AFTER SUMMER.
AUGUST is the month of matured summer and ripening L31.- fruits and grain. Looking abroad, we see how changed is the face of Nature. There is a drooping fullness, a touch of mellow light that bespeaks the beginning of the end. How goodly a sight it is to see that rich yield-up of the land that speaks of such abundant future provision ! A sweet and heavy hay crop has been gathered in, and now the cattle stand knee- deep and satiated in the lush aftermath. The grain, not yet ripe, but full and thick of ear, is just assuming its rich golden yellow. Outside, and among the tangle-wood of the broad weed- fringes, the partridges are strutting or sunning themselves on the hillocks ; although living luxuriantly, they are waiting for the shearing of the hard, sound grain. Already the red squirrels have taken free right and warren of the grain, and the pretty white-bellied field-mice are nibbling the as yet sweet corn- stalks. Bees bungle at the mouths of the corolla tubes, and
rabbits pop in and out of the bordering hedgerow. Sedate, sable rooks, white gulls, and blue wood-pigeons hang and hover about, waiting for the coming of the reaper; and from a beech-tree to an oak, there keeps fluttering across a blue- winged jay. The colour of the corn is daily assimilating to that of the yellow buntings that have already begun to thrash the riper ears, and with them seem to have come all the birds of the country.
Even the ubiquitous sparrow is here in immense flocks, his once smutty plumage now showing rich colouring of black and white and brown. It is usual at this time of the year for the haunter of cab-stands and dusky chimney-stacks to take his annual holiday, and to seek out his share of the bountiful harvest. And no bird exercises his rights like the sparrow. Every cunning engine devised for his destruction he holds in utter and supreme contempt, and in spite of all he flourishes and multiplies. There can be now no question that the sparrow is one of the greatest impositions of advanced civilisa- tion. And yet, what if we were deprived of his presence ? His reckless audacity and presumptive impudence is of that very type which is most fascinating and loveable. Here, thus early, is a field standing in stooks. And what an animated paradise to the things of the fields and woods ! Linnets and greenfinches in vast flocks are picking among the straw. Clover springs green among the corn-stooks, and bees, hive and humble, invade the white and red clover flowers. Lying on the margin of our meadow suggests a golden time of mellow frnitfubaess,—a lotus-eating land in which it might be always afternoon.
We creep by the tangled hedge-bottom, and come in view of the brae where the partridges bask. There is something loveable in the dumpy, old-maidish form of the partridge, and they give a sense of quiet peace and content- ment to the scene. Presently from our side last year's oak-leaves are gently rustled, and from the weed-flowers by the woodbine's root emerges a pretty white-bellied mouse, with a long tail. It runs by little starts, turning aside for an insect as it goes, clambering up grass-stalks, hanging by its prehensile tale, swinging from the red campion to the ruddy corn, and now prettily sitting upright and holding a golden ear. Soon another mouse, like to the first, rustles the leaves and joins its mate. They gnaw off a pannicle of grain, and let it fall to the clover; then they descend. Soon the scarious husks are made to come away, and a dark shadow comes between sun and corn ; and this is why our white-bellied mice rustled so hur- riedly away. The kestrel, suspended as by a silken thread, hung over us for a moment, and was gone. Wading a little way out among the stubble we find the nest of the harvest- mice,—a beautiful, ball-like structure, exquisitely soft, and made of long grass-blades, cunningly interlaced. The corn- stalks pass right through the nest, and no opening is per- ceptible.
All our soft-billed, delicate wood-birds are just meditating their autumn flight. .Many of the insects are already retiring to their long retreat, and the slightest suggestion of frost at night tells them that they must soon be gone. The birds which will now go from us are the great host of insect-eaters, to say nothing of the four birds of the swallow kind, which almost constitute a summer in themselves. Of course their places will be taken by a number of winter visitants, and these hardier forms will be more in keeping with the frost and snows of winter. In the fields just now we get the first suggestion of that flocking of birds which is so great a feature of feathered life in autumn. And this applies to the birds that will come to us, as well as those about to leave. On the Scandinavian seaboards, vast flocks of goldcrests and woodcocks will even now be concentrating themselves, and preparing for their stormy journey across the wild North Sea,—they know not why or where, only that a wild, resistless impulse drags them on. Soon those who live on the coast-line will see, among the other countless birds, that one of Job, the hawk, which stretches her wings to the South.
The home movements of our own birds—those whose migra- tions are only of a local character—are becoming less apparent. The twites and ling-birds are descending lower along the moorland belts, and wheatears are leading their young from their elevated breeding-tracts. The white- crescented ring-ouzels are leaving the torrent-sides, and seeking out the berries of the rowan-tree or mountain-ash. Almost as soon as the grouse-shooters commence, the birds begin to "pack," and as many as fifty may be seen now going together. This year, the number of both grouse and partridges, especially the former, is much greater than was anticipated. Much corn is still standing everywhere, and the ear will have to fill considerably before the coming of the reaper.
The nuts are becoming embrowned at their tips, and the rosy clusters droop in shaggy plenty. A hazel copse at this season is a veritable haunt of abundant life. The pretty comma butter- fly never seems absent from the hazel, and it is haunted by a host of moths. Among these are the lunar marble, the fair emperor, the nut-tree tussock, the copper underwing, the large emerald, the dark-bordered beauty, and the high-flyer moths. But there are three creatures pre-eminently of the copse. These are the squirrel, the dormouse, and the pretty little bird called the nuthatch. Our hazels are mostly shrubs, but out there in the clearing stands a tree thirty feet high. This vigorous growth comes of isolation, and is be- gotten of light and air and sun.
These clearings in the copse are common, and in one such stands a smooth-holed beech. Beneath it a squirrel, that dark-eyed miracle of the forest, sits upon its haunches gnawing beech-mast. Disturbed at our approach, it rushes up the high hazel, gliding from branch to branch like a sunbeam. From its aerial outlook it surveys the world below, and stamps and garrulously chatters. The pretty creature haunts you, listens for you, hides from you, looks for you, loves you. But, as Rosalind said, so does the old keeper. "He abuses our young trees" by stripping them of their juicy bark. Here on this cushion of cup-moss let us sit awhile and watch him. Now he is half-hidden in the foliage ; in his fore-paws he holds a shaggy cluster of nuts, one of which he abstracts, then allows the cluster to drop. The nut he secures adroitly, and rapidly rasps away the small end. A hole being made, he splits the shell with his long teeth. By examining the divided halves, the squirrel's mode of operation will be made clear. He is careful to pare off every particle of the brown skin which envelops the kernel before he begins to eat. Only the largest and soundest nuts are plucked. The dormouse and field- mouse adopt a somewhat different method of coming at the contents of the shell. They gnaw a hole in it, so small that the wonder is how the kernel is abstracted through it, and as regular as though drilled by a wimble.
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