ENGLISH ANIMALS IN SNOW.
AS the first snow fell this year gently, steadily, and by day, instead of rushing upon us in a midnight storm, the sheep, not waiting until it pleased the snow-demon either to bury them or to pass on to mischief elsewhere, drew together facing the wind, and stamped the snow down in- cessantly as it fell, just as they stamp their feet when facing a strange dog,—but far more rapidly and continuously. Some of them were lambs of the year, that had never seen a snow- fall. Yet these creatures, so long domesticated, untaught by experience, were by instinct using the same means to combat the snow, their greatest enemy, as does the wild moose in the Canadian backwoods. The moose would perish like the sheep in the drifts, if the herds did not combine to trample out the "moose-yards;" and these sturdy Southdowns were showing exactly the same instinct in an English park.
But snow generally catches our animals unprepared—all but the hedgehog, who is comfortably asleep, rolled up in a coat of leaves—and they are put to all kinds of shifts to find food and escape their enemies. The more open and exposed the districts, the greater their difficulties. Where there are thick woods and hedgerows, and above all, running water, birds and beasts alike can find dry earth in which to peck and scratch, or green things to nibble, and water to drink. But on the great chalk-downs, a heavy snow-storm seems to drive from the open country every living creature that dares to move at all. For the first day after a heavy fall, the hares, which allow the snow to cover them, all but a tiny hole made by their warm breath, do not stir. Only towards noon, if the sun shines put, they make a small opening to face its beams, and perhaps another in the afternoon, at a different angle to the surface, to catch the last slanting rays. Walking across the fields after a violent snow-storm in January, the present writer stepped on a hare, though the field showed one level stretch of driven snow; and later in the day, from the brow of a steep, narrow valley, he noted the sun-holes made by the hares on the opposite ridge. Four or five were discovered in this way ; and on disturbing them, it was found that each had its two windows, one facing the south, the second and longer tunnel pointing further to the west, and at a sharper angle to the surface. But hunger soon forces the hares to leave their snug snow-house ; in the bitter nights, as the icy wind sweeps through the thin beech• copses on the downs, and piles up huge ice-puddings of drifted snow and beech- leaves, they canter off down into the vale, to eat the cabbages in the cottage-gardens, and nibble the turnips in the heaps opened to feed the sheep in the straw-yards. Squirrels, which are often supposed to hibernate, only retire to their nests in very severe and prolonged frosts. A slight fall of snow only amuses them, and they will come down from their trees and scamper over the powdery heaps with immense enjoyment. What they do not like is the snow on the leaves and branches, which fails in showers as they jump from tree to tree, and betrays them to their enemies, the country boys. During a mild winter, they even neglect to make a central store of nuts, and instead of storing them in big hoards near the neat, just drop them into any convenient hole they know of near. Last year a pair took possession of an old, well-timbered garden in Berkshire, and when they found out, as they very soon did, that they were not to be disturbed, continued during the mild, open weather to exhibit a reckless improvidence quite at variance with squirrel tradition. In October, they stripped the old nut-trees, but flung the greater number of the nuts on to the ground. Later in the autumn, they spent the greater part of each morning collecting and burying horse-chestnuts, not in any proper store, but in all sorts of places,—among the roots of rose-bushes, under the palings of the lawn, or in the turf under a big tulip-tree. Almost every knot-hole in the trees of the orchard and walks had a chestnut or walnut poked into it ; but there was no attempt to bring them together for a cold-weather magazine; and they even had the impudence to dig up crocus-bulbs under the windows, and
leave them scattered over the lawn. Then came the snow, and the improvident squirrels had to set to work at once and call in all these scattered investments at an alarming sacrifice, for the nuthatches very soon found out their carelessly hidden property and made off with it. Fortunately, the snow soon melted, or they might have been reduced to short rations.
Like the squirrels, rabbits seem rather to enjoy the snow at first. Like many men, they require a dry, bracing atmosphere, and sea-breezes and frost suit them ; and the morning after a snowfall, their tracks show where they have been scratching and playing in it all night. But after a deep fall, they are soon in danger of starving. Though not particular as to. quality, they like their meals " reglar," and with all the grass covered with a foot of snow, their main supply of food is cut off. If there is a turnip-field near, they will scratch away the snow to the roots, and soon destroy the crop. If not, or if the surface of the snow is frozen hard, the hungry bunnies strip the bark from the trees and bushes. In the long frost of February, 1888, we saw nothing but bare white wood in the fences near the warrens. Ivy bark seemed their favourite food, and even the oldest stems were stripped, making a white network against the trunks of the big trees. Even these did not quite escape, for though the lower bark was too hard and dry even for the rabbits, broken limbs of a foot in diameter, smashed by the weight of snow, were peeled to the bare wood. In some places the rabbits had first stripped the bark from the lower part of a clipped thorn fence ; then mounted to the top and nibbled the shoots ; and lastly, using the thick top as a seat, had nibbled the ivy bark from the trees in the hedge- row, eight feet from the ground. It is easy to guess what damage the starving rabbits do in young plantations, if the drifted snow enables them to scramble over the wire fencing.
When snow melts on the grass, any one may notice a num- ber of dead, frozen earth-worms lying on the flattened sward. This may account for a habit which moles have of working just between the earth and snow. When the thaw comes, the lower half of the burrow may be seen for yards along the surface of the ground, unless the upper crust was frozen: before the snow fell. While all the harmless animals are obliged to spend the greater part of the day and night seeking food, their enemies profit exceedingly. The stoats and weasels find that they have only to prowl down the stream-side to catch any number of thrashes and soft-billed birds which crowd the banks where the water melts the snow, and little piles of feathers and a drop or two of red on the snow show where the fierce little beasts have murdered here a redwing and there a wagtail, or even a water-hen. The tracks show well their method of hunting. Once we followed the track of a fox for a long distance from a large earth on the downs. He had begun by visiting a farm near, going round all the ricks, and then close to the house. Apparently he had been frightened, for he had gone off at a gallop. Then after keeping along a high, steep bank where there was a chance of finding a lark roosting in the rough grass at the edge, he had diverged to examine a patch of dead nettles which had sprung up round a weed-heap. Next he had gone off for half-a-mile in a straight line to a barn, and there, after examining every bush and straw-rick, had caught a rat or a mouse, and then gone off into the vale.. Not far off was his return track. He had gone a short distance on the track of a bare, but apparently had found a good supper before then, for in a few yards he had abandoned the trail and gone straight back to the earth. The same day, we found the traces of a tragedy in rabbit-life : the foot-marks of several bunnies just outside a thick brake, the traces of a fox creeping cautiously up the hedgerow between them and their earths, and the fox's rush from the bushes, ending in a broad mark in the snow, where a rabbit had been seized, leaving only a few bits of grey hair scattered about as memorials for his family. Walking along the road through the fiat meadows one snowy night, we were startled by the noise of a covey of partridges rising and cackling the other side of the hedge. A fox had sprung right among the covey, but apparently missed his mark, as the next moment he crossed the road in front of us. Water- shrews, water-rats, and otters all dislike frost and snow, more, perhaps, because the streams are frozen, and food more diffi- cult to obtain along the banks, than from any inconvenience the snow causes them. The otters, even if the rivers do not freeze, have a difficulty in finding the fish, which in cold weather sink into the deepest pools, and, in the case of eels,
tench, and carp, which form the main food of the otter in the slow rivers of the Eastern and South-Eastern counties, burrow in the mud. So the otters go down to the sea-coast for the cold weather, and making their homes in the coast-caves or old wooden jetties and wharves, live on the dabs and flounders of the estuaries. Rats also often migrate to the coast in snow- time and pick up a disreputable livelihood among the rubbish of the shore. Of all effects of weather, snow makes the greatest change in animal economy in the country-side, and weeks often pass before the old order is restored.
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