FEBRUARY ON THE' THAMES.'
Tr is still -a-superstition in- England- that summer- is the time to look forward- to .: the summers. themselves cannot cure us of it. But it is one- of the characteristics of the: English climate, if not one of its. good points, that its fine-.weather comes always by surprise, and that. a fine day in. February. or- in October is as goodas a_fine. day in August At all. events, a blue: sky never works: such a transformation in the set seasons as -in February,. which is neither winter nor spring but each alternately.
The_ floods have subsided entirely' from_ the Thames meadows—first the surface. waters and then: those which seemed to -permeate. the whole-earth—leaving the- grass a brighter green and only- their flotsam and jetsam behind to make the barrier hedges look like steeplechase- hurdles and to. hang on the wire fences like family. washing. The coming of fine weather. opened the rescued- daisies-by hun- dreds and set the.larksup-as high as they:could-sing : they have :returned tothe low-lying fields again and-show- very conspicuously against the short grass: It is- an. apparent failure of protective colouring that almost-. all our wild: creatures which. live- most- in the fields--the partridge, both larks and both- pipits, the thrushes, the hare, the common lizard, and the meadow brown butterfly, for instance—are coloured brown, even warm brown,. when- green would have served them better. Most of them turn their handicap, to advantage by keeping as much as pos- sible to ploughlands, but the bare earth is an artificial con- dition and- never more than a temporary one. The birds which are coloured green. almost invariably belong to trees : the lapwing andyellow-wagtail seem to be the only ground-birds which-even; approach green in their plumage. And in the same.- way as the: ground-birds -seem driven to hide.their -blatancy on the ploughed-fields; some of these green arboreal birds seem slowly to be adapting themselves to -a.life in the fields, where their colour is of more use to them. An American woodpecker, which is- principally green, has in quite recent times forsaken trees altogether, and it is . at least a coincidence . that of our three British woodpeckers—two black: and white and one green—the green bird:.alone. has taken to feeding on ants and some parts spends half its life .on the ground. It_is to be seen on grass commonly and. sometimes. in heather, but never on the bare soil. The-greenfinch:spends more time feeding on the ground. than any other member. of its-family, and the -green warblers (the chiffchaff, willow-wren and wood- wren) all nest. on the ground-though their food is up above, in the Abushes and tall trees. But to come back to the. Thames.
There are kingfishers along this- reach, I know; for .occa- sionally I see a solitary-bird sitting hunched-upon .a post or. darting across the stream: with a shrill triplicate call.. But it is more than a month since I saw-the last:: they. do not. make themselves cheap. At. the- present time the king- fisher. seems to be: a decidedly rare bird' on: most parts of the Thames. It was formerly very, common; but Cockney sportsmen who admired its stuffed skin shot it so- freely- that by the early' 'nineties (when- W. H. Hudson spent some time near the river.) it had become -a rare bird. A. single birdstuffer has dealt with: a hundred. birds in- ad season. Then in 1894 . the Conservancy. Act- forbade the use.of firearms on the river bank,.andthe kingfisher began-, to flourish again. Soon. afterwards it became really-plen- tiful, at any rate on the middle reaches.. These- halcyon- days for the halcyon lasted till tar poisoning, and ether' insidious. methods of pollution, began to sweep away. wholesale the creatures which formed:their food, and with the growing uncertainty of their livelihood the kingfishers declined. We may hope that they have reached the turning-point : the worst of the pollution seems to be over by now.
Considering that it enjoys the.privilege of sanctuary for by far the greater part of its length, the Thames is not -rich in wild life. Certainly there are a great number of -moorhens, which at this season look brand new. Their bills are as red as sealing-wax ; their tails black and white 'fans ; their feet a fresh pale green and their black and brown bodies glossed with bronze. And there arc plenty of mallards and dabchicks. But one sees nothing rare of the duck family, for example, nor of the sandpipers, using this safe halting-place. Even the redshank seems to be ;missing.
In summer, perhaps, the river is too much disturbed 'for the liking of many birds, though the breeding season is nearly over before the Thames becomes populous. One reason for the scarcity of wild life may be the decorative but destructive swan. In our choice of pets we are often unfortunate. The domestic cat and the mute swan, which are so much national extravagances that the one is excused taxation and the other actually maintained by the Crown, are as hardened a pair of villains as we could have found.
Beyond the cowslip field on the Thames bank the railway runs parallel with the river and not far from it. Soon after crossing the line one day lately I came back the same way and found that the train which had passed in the interval had killed and mutilated a very large black and white cat, which must have been lurking in one of the hedges when I passed. At some particular points on railways cats are killed so often that the glint of the sun on the rails is believed to have a fascination for them which makes them expose themselves to danger.
In this same lane leading to the river I had a very similar experience a week or two before. I passed down to the Thames, and, returning soon afterwards, noticed a freshly killed racing pigeon, which had almost certainly not been there before, lying at the foot of the hedge with deep wounds in the shoulder of each wing. It had the ilppearance of having been struck down by a hawk, but only the kestrel and sparrowhawk seemed to be found here, and neither makes a practice of stooping at racing pigeons. The only British bird of prey which kills pigeons for pleasure is the peregrine ; but it seemed fantastic to argue from such an incident that there was a peregrine at large in the Thames Valley. And I thought no more about it. But on this fine day in the first week of Feb- ruary, when the Thames was as blue as the sky above it, and an almond-tree up towards Henley was already- in full blossom, I saw a pair of peregrines playing and hunting high overhead. A party of wild duck passed temptingly beneath the tiered, but he would not give chase. There is something menacing in the very shape of a peregrine seen up . in the blue : it seems so natural that the larks should stop singing on his appearance and the talkative chaffinches in the hedge suddenly silence themselves that only their beginning again afterwards makes it noticeable.
The long wings taper from so broad a shoulder and the stiff, narrow tail . from so massive a body that the falcon Seems head-heavy, which may in part account for this terrifying effect. Certainly it is no trick of the imagina- tion that he is terrifying, for all living things:recognize it, while larger predatory birds—the buzzard, for instance—
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