outside the senses of which we have cog- nisance ; and though homer pigeons certainly depend very greatly on sheer sight they have probably other guides, too.
* * * * Local Fidelity
The pigeon's fidelity to home is sometimes oddly expressed. For example : in the War a sudden order was received from the officer known as " O.C. Pigeons " to remove the London 'buses, then used as mobile dovecotes, from the neighbourhood of Poperinghe to the neighbourhood of Arras. When the pigeons were released from their new home they flew back to Poperinghe and were found roosting on the ground exactly where the 'buses had stood. The domestic hen has a like blind fidelity to a particular pitch. A poultry farmer who was accustomed to remove his portable houses across his fields found that he had to limit the migration to a very few yards. If the houses were shifted even a few yards further than the normal, the hens quite refused to enter them, but went to roost on the exact spot from which their quarters had been 'removed. This was done though the houses were obvious to the most myopic vision and the meanest intelligence. A fidelity to place, of like exactitude, has been noticed during certain experiments with bees. Though they will return to a transported hive, they will not always return to a hive removed only a few yards in their absence.
* * * * In the Garden Almost the loveliest sight in any garden is a host of daffodil or crocus on short grass under trees. This fair spectacle—of which a beautiful example is seen in the Green Park—is not open to small gardeners, who do not perhaps avail themselves fully enough of bulbs adapted to the rock gardens. None of the great flaunting daffodils has so seductive a charm as minimus which always graces the rock garden at Kew and the crocuses Imperati and Tomasinianus are worth their place in every garden, so too, is Iris Pumila in its several varieties. Among other bulbs the larger and paler chionodoxas have of late rather supplanted the squills, but these remain supreme in colour, even when compared with Muscari or grape hyacinth. Among naturalisation bulbs for very rough places none perhaps multiplies more certainly than the wild Lent lily, said by some to be a garden " stray " ; and the old double daffodil is nearly as lusty in this regard. Yet many, even of the more precious sorts, do quite well in grass, and in my experience those of the Leedsii type and the Pheasant Eye are successful in rough conditions. English bulbs of these
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