THEY
were moor-buzzards - birds which sail with their broad brown wings over
desolate marshes, and build their nests in lonely places, where no footfall
comes, and no sound is heard but the cry of the curlew and plover, and the
scream of the gulls, and, far away, the moaning of the sea - where, in the hot
sunshine, in summer days, knots of tangled snakes bask on the tufts of dry
yellow grass amongst the heather-tussocks, and the fox, in the dusk evenings,
creeps stealthily along, hunting for eggs in the wild-fowl nests.
It was in just such a wild and
desolate place my buzzards were born. The
squirrels looked out over miles and miles of it, all black bog and morass, from
their magpie mansion on the hillside. A
wonderful place it was. High up on the
hills, from the squirrel's point of view, it looked as if nothing was wanted
but a pair of seven-leagued boots to stride over it straight-on-end to the sea;
but once upon it, unless you were brave of heart, and quick of eye, foot, and
hand, and, in fact, well versed in the whole science of bog-trotting, you would
probably flounder, at the first jump or two, in black mud, to your knees; the next
time waist-deep (and unless there were two or three people, and a cart-rope at
hand), down and down into the oozy depths, you would find yourself sinking,
despairing, sucked down, the black horrid mud and water rising round your
throat, the blue sky, and the wild birds wheeling in it above your head, and
the heather-twigs, which would save you if you could but grasp them, within a
foot of your hand, and you must die, for you have no power to reach them.
Many a cry for help, which no one ever
heard, has been screamed over that wild black bog; and it is said, bleached
bones have been found by the turf-cutters—bones of people who must have
perished years and years ago—people who were waited and prayed for long, long
ago, in the castle and cottage homes of those old days, when morning came and
night, and they never came back, and the hearts at home wearied of waiting for
them.
But no one knows their stories
now. But one story I do know, and can
tell, of some one who was very nearly lost, but who was saved by his own
courage and cleverness. It is quite
true, and was told to me by the gentleman to whom it happened; and I will tell
it here to show you what sort of a place our great bog is.
It was an autumn morning forty or
fifty years ago. The gentleman who told
me this was crossing the bog with his dogs and gun; and nearly in the middle of
it, miles from any help, springing on to some green moss, in a moment it gave
way under him, and he sunk to his waist in the black bog and water which the
moss had just thinly coated. There was
no heather near, and nothing to lay hold of, and he felt he was sinking very
slowly, but sinking lower and lower, for the bog was soon round his chest. His arms were out, and the gun had fallen
across the moss. He managed to tie a
white handkerchief to the gun, and held it above his head, waving it and
shouting; but no sound came back but the cry of the birds over the bog. Then came despair, for he was sinking to the
shoulders, and only holding by the gun, which was lying on the moss across the
top of the sort of hole he was in. If the moss broke through, he would go down
and die at once; and if the gun held, he must still die of starvation and
horror, getting weaker and weaker till he had no strength to hold on by the
gun. Then the black fearful mud would
close over his head, and in an instant he would be buried alive in that unknown
grave, and never heard of more.
He thought he must have been there
nearly an hour, and all hope was nearly past, when the thought came to him
which saved him. The dogs with him were
two large pointers. They had kept beating about near, and one came up at once
when he called it. He got hold of the
dog when it was near enough, and suddenly, with a great exertion of strength,
pushed it down upon the gun into the bog, and holding it there, called the
other dog, and pushed him down on the top of the first. Then, with all his strength, with his hands
on their backs, he pulled himself up out of the black grave, and got upon the
solid edge of the bog, and was saved. The
pointers soon floundered out, and were no worse for their bog-bath.So you see a walk on the bog is not all
plain-sailing, and bog-trotting is not learnt in a day, and seven-leagued boots
would not make much of a stalk of it over the great bog of G(ors) F(ochno).
But though the bog has its dangers,
its beauties outdo them all; and the delight of a long summer's day lonely
scramble, with a leaping-pole, three or four dogs, and a fishing-basket, over
it, is not to be told. So my advice to
all little people is to learn bog-trotting. To learn to balance in a sea of black mud on a heather-tussuck; and jump
five feet of black water so lightly, that landing in soft squash, you may
alight dry- footed like a curlew, and
then you will be fit to come and
see the wonders and beauties of the bog.
In the meantime, I will tell you what
you will see there. And first for the flowers. In May and June there will be a
carpet of golden asphodel—every bit of water will be fringed with white starry
bog-bean, lifting its bunches of marabout feather-flowers up out of the
ink-dark water—silky cotton-grass waving everywhere in the wind—miles and miles
of cotton, enough to make pillows for all England!—rose-tipped bells of the
Andromeda; the wonderful sun-dew, like a living creature, catching and crushing
gnats in its tiny crimson leaves, and eating them up for breakfast and dinner;
and above all, far away, where the heather grows waist-high, and hangs its
myriad bells of palest lilac in great masses over the edges of still black
pools, there is the queen of all the flowers. Floating amongst her broad green
leaves, the alabaster cups to the blue sky, there are the water-lilies. Thousands of them, the lovely flowers, opening
their beautiful buds upon the water, where no one ever sees them, and no one
knew of their existence, till one famous and memorable day I and all the dogs
came upon them, and kneeling down amongst the heather, watched them for an hour
or more in wonder and delight at their marvellous beauty. The lovely white flowers ! But the sun was
setting, and some blossoms must be got at, and carried off for all the world to
see that it was no Mid-summer's Night's Dream of mine that the queen of the
flowers really did live and reign far away on the great bog.So the fishing-basket was filled quite full
of buds and blossoms and shiny wet green leaves, hooked out somehow, anyhow,
with the leaping-pole; and we sallied home, as triumphant at the discovery as
Columbus when he sailed back from his great find of North and South America.
But more enchanting even than the
flowers of the bog are the birds. In
winter, when hard weather is coming, the bleak north wind brings strange
company for the stay-at-home ducks and curlew and snipe on the bog.Flights of wild-fowl of all sorts come to
the broad river that skirts one side of it. You may often hear the sharp
whirring of wings, and looking up, see two lines of birds, flying in the
shape of a wedge, black against the sky. The grey wild-geese come every winter; and once, on an icy day, broad
white wings flapped amongst the reeds of a pool, and close to my feet rose two
great swans, and sailed away up in the blue sky, away to the river. But the first few days of spring send away all the
stranger-birds northwards, in a great fright lest it should get too hot, to build their nests on the
North Pole, or somewhere there-abouts, amongst the icebergs and the snow. Then
the home-birds begin nesting all over the bog, and from every part of it sweet
wild cries may be heard at morn and even. The curlew's, like a flute-note
sad and sweet, the jarring bleat of the great snipe, ventriloquising his
love-chant in his fitful flight backwards and forwards over his nest. The only way to see him is to lie flat on
your back amongst the heather, to call the dogs in, and all to be quiet, and
then, by good luck, you see him close to you, and hear his song far away, or
vice versa, for he is ventriloquising. In
the dusk of evening he and his sad weird note, now near, now far, himself
unseen, might belong to some lost spirit, so sad and mysterious does it seem.
But I meant it to be broad bright
daylight and hot spring sunshine to take you over the bog, for it is then you
would see the birds in their glory. There
is a laugh, low, like a chuckle at some great bit of fun, amongst the heather,
then two or three people seem to join in it, and the fun gets fast and furious,
till screams and shrieks of wild laughter sound all over the bog. You
can hardly help joining in it, it sounds so merry; and up in the sky wheel
white wings, sweeping round and round, and up and down, and you see the
laughing-gulls having one of their sky-high frolics, till the curious
human-like laughter, from which they are called, fills the air. Their nests are
on the bog; and in some low birch trees near it the fern-owls build. From
the noise a pair or two of these pretty little birds contrive to make, you
would think the whole place was full of old women and their spinning-wheels. They go on spinning for hours and hours, and never seem
to rest.
But of all the birds of the bog, the
moor-buzzard is the grandest; at least, when the swans are gone home to the
North Pole. If the water-lily is queen
of the flowers, he is king of the birds; and as he sails on broad brown wings,
slow and stately, sweeping with a swift flight, and then hanging still in the
sky, as if no feather stirred, he looks almost as grand and right-royal as the
eagle himself. But I am afraid his
tastes and habits are not strictly imperial; for he will feed on carrion, and
he carries on war in a very small fashion on rats and mice and such small deer,
and is not too proud, if they are not to be had, to eat any rubbish he finds:
old horse, dead cow, dead sheep, drowned cats. I am sorry to have to tell it of him, for it sounds anything but royal
of my bird-king; and I am afraid you will scarcely think so much afterwards of
the young prince and princess of the
family, who came into my possession, and whose history, if I had not gone
bog-trotting all this time, you ought to have heard half-an-hour ago.
That year there was but one buzzard's
nest on all the bog. It was far out near the water-lilies, about three miles
from the sea. Two gentlemen out
shooting found it one spring day, and in it were some huge speckled green and
brown eggs. The nest was built on a
little island of dry bog where the heather grew very high. The birds had in
some way bent
down the stiff heather-stalks quite flat for a large space, and put a thick mat
in the place, of withered grass and bullrush leaves and stalks. On this the eggs were laid. The gentlemen,
did not touch the nest; but three or four weeks afterwards one of them took me
to see it, and then we saw in a moment that a foot had been there before
us. The foot-marks were fresh upon the
soft bog. Going to the nest, we found
neither eggs nor birds, only bits of a broken egg- shell, out of which a bird
had been hatched. So we were sure the nest bad been found and
robbed, and from the freshness of the foot-marks, probably that day. So we set off to some cottages a long way
off, on the edge of the bog, where I knew the thief would be found who had
harried our nest. I soon got traces of him, and half-an-hour after we arrived
at the cottages, had heard the whole story. The cottages over-looked the bog, and from a great distance a boy had
seen the birds above their nest, and only the day before had taken a comrade
with him, and they had got to it and carried off two young birds. These they offered to give me at once. So I was taken to a back garden, and in an
old rabbit-hutch I saw what looked like a dirty lump of cotton-wool, about as big
as a hen, with no feathers, and no wings to be seen—a thing with a melancholy
pair of immense black eyes, and legs as long as a Cochin China cock's, and wool
instead of feathers, It squatted down, a helpless white-puff ball, for it was
not strong enough to stand on its long legs. I got it out, and from some other dirty hole the other bird was fished
out by the boys, and both crammed, a very tight fit, into the fishing-basket,
and I took them home. What I should
like to have done would have been to take them back to the nest, but they would have starved, for the old birds would not
have me near the place again, so all I could do was to take them home, and try
to bring them up as well as I could, and to act the part of a good
mother-buzzard to the poor orphan puff-balls in the best way I knew how. But
it was a difficult charge; and I have always been proud of having succeeded in
it, and of having reared and fed and sent out into the world, two as fine young
moor-buzzards as the world perhaps ever saw.
When I got to the house, a large, old hawk-cage was rummaged out
of a lumber-hoard, and the buzzards put in it on a little straw and
heather. They were
very sick and seedy, and no wonder; for the horrid
boys had given them nothing but mashed potatoes, and mashed potatoes to
buzzards must be extremely "stodgy,"( a word of great force and expression, for which
England is no doubt indebted to her public schools) about as pleasant and digestible as a dinner of
chopped straw and sawdust would be to me.
They were very sick, but able to swallow slowly tit-bits
of liver and lights,
dropped, into their wide-gaping beaks. When
their crops had swelled out like the breasts of Christmas stuffed turkeys, I
thought it was time to stop, so they were left to go to sleep and forget all
their troubles, and "put their heads under their wings, poor things!"
The next morning, when I went out to see my
strange wild nurslings, I found they were both better, and quite ready for
breakfast. The largest, the hen, even tried to get up on the top of her Cochin China
legs, and came down with what nurses call a " flump," and did not try
it again for a week, when, one day, suddenly she and her brother both found
their legs, and stood up resolutely from that time, sometimes on one leg,
sometimes on both. But for the first
week they squatted like hens on a nest, and were the most laughable-looking
things. Some one said they were just
like young barristers. The white down
on their heads came in a peak over their faces, in which you saw only a large
pair of black eyes, and a dark beak, which made a very good barrister's nose,
and was no caricature at all of many a hooked nose under many a wig, which I
have seen in my day at Westminster Hall. That first morning, and as far
as I remember, ever afterwards, the barristers were decidedly hungry, not to
say greedy. Liver and lights were, I think, a quite new and delicious delicacy
to them, and they gulped down square pieces of both as fast as they could be
given. Any one who was squeamish had
better finish breakfast before going to preside at a young buzzard's. The horrid raw meat, and the gobbling and
gulping, and the altogether, the
je ne sais quoi, might be
too much for many people; but having undertaken a foster-mother buzzard's duties,
I went through with it. Only
substituting a groom-boy's fingers for my own for the morning, noon, and
evening cramming, I always conscientiously looked on at the ceremony, to see
that the poor orphans were stuffed out to the proper dimensions. The quantity
they devoured was immense. Besides all the liver and lights supplied by the
butcher, once a week, they had “no end" of rabbits and rats and mice. A
kind of black-mail in the latter was raised in the neighbourhood. sympathizing
and civil villagers saved and sent up a good many head of such small
game—long-tailed marauders, who had succumbed to their traps, depriving their
own tabbies of dainty dinners to
send presents to my hobgoblins. They
certainly looked very elfish at this stage of their existence; and I think our
villagers, who believe in everything, from fairies to witches, ghosts and
goblins, giants and dwarfs and all, thought very badly of these strange-looking
birds, and I dare say had many misgivings that they were "no that canny "
to have about a house; and if the butter didn't come, and
the eggs were addled, it was no more than was to be
expected. But the black-mail would not
have gone far towards feeding two such cormorants, and it was lucky they were
within reach of another supply. The
great bog, as I said before, is the scene of many murderous disasters; and
several casualties occurred during the buzzards' minority, by which they
profited immensely. I don't mean to say
they ever got a taste of drowned old turf-cutter or anything of that sort; but
of suicidal mutton, drowned sheep, fished out of bog-drains, they had plenty.
They had once, in their larder in the fir-tree, at one time, besides ever so
much mutton, some rabbits, and rats and mice, two fore-quarters of pony— a poor
fellow, who had also, like the mutton, committed felo-da-se. They liked their meat well hung. The
gamier it was the faster they gobbled it; but they always had bits of rabbit-fur or feathers given
with their horse and mutton, because, like all their cousins, the kites and
hawks, and even the owls, once or twice a day they have to be sick. It's very nasty, but they can't help it; and
if they are not sick they are very ill: and they can't be sick unless they
swallow fur or feathers, which they always take care to do in their wild
state. Old Tu-whit Tu-whoo, in the
church tower, swallows
his mice whole for this very reason, and has to
be very poorly, and then he is all right again, and ready for more. Their feeder had to be sure the barristers
had been sick, or they would never have turned into buzzards. In a fortnight
they began to look brownie about their heads, and bluish quills came on their
apologies for wings. In a few days more they were brown in patches all over,
wearing the displaced white down still at the ends of their feathers. They were funnier than ever. But very soon the down dropped off, the
feathers spread out, and they stood two beautiful full-fledged
moor-buzzards. The hen, the largest of
the two, was almost two feet high, and must have mesured four feet across the
wings. Every shade of soft grey and
brown pencilled their plumage in delicate curves and lines and spots; and on
their heads they had a mat of palest golden-fawn feathers. Their black eyes had won the true hawk
look—the wild, far-away, beautiful look of fearless free creatures—the look
with which the eagle, the royal bird of his race gazes from his eyrie; and
which seen in human eyes is that right-royal glance, seen once in ten thousand,
far seeing, soul-piercing, we call an eagle look—with such a look as Wellington looked over Waterloo. But don't go up-stairs, little people, and practice hawk-glances in the glass. The chances are, you would
come down squinting abominably, certainly staring more like an owl than an
eagle, and I am quite sure I should never be able to see the slightest likeness
to my buzzards. The chief use they made of their eagle looks
was to gaze right away up to the sky. I
thought they were turning astronomers. They
would sit still for hours watching upwards, as if they were expecting some one
from the clouds. And so they were, I
found; for once or twice, when I too stared up, I saw above the yard, where
they were sitting,
a great pair of wings sailing sky-high, and heard the wild buzzard note, and was
sure it was one of the old birds, who somehow had heard the cry of the young
ones, and was taking a bird's-eye view of them from cloud-land. But they always soared away again, and
never, came down to their children that I could discover; but I sincerely hope
they were satisfied with what they saw, and felt that their young birds were
being brought up as young buzzards ought to be. I don't know what their father
and mother called them; we called them Jupiter and Juno, Juno was the largest
and most beautiful, as the hens of the hawk tribe always are. Amongst all the
other feathered creatures it is the gentlemen-birds who wear the finest
feathers, sing the best songs, and have the best of it, in fact, in every way. But in the great hawk family the hens are
the biggest and most beautiful, and the husbands are smaller than their mates, and have
paler-tinted plumage. The
lovely hen harrier-hawk is the exception; who isn't a hen at all, but has a dowdy wife in
dingy brown, the real hen-barrier, whom no one ever sees or knows about. The buzzards, as soon as they were fully
fledged, began to try their wings a little.
But they were very slow about it, and seemed quite contented with having
got the complete use of their long legs, upon which they stalked round the
house like a pair of barn-door fowls. They began to wage war with the dogs, and
could hold their own, and keep their dinners against two large pointers, a cat,
and a Skye terrier. They always began
the fight in the most lawless and unprovoked way, without the slightest
provocation from the poor dogs, who were inclined to be very civil to
them. As soon as they could fly a
little, their great delight was to soar for a few moments, and then with a cry
like an Indian war-whoop, swoop down on the pointers, stick their claws in
their backs, scream in their ears, and buffet about their heads with their
wings, till the dogs shook themselves free and escaped with a howl and a
scuffle, and their tails between their legs.
For some reason, their wars with the cats were more cautiously
conducted. I don't think it ever came
to a fair fight between them, though a good deal of guerilla skirmishing round
the bushes went on from time to time. The
poor dogs led wretched lives; they had no peace either eating or sleeping. They had to cower away in corners to munch
their bones, and sleep with one eye open, lest both should be pecked out. One day, hearing a great noise in the
drawing-room, I opened the door, and found a buzzard had hunted a Skye terrier
through an open window, and, with claws well stuck down in his long coat, was
careering round and round the table on his back; poor Tammie, at a breathless
gallop, trying to shake off his tormentor, frightened into fits by the screams
in his ears, and the claws in his back. I soon rescued him, poor little fellow,
and turned his fierce foeman out to cool his temper on the lawn.
When the birds had quite got the use of their wings, they used to
fly away to some distance, and be out of sight for hours. But morning and evening, a long whistle,
though they were nowhere to be seen, always brought them back to be fed; and it
was a strange sight to see these grand wild birds come sailing along as if just
below the clouds, mere specks in the sky, and to hear their musical cry, and "the sudden scythe-like sweep of
wings," as, sweeping in circles downwards, they came flying round and
round, nearer and nearer, till they folded their great wings, sitting on my arm
or shoulder. Then, with a sharp clutch
of their strong yellow claws, they grasped the meat, and sailed away with it in
their feet to eat upon the lawn, coming back over and over again, till they had
carried it all away. They roosted in the woods at night, and in the day were generally to he found
in some trees
near the bog, at the outskirts of the wood.
As soon as I and the dogs sallied out " into the open," for a
scramble amongst the heather, there would be a cry of the buzzards from the
wood, and they would soar up from amongst the trees and come after us, wheeling
about in the air and swooping down on the dogs, following ever so far, till
they had had enough of the fun. Then
they would rise high on the wing, and sweep slowly
and grandly back to their wood. Two or
three times they followed me when I was on horseback, and I found myself
riding, like a lady of the olden time, with hawk and hound; but I think my
grand Juno would have astonished any one who had tried to make her sit on their
wrist with a hood on her nose and bells on her toes, like the hawks in old
pictures, where a blindfolded bird sits mumping on her lady's glove, with a
tufted red tassel on the top of her hood. My birds would wheel about my head
and the pony's, to the great astonishment of the latter; and once or twice I
thought Juno was going to hawk at her, as she did at the pointers, but luckily
she gave up the notion. I think it was
the end of October when Jupiter appeared no more. I had watched him very often flying towards the river, and we
always thought he had been beguiled by the buzzards, who live on the marshes
over the water, to come and live in that famous hunting-ground, the chief haunt
of his race in our neighbourhood. -
There he would have good society and plenty of frogs, and drowned sheep now and
then; in short, all a buzzard could wish or hope for. Juno stayed with me much longer, coming at intervals to the
windows to ask for food. I often heard
her cry, far away, and looking out of my window would see her, a speck high up
in the blue sky; and a moment or two afterwards she would be folding her wings
on the ledge below my window, uttering her wild musical cry. No royal arrival
was ever more welcomed. Then and there was there a hurrying to and fro to fetch
her royalty her dinner,
lest she should be off to the clouds again, and think herself neglected. She would take the meat daintily up in her
claws and alight with it on the ground, looking up and screaming between each
beakful, as if she had so much on her mind she could not eat till she had told
her tale at the very top of her querulous voice. But I don't think she had much
to complain of. She looked well-to-do,
was always in good feather, and not hungry; and although she would peck a
little at the food that was brought her, she evidently came more for the sociability of the
thing than the luncheon. About this time
I discovered she had found out a much easier way of getting her own living than
hunting mice, or scenting out drowned mutton. Two miles off, at the back of the
house in the great wood, high up in the trees, she had found that delectable
institution- a dog's larder— a better-stocked larder than her own had ever
been, even at that memorable era of the days of the drowned pony; and there she
revelled. Once or twice, riding up through the wood, I had met her flying back
from breakfast, and she had screamed out her pleasure at the meeting, in answer
to a whistle, but had gone on her way to her noonday's siesta in her home
woods. Jupiter seemed quite gone, and Juno well able to take care of herself;
but I was sorry when we went away for the rest of the winter, and the house was
almost shut up, to think my poor pet might come down sometimes, hungry,
and find nothing to eat, and no one to welcome her. But as far as I could find out, from a servant who had promised
to watch for her
and feed her if she came, she never flew down once the whole winter.
But it was certainly Juno, the next spring, who came sailing slowly on
wide wings every now and then over the lawn and woods, and poising herself in
her dreamy flight above the house, would look as if asleep in the air, she hung
so still. And no doubt she
was in a day-dream of her early days—haunted,
perhaps, by visions of herself as a puff- ball in that very spot, and of that
other puff-ball (her only brother) who had left her so long—perhaps by some
lingering recollections of her lady—but most of all (as she was but a buzzard)
by sweet and savoury memories of high-scented mutton and gamey pony; but
neither for love or for mutton would she come down more. No call seemed to reach her ears. The
bird-queen was too proud now to stoop her wing to a whistle, and no sweet wild
cry came back in answer, as, waking from her dream, she soared away in her
graceful flight to her old haunts on the bog.
Where also, I think, about this time other broad wings were seen.
(Not
Jupiter's.) So no doubt it was the old
old story over again. Juno had been wooed and won, she had found her mate, and
the bird-queen was a bride. And
somewhere in the heather there will be more puff-balls to be found, only I
earnestly hope they never will be found; for, if all tales be true, Juno is
about the last of her race who builds on the bog, and if her nests are harried,
when you come for your scramble in the heather, there will be no broad wings in
the blue sky to show you what my strange and beautiful pets were like—the wild
and beautiful moor-buzzards.