John F.L.S. Watson
Poachers and Poaching
The duck decoys, once common throughout the country, fell into general disuse about the beginning of the present century; and their decline has been contemporaneous with the improvements made in firearms and all relating to shooting. Often as many marine ducks are bagged by one shot from a punt gun as the fowler can take in a day, and whilst the former can follow the birds, the latter must wait for their coming before he can commence decoying.
Duck decoying is one of the most interesting phases of woodcraft, and really skilled modern fowlers are as rare as trained falconers. Moreover, decoying is one of the fine arts. The decoy-man surrounds his craft with as much mystery as the old fish poacher his preparation of salmon roe, and fowling secrets are often kept in families for generations.
The best decoys are those about two or three acres in extent, and surrounded with wood. On larger ones fowl are difficult to work, and although there may be thousands on the water, none may be near enough to a "pipe" to regard either the dog or the "call" ducks. Before speaking of the actual working, it may be well to give a general outline of a decoy. Imagine then a stretch of water about the size indicated, and having five or six radiating arms or inlets—a figure represented exactly by a starfish, or the body and legs of a spider. The arms, called "pipes," curve away from the main pool so that it is impossible to see more than a short distance up them. They are also arranged that whichever way the wind blows, one or other of the pipes may be approached without getting to windward of the quick-scented fowl. The "pipes" are covered over with netting, and gradually diminish in height and width till they terminate in a "tunnel-net." Wooden palings bound these, built obliquely, over-lapping at regular intervals, and connected by low barriers. By this arrangement any one standing behind the palings is only visible to whatever is further up the "pipe," and cannot be seen by the occupants of the pool. This then is the general structure.
And now we must look to other matters essential to the general working of a decoy. About midsummer the "call" ducks are put upon the water, and their training is at once taken in hand. As this is an important part of the process, the ducks should be young, made very tame, and taught to come to any pipe from all parts of the pool when they are whistled. Previously these have been pinioned to prevent their flying away, and they cannot leave the lake. Still another requisite is a well-trained dog. Custom has always established that this shall be red and as "foxy"-looking as possible; and certainly dogs of this colour prove especially attractive to wild-fowl.
About the beginning of September mallard and teal begin to congregate in the decoys, and a month later, if easterly winds prevail, there will probably be a flight of fowl from the north, consisting of mallards, teal, widgeon, pochards, and shovellers. These are attracted to the decoys by the resident birds, but more because it is their habit to fly off at dusk, and return at daybreak to sleep and enjoy themselves in the fancied security of the reedy pool.
Nothing requires more care and judgment than the successful decoying of ducks. It is carried on most successfully between nine and ten in the morning and three and four in the afternoon. In open weather the fowl are captured almost entirely by means of the dog, but as soon as frost sets in they are taken by feeding them in the pipe, and keeping a piece of water constantly open near it. Now as to the actual working. If the birds are sluggish the trained dog cleverly works them from the bank, and either drives or attracts them by curiosity to the pipe to be worked, being also aided by the decoy ducks and induced to stay by finding corn scattered about. By skilful manipulation the fowl are worked up the pipe, the dog trotting in and out of the reed-screens and luring them further and further away. Soon they have made sufficient progress to enable the man to show himself, and this he does at the same time waving his hat. Retreat to the pool is cut off, and the terrified birds rush up the pipe only to find themselves in the narrowing tunnel-net which terminates it. This is at once detached, and the final scene is the wringing of the ducks' necks by the decoy man. As all the pipes curve to the right the decoying is unseen from the pool, and one set of fowl can be "worked" whilst others are sleeping or preening themselves on the lake. Further aids of concealment for the working of the decoy other than those enumerated are banks of earth and brushwood running parallel to the palings.
As sportsmen would rather shoot fowl than snare them, the decoy is mostly interesting nowadays to naturalists and antiquarians. To show their value, however, in times gone by, it may be mentioned that a corporation has been known to invest trust funds in one, and that a decoy in Suffolk, which sent a ton and a half of wild-fowl to London four times a week, realised £1,000 a year. In this 16,800 ducks were captured in a single season.
CHAPTER XI.
FIELD AND COVERT POACHERS
As compared with the doings of human "mouchers," there is a class of field poachers whose depredations are tenfold more destructive. These are nature's poachers, and their vigils never cease. In season and out, by night and by day, they harry the things of the field and wood. Playing as some say a questionable part in the economy of nature, they play a very certain part in the economy of our game, both winged and furred. Strange anomaly it is, that whilst our game stock could not be preserved a year without their agency, the hand of every one is against them. So long as nature is founded on its present beneficent plan, so long will the swallow be speared by the shrike, and every wood be the scene of plunder and prey. Nature is one with rapine, and the close observance of every woodland way only emphasises the fact. Every sylvan thing is but a unit in a possible chain of destruction. The bee-bird captures the butterfly, and is stricken down in the act by the hawk; the keeper kills the raptor, and the keeper's hobnobbing with death is delayed but a while.
The greatest and smallest murder but to live, and whilst the eagle kills the lordly stag, the merlin is lark-hawking on the down. Only those whose harvest is gleaned in the open, who have observed in all weathers and through every hour of the day and night, can form any adequate conception of how dependent is one form of life upon another. The way of an eagle in the air is one of those things concerning which Solomon professed himself unable to understand, and the scythe-like sweep of wings of the majestic bird is one of the most glorious sights which nature has to offer. Just as the eagle is the largest, so the merlin is the smallest British bird of prey, and to see this miniature falcon rush past on the breast of a mountain storm gives an idea of its almost marvellous velocity of flight. Within the whole range of animate nature, nowhere is the adaptation of means to an end more strikingly exhibited than among the raptors—the plunderers. The furred poachers are not less appropriately fitted with their weapons of destruction; and so perfectly adapted is the otter to its environment that its movements in the water are as the very poetry of motion.
Let us follow these poachers of the field and covert to their haunts, and there observe them in their wild home. The sparrow-hawk is a roving arab of the air and the most arrant of poachers. Ask the keeper to detail to you the character of this daring marauder, and he will record a black and bloody list of depredations against the bird. He knows nothing, however, of the laws which govern the economy of nature, and if he did, or would, what are they compared to the shilling per head for those he can display on the vermin-rails.
The kestrel or windhover acts in quite a different fashion to the sparrow-hawk. It is persecuted less, and confidently approaches human habitations. And yet at certain seasons the kestrel is as destructive in the covert as its congeners. When the pheasants represent little more than balls of down he clutches them from out the grass as he clutches a mouse or cockchafer. Coming from out the blue, one hears the pleasant cry of kee, kee, keelie, and there he hangs rapidly vibrating his wings, yet as stationary as though suspended by a silken thread. Presently down he comes, plump as a stone, and without touching the ground sweeps a "cheeper" from off it, and soars high above the covert. The depredations are only committed, however, when the game is exceedingly small, and the benefit which the kestrel confers on the woods by its presence far outweighs any harm it may do. The artificial methods of game-rearing now in vogue are most conducive to disease. In extenuation of the thefts of our little marauders it may be pleaded that they invariably pick off the weak and ailing birds, and therefore tend to the survival of robust and healthy stock.
The presiding spirits of the moors are the beautiful little merlins. They work together, and quarter the heather like a brace of well-broken pointers. Not an object escapes them. However closely it may conform to its environment, or however motionless remain, it is detected by the sharp eye of the merlin and put away. The miniature falconry in which the merlin indulges on the open moorlands, where nothing obstructs the view, is one of the most fascinating sights in nature. The "red hawk" is plucky beyond its size and strength, and will pull down a partridge, as we have witnessed repeatedly. The young of moorfowl, larks, pipits, and summer snipe constitute its food on the fells. It lays four bright red eggs in a depression among the heather, and about this are strewn the remains of the birds indicated. To be seen to advantage this smallest of British falcons ought to be seen in its haunts. It is little larger than a thrush, and in the days of falconry was flown by ladies, its game being larks, pipits, pigeons, and occasionally partridges. On the moorlands it may be seen suddenly to shoot from a stone, encircle a tract of heather, and then return to its perch. A lark passes over its head, and its wings are raised and its neck outstretched; but it closes them as if unwilling to pursue the bird. Then it flies, skimming low over the furze and heather, and alights on a granite boulder similar to the one it has just left. As we approach, the male and female flap unconcernedly off, and beneath the block are remains of golden plover, ling birds, larks, and young grouse.
At night the waterside is productive of life, and here it is most varied. Like most poachers, the heron is a night fisher, and there is one equally destructive which carries on its nefarious trade under the full light of day—the kingfisher. And the kingfisher is a poacher in another respect. It never constructs the hole in which its young is reared, but takes possession of that of some small burrowing rodent, or even that of the little sand-martin.
The buzzard is another bird of the moorlands, but can hardly be convicted of poaching. When it takes moor-game these are invariably found to be diseased or late hatched birds, and it certainly has not speed to pull down a full-grown grouse. Many times during whole summer afternoons have we seen the buzzards wheeling about when the young grouse have been following the brooding birds, but never have we seen them swoop at one. And seeing that as many as sixty mice have been taken from the crop of a single bird, surely the buzzard ought to be protected. During times of severe frost the buzzard often performs deeds of daring to obtain a meal. When a lad, Wordsworth was in the habit of setting "gins" for woodcocks, and one morning on going to examine his snares he discovered a buzzard near one which was struck. The bird of prey attempted to escape, but being held fast could not. A woodcock had been taken in one of the snares, which when fluttering had been seen and attacked by the buzzard. Not content, however, with the body of the woodcock, it had swallowed a leg also, round which the noose was drawn, and the limb was so securely lodged in the latter's stomach that no force that the bird could exert could withdraw it.
In the glades and woodlands the garrulous blue-jay is a sad pilferer, to say nothing of its poaching propensities. In the spring it sucks innumerable eggs, and makes free right and warren of the peas and beans in the keeper's garden, and those sown in the glades for the pheasants; and so the old man's whole knowledge of woodcraft is directed against it. In addition to this, the jay does indirect harm, which multiplies the cunning engines devised for its destruction. For by pilfering the crops before mentioned, which are planted with the object of keeping the wandering pheasants on the land, a poor show of birds may be the result when October comes round, and the keeper's reputation suffers. Even the audacious pies steal both pheasant and partridge chicks, and consequently each find a place in the "larder." The brown-owl is mostly a rabbit poacher, but its congener, the barn-owl, poaches to good effect, as a subsequent statement will show. Almost all the birds of the crow-kind are persistent poachers, and are generally shot down.
It is probable that the number of grouse on the higher hill ranges is very much kept in check by the great number of carrion-crows which everywhere exist among the fells. They impale the eggs of the red grouse upon their bills, and carry them away to eat at leisure. Under some wall or rock great numbers of egg-shells may often be found, testifying to the havoc which these sable marauders commit. This bird is one of the great features of the northern fell fauna, and is well known to the dalesmen and shepherds, who give it a bad character. In spite of much persecution, however, it is still a common resident, keeping to the sheep-walks in search of food, and breeding among the mountains. Although a great carrion-feeder, it will kill weak and ailing lambs, picking out the eyes and tongues of these when they are reduced to a helpless condition. They are resident birds in the north, and only the snows of winter drive them to the lowlands in search of food. As the hooded crow is only a seasonable visitant, it is but little felt as a poacher. The keeper has the shrikes or butcher-birds in his black list, but these do little harm, as their shambles in the blackthorns abundantly prove.
Mention of the noble peregrine marks a poacher of the first water. As the bird sits watching from the jag of a mountain crag, it is the very emblem of passive speed and strength. Nowhere but in the birds' haunts can these attributes be seen to perfection. A trained falcon is slow of flight and uncertain of aim as compared with a wild bird. Its symmetry, its stretch of wing, its keen eyes and cruel talons, all speak to the same end. While some of the larger hawks are treated with indifference by the bird-world, not so the peregrine. A pair of buzzards pass over, but the cheep and chatter of field and hedgerow go on. A peregrine sails, down dale and all is hushed! A strange experience this at noon in the heyday of summer—but the shadow of the peregrine stills all life. A terrified screech is heard, and bird life seeks the thickest retreats. The depredations of the peregrine are greatest, of course, during the breeding season; and at this time it even carries off the newly-born lambs of the small, black-faced mountain sheep. Now hardly anything comes amiss. Partridges, ducks, pheasants, hares, grouse, plover—each is taken in turn, and the birds forage over a wide area. A barndoor fowl sometimes supplies a meal, or a dead sheep (so long as the flesh is sweet), thrushes, pigeons, gulls, and a number of water and shore-haunting birds. Once scrambling among boulders in search of Alpine plants, a large bird of prey was seen advancing on the wing. At a distance the under-parts appeared white, but the bird, coming directly over, enabled us to recognise distinctly the dark bars across the feathers of the abdomen. Its flight under these circumstances was a sort of flapping motion, not unlike that of a ringdove; and its head turned rapidly in various directions, the eye peering into the rocks and crannies of the ghylls in search of any skulking prey. Soon this silent hunting was all changed. Above us was a ledge covered with blood, bones, and feathers. We were close to the nest. Just as we were discovered one of the falcons went "whizz" past our face, almost touching it. Then it gives a wild yelp, as in one gyration it shoots upwards, and screams round the crag. Again the bird dashes along the cliff, and is joined by the female, who from her nest has been quietly watching us. The peregrine's outstretched wings measure three feet, and it makes a velocity of fifty-seven miles an hour. One at the above rate flew one thousand three hundred and fifty miles. So great is its power and speed of flight that a bird belonging to Colonel Thornton was seen to cut a snipe in two in mid-air.
Falcons will occasionally search after their prey when it has been driven to seek shelter from the closeness of pursuit. The goshawk, which falconers use mostly for taking hares and rabbits, frequently does this, and will watch for hours when its game has taken to cover. As well as ground-game the goshawk poaches pheasants and partridges, numbers of these being killed by the bird in its wild state. Through a wooded country it pursues its quarry with great dexterity; and it possesses great powers of abstinence. During the day it remains solitary in dark fir-woods, coming out to feed at morning and evening….
We advance over the heather; and there, skimming towards us, is a large hawk—a harrier. As it flies near the ground, working as a pointer or setter would do, the species cannot be doubted. Now it stoops, glides, ascends, stoops again, and shoots off at right angles. Rounding a shoulder of a hill, it drops in a dark patch of ling. A covey of young grouse whirr heavily over the nearest brae—but the marsh harrier remains. It has struck down a "cheeper," and is dragging its victim to the shelter of a furze-bush. A male and female harrier invariably hunt in consort, and afford a pleasant sight as they "harry" the game, driving it from one to the other, and hawking in the most systematic fashion. They thoroughly work the ground previously marked out, generally with success. In hawking the quiet mountain tarns their method is regulated according to circumstance. In such case they not unfrequently sit and watch, capturing their prey by suddenly pouncing upon it.
At one time the golden and white-tailed eagles bred not uncommonly in the mountainous environment of the English Lake District. Most majestic of the winged poachers, they held sway over a wide area, and suffered no intrusion. The eyries were perched high upon the almost inaccessible fastnesses of the mountains. It is asserted by the shepherds of the district that the eagles during the breeding season destroyed a lamb per day, to say nothing of the carnage made on hares, partridge, pheasants, grouse, and the water-fowl that inhabit the lakes. The farmers and dalesmen were always careful to plunder the eyries, but not without considerable risk to life and limb. A man was lowered from the summit of the precipitous rocks by a rope of fifty fathoms, and was compelled to defend himself from attack during his descent. The poet Gray in his Journal graphically describes how the eyries were annually plundered, upon one of which occasions he was present. Wordsworth says that the eagles built in the precipices overlooking one of the tarns in the recesses of Helvellyn, and that the bird used to wheel and hover over his head as he fished in the silent tarn. Now the spot is occupied by a pair of patriarchal ravens—the sole remaining relics of the original "Red Tarn Club."
Among the mountains an instance is related of an eagle which having pounced on a shepherd's dog, carried it to a considerable height; but the weight and action of the animal effected a partial liberation, and he left part of his flesh in the eagle's beak. The dog was not killed by the fall; he recovered of his wound, but was so intimidated that he would never go that way again. Subsequently the owner of the dog shot at and wounded one of the eagles. The bird, nearly exhausted, was found a week afterwards by a shepherd of Seatoller; its lower mandible was split, and the tongue wedged between the interstices. The bird was captured and kept in confinement, but it became so violent that ultimately it had to be destroyed. On the eagles being frequently robbed of their young in Greenup they removed to the opposite side of the crag. At this place they built for two years, but left it for Raven Crag, within the Coom, where, after staying one year only, they returned to their ancient seat in Eagle Crag; here they built annually during their stay in Borrowdale. On the loss of its mate the remaining eagle left the district, but returned the following spring with another. This pair built during fourteen years in Borrowdale, but finally abandoned it for Eskdale. At the last-mentioned place they were also disturbed, and the female eagle being afterwards shot the male flew off and returned no more.
The white-tailed sea eagles bred upon the rocks of a towering limestone escarpment overlooking a recess of the sea, and fed upon gulls and terns. The vast peat mosses which stretched away for miles below them abounded with hares and grouse, and among these the birds made devastation. Year after year they carried off their young from the same cliffs, and now return only at rare intervals when storm driven. The peregrines have the eagles' eyrie, and are only eagles in miniature. The sea-fowl form their food in summer, as do wild ducks in winter. At this latter season the osprey or "fish-hawk" comes to the bay and the still mountain tarns, adding wildness to the scenes which his congeners have left never to return.
Those who have recently advocated a close time for owls have, fortunately, been forestalled by legislation. The Act of 1881 affords protection to all wild birds during the breeding season, and, although exemption is allowed in favour of owners and occupiers of land, owls, being included in the schedule, may not be destroyed even by them or with their authority. It was a wise step that granted this double protection, for of all birds, from the farmers' standpoint, owls are the most useful. These birds hunt silently and in the night, and are nothing short of lynx-eyed cats with wings. The benefit they confer upon agriculturists is most incalculable, which is susceptible of proof.
It is well known that owls hunt by night, but it may be less a matter of common knowledge that, like other birds of prey, they return by the mouth the hard indigestible parts of their food in the form of elongated pellets. These are found in considerable quantities about the birds' haunts, and an examination of them reveals the fact that owls prey upon a number of predacious creatures the destruction of which is directly beneficial to man. Of course, the evidence gained in this way is infallible, and to show to what extent owls assist in preserving the balance of nature, it may be mentioned that seven hundred pellets examined yielded the remains of sixteen bats, three rats, two hundred and thirty-seven mice, six hundred and ninety-three voles, one thousand five hundred and ninety shrews, and twenty-two birds. These truly remarkable results were obtained from the common barn-owl, and the remains of the twenty-two birds consisted of nineteen sparrows, one greenfinch, and two swifts. The tawny and long-eared owls of our woodlands are also mighty hunters, and an examination of their pellets showed equally interesting results. It must be remembered in this connection that Britain is essentially an agricultural country, and that if its fauna is a diminutive one it is not less formidable. We have ten tiny field creatures constituting an army in themselves, which if not kept under would quickly devastate our fields. These ten species consist of four mice, three voles, and three shrews. Individually, so tiny are these that any one species could comfortably curl itself up in the divided shell of the horse-chestnut. But farmers well know that if these things are small they are no means to be despised. Now that the corn crops are cut and the hay housed, the field vole and meadow mouse are deprived of their summer shelter. Of this the barn-owl is perfectly aware, and at evening he may be seen sweeping low over the meadows seeking whom he may devour. And with what results we already know.
Much unnatural history has been written of the owls, and unfortunately most people have their ideas from the poets.
The barn-owl, when she has young, brings to her nest a mouse every twelve minutes, and, as she is actively employed both at evening and dawn, and both male and female hunt, forty mice a day is the lowest computation we can make. How soft is the plumage of the owl, and how noiseless her flight! Watch her as she floats past the ivy tod, down by the ricks, and silently over the old wood. Then away over the meadows, through the open door and out of the loop-hole in the barn, round the lichened tower, along the course of the brook. Presently she returns to her four downy young, with a mouse in one claw and a vole in the other, soon to be ripped up, torn, and eaten by the greedy snapping imps. The young are produced from April to December, and not unfrequently both young and eggs are found in the same nest. If you would see the mid-day siesta of the owls, climb up into some hay-mow. There in an angle of the beam you will see their owlships, snoring and blinking wide their great round eyes. Their duet is the most unearthly, ridiculous, grave, like-nothing-else noise you ever heard. Here they will stay all day, digesting the mice with which they have largely gorged themselves, until twilight, when they again issue forth on their madcap revellings. This clever mouser, then, this winged cat, has a strong claim to our protection. So let not idle superstition further its destruction.
The keeper's indiscretions are fewer in fur than in feather. His larder abounds in long-bodied creatures of the weasel kind. Here is the richly-coloured dark-brown fur of the pine-martin; that of the polecat, loose and light at the base but almost black at the extremity; and there are many skins of weasels, reddish brown above with the sides and under parts white. For each of these creatures he has quaint provincial names of his own. The pine-martin he calls the "sweet-mart," in contradistinction to the polecat, which is the "foumart," or "foulmart"—a name bestowed on the creature because it emits a secretion which has an abominable stench. Also, we have the stoat or ermine, which even with us is white in winter, brown in summer; but the tip of the tail is always black.
The beautiful martins take up their abode in the rockiest parts of the wood where the pines grows thickly. They are strictly arboreal in their habits; and, seen among the shaggy pine foliage, the rich yellow of their throats is sharply set off by the deep brown of the thick glossy fur. With us they do not make their nests and produce their young in the pine-trees, but among the loose craggy rocks. Martins rarely show themselves till evening. They prey upon rabbits, hares, partridges, pheasants, and small birds; and when we say that, like the rest of the mustelidæ, they kill for the love of killing, it is not hard to understand why the keeper's hand is against them. Sometimes they do great harm in the coverts; and the old man shoots them, traps them, and does them to death with various subtle engines of his own machination. To-day the martin is rare; soon it will be extinct altogether. Weasels do much less harm. They are the smallest of our carnivorous animals, and will probably long survive. They frequently abound where least suspected, in the cultivated as well as the wildest parts of the district. They take up their abode near farmhouses, in decayed outbuildings, hay-ricks, and disused quarries; and may often be seen near old walls or running along the top of them with a mouse or bird in their mouths. These things form the staple of their food; but there is no denying that a weasel will occasionally run down the strongest hare, and that rabbits, from their habit of rushing into their burrows become an easy prey. But this does not happen often, I believe. To rats the weasel is a deadly enemy; no united number of them will attack it, and the largest singly has no chance against it. Like the polecat the weasel hunts by scent. It climbs trees easily and takes birds by stealth. The keeper has seen a brooding partridge taken in this manner, and on winter evenings the sparrows roosting in holes in a hay-rick. Weasels also kill toads and frogs; and their mode of killing these, as well as of despatching birds, is by piercing the skull.
The polecat, or fitchet, keeps much to the woods, and feeds mostly on rabbits and game. But in the northern fell districts it often takes up a temporary abode on the moors during the season that grouse are hatching. Then it not only kills the sitting birds but sucks the eggs, and thus whole broods are destroyed. Many "cheepers" of course fall victims. Knowing well the ferocity of the polecat, I believe the damage done to grouse moors where this blood-thirsty creature takes up its abode can hardly be estimated. Like others of its tribe, the polecat kills more prey than it needs. Sometimes it makes an epicurean repast from the brain alone. Fowl-houses suffer considerably from its visits; and it has been known to kill and afterwards leave untouched as many as sixteen large turkeys. In the nest of a fitchet which was observed to frequent the banks of a stream no fewer than eleven fine trout were found. The gamekeeper persistently dogs this creature both summer and winter. In the latter season every time it ventures abroad it registers its progress through the snow. It is then that the old man is most active in his destruction, and most successful. He tracks the vermin to some stone fence or disused quarry or barn, cuts off the enemy's retreat, and then unearths him. Trapped he is at all times.
