Creatures Of The Night: A Book Of Wild Life In Western Britain | by Alfred W. Rees
Creatures Of The Night: A Book Of Wild Life In Western Britain, The original form of these Studies of animal life has been extensively altered, and, in some instances, the titles have been changed.
| Title | Creatures Of The Night: A Book Of Wild Life In Western Britain |
| Author | Alfred W. Rees |
| Publisher | John Murray |
| Year | 1905 |
| Copyright | 1905, John Murray |
| Amazon | Creatures Of The Night: A Book Of Wild Life In Western Britain |
By Alfred W. Rees, Author of "ianto the fisherman".
To Myfanwy And Morgan, "All life is seed, dropped in Time's yawning furrow, Which, with slow sprout and shoot, In the revolving world's unfathomed morrow, Will blossom and bear fruit".
Mathtlde Blind.
Preface- The Editors of The Standard have kindly-permitted me to republish the contents of this book, and I tender them my thanks. The original form of these Studies of animal life has been extensively alte...
- The Otter. I. The Holt Among The Alders
- I first saw Lutra, the otter-cub, while I was fishing late one summer night. Slow-moving clouds, breaking into fantastic shapes and spreading out great, threatening arms into the dark, ascended from t...
- The Holt Among The Alders. Part 2
- Among flesh-eating mammals of many kinds, the females display signs of intelligence earlier than the males. Lutra being the only female among the cubs, she naturally grew to be the most keenly observa...
- The Holt Among The Alders. Part 3
- Warm, cloudy weather continued from the late autumn through the winter—except for a few days of frost and snow in December—so that food was never scarce, and Lutra thrived and grew. The great migratio...
- II. The Pool Beneath The Farmstead
- Last year, in autumn mornings, when the big round clouds sailing swiftly overhead reminded me of springtide days and joyous skylarks in the heavens, but when all parent birds were silent, knowing how ...
- The Pool Beneath The Farmstead. Continued
- Crouched on a grassy mound beside the rapids, she could see each movement on the surface of the pool. The wild ducks splattered and quacked as they paddled busily hither and thither, visiting each lit...
- III. The Gorge Of Alltycafn
- When Lutra had attained her full size and strength she was wooed and won by a young dog-otter of her own age, and lived with him in a holt among the great rocks of Alltycafn. Now, again, the Hunt ar...
- The Water Vole. I. Our Village Hounds
- Not many years ago the pleasures of life among my neighbours here in the country were simpler and truer than they are to-day. Perhaps in that bygone time money was more easily made, or daily need was ...
- Our Village Hounds. Continued
- The first hunt was started in spirited fashion; the men walked along the bank thrusting their sticks into crevices and holes; but only Joker and Bob entered the water, and rats and otters for a while ...
- II. The Burrow In The River Bank
- The first faint shadows of dusk were creeping over the river when Brighteye, awakened by a movement on the part of his mother, stole from his burrow into the tall grass at the edge of the gravel-bank ...
- The Burrow In The River Bank. Continued
- Though Brighteye's distinctive appearance attracted the notice of numerous enemies, his marked individuality was not wholly a misfortune, since it aroused my kindly interest, and thus caused him to be...
- III. Wild Hunting
- Once, during the first summer of the water-vole's life, I saw as pretty a bit of wild hunting as I have ever witnessed, and my pleasure was enhanced by the fact that the quarry escaped unharmed. Early...
- III. Wild Hunting. Continued
- The first autumn in the water-vole's life was a season of wonderful beauty. A few successive frosts chilled the sap in the trees and the bushes near the river, but were succeeded by a long period when...
- IV. Saved By An Enemy
- The days were dim and the nights long, and thick, drenching mists hung over the gloomy river. The salmon's family affairs had reached an important stage; and the redd, furrowed in the gravel by the ...
- Saved By An Enemy. Part 2
- He was careful, like his small relative the field-vole, and like the squirrel in the woods above the river-bank, to harvest only ripe, undamaged seeds and nuts; and in making his choice he was helped ...
- Saved By An Enemy. Part 3
- Since the leaves had fallen, the brown rats had become fewer and still fewer along the river, and, when the flood subsided, it might have been found that none of these creatures remained in their summ...
- V. The Courage Of Fear
- The dawn, with easy movement, comes across the eastern hills; the mists roll up from steaming hollows to a cloudless sky; the windows of a farm-house in the dingle gleam and sparkle with the light. So...
- The Courage Of Fear. Continued
- In this tight snuggery, at a time when the corncrake's nocturnal music was first heard in the meadow by the pool, five midget water-voles, naked and blind, were born. Brighteye listened intently to th...
- The Field Vole. I. Hidden Pathways In The Grass
- The sun had set, the evening was calm, and a mist hung over the countryside when a field-vole appeared at the mouth of his burrow in a mossy pasture. The little grey creature was one of the most timor...
- Hidden Pathways In The Grass. Part 2
- Again an almost overwhelming fear possessed the hunted vole, his limbs stiffened, his condition seemed helpless. He crawled slowly hither and thither, now passing some fellow-creature huddled in the c...
- Hidden Pathways In The Grass. Part 3
- The year drew to its close, the weather became colder, and an irresistible desire for long-continued rest took possession of Kweek. His appetite was more easily satisfied than hitherto; hour after hou...
- II. The Valley Of Olwen
- Eastward, the sky was covered with pale cobalt; and in the midst of the far-spreading blue hung a white and crimson cloud, like a puff of bright-stained vapour blown up above the rim of the world. Wes...
- The Valley Of Olwen. Continued
- Kweek's frequent visits to his kindred beyond the wood led to numerous adventures. Every member of the colony seemed suddenly to have turned to the consideration of household affairs, and a lively wid...
- III. A Barren Hillside
- Living a secluded life in the pasture with his little mate, Kweek escaped the close attention paid by the vermin to his kindred in the colony beyond the wood. The brown owl still remembered where he...
- The Fox. I. The Last Hunt
- A dark and wind-swept night had fallen over the countryside when Reynard left the steep slope above the keeper's cottage, and stole through gorse and brambles towards the outskirts of the covert, wher...
- The Last Hunt. Continued
- As the morning advanced, signs of unusual stir and bustle were apparent in the neighbourhood of the lodge. Messengers came and went between the cottage and the mansion at the bend of the river, or bet...
- II. A New Home
- When the vixen recovered from the excitement and distress consequent on her capture, she found herself in a commodious, well ventilated chamber, circular in shape and slightly above the level of two l...
- A New Home. Continued
- When the vixen stole out into the grass, the pale moon was brightening in the southern sky, and a solitary star glimmered faintly above the tree-tops. A thrush sang his vesper from the bare branch of ...
- III. The Cub And The Polecat
- The young fox's education, varied and thorough, steadily proceeded. Though the vixen-cubs were slightly quicker to learn, they were more excitable, and consequently did not benefit fully by each lesso...
- The Cub And The Polecat. Continued
- Sickened by the pungent smell, and with muzzle, lips, and right eye burning horribly from his wounds and the irritant poison, Vulp hastily dropped his prey, and ignominiously bolted from the scene of ...
- IV. A Cry Of The Night
- One starlit night, when in early winter the snow lay thick on the ground, Vulp heard the hunting call of a vixen prowling through the pines. A similar call had often reached his ears. Not long after h...
- A Cry Of The Night. Part 2
- One day in August, as he lay in his outdoor lair, the brightness and heat of the sunshine were such that his eyes, blinking in the drowsiness of half-awakened slumber, appeared like mere slits of blac...
- A Cry Of The Night. Part 3
- While roaming abroad in the summer night, Vulp gradually became acquainted with all sorts of vermin-traps used by the keepers. Once, treading on a soft spot near a rabbit creep, he suddenly felt a s...
- The Brown Hare. I. The Upland Cornfield
- In midsummer, when the sun rises over the hillside opposite my home its first bright beams glance between the branches of a giant oak in the hedgerow of a cornfield above the wooded slope, and sparkle...
- The Upland Cornfield. Part 2
- When the calm night was illumined, but not too brightly, by the moon and stars, the leveret would venture far away from her retreat to visit a cottage garden where the young lettuces were crisp and te...
- The Upland Cornfield. Part 3
- Unless hard pressed, a hare seldom leaves a field except by certain well-known openings in the hedgerow. Unlike the rabbit, she will not readily leap over any obstacle beneath which she can crawl; and...
- II. March Madness
- March came in like a lion. The wind whistled round the farmstead on the hill, and through the doorway of the great kitchen, and down the open chimney. It woke up the old, grey-haired farmer who doze...
- March Madness. Continued
- For some weeks, the hare languished under the effects of the falcon's blow. When her leveret was old enough to find food for itself, she rested, forced by the wound to live quietly in hiding, till the...
- III. The Chase
- Of all the hounds employed in the chase of the hare, the basset promises to become the prime favourite among some true - hearted sportsmen who love sport for its own sake, and not from a desire to kil...
- The Chase. Continued
- Luckily for Puss, the harriers never visited her neighbourhood, and only on special occasions was coursing permitted on the estate. If at night a lurcher entered the field in which she grazed amid the...
- The Badger. I. A Woodland Solitude
- Even in our own densely peopled land, there are out of the way districts in which human footsteps are seldom heard and many rare wild creatures flourish unmolested. Near such parts the naturalist deli...
- A Woodland Solitude. Continued
- As the night wore on, it almost invariably happened, however, that the Castle game gave place to a livelier diversion akin to Puss in the Corner, when, on feeble, unsteady legs, the earth-pigs...
- II. Home Discipline
- During the mother badger's absence from home, an unlooked-for event — almost the exact repetition of an incident in the training of Vulp, the young fox—had happened in the education of her cubs. Her m...
- Home Discipline. Continued
- The forest trees had donned their verdure; the tall bracken had lifted its fronds so far above the grass that the mother rabbit no longer found them a convenient screen through which to peer at the st...
- III. Fear Of The Trap
- Night after night, the cubs, sometimes under the protection of both their parents, and sometimes under the protection of only the dam, roamed through the by-ways of the countryside. From each expediti...
- Fear Of The Trap. Continued
- Having lost the love of venerie possessed by their forefathers, the farmers cared little about any wild creatures but hares and rabbits; a badger's ham was to them an unknown article of food. The f...
- IV. The Winter "Oven"
- The badger-cubs, while not so well provided against the cold as were their parents, grew lazy as winter advanced, and spent most of their time indoors on a large heap of fresh bedding, that had been c...
- The Winter "Oven". Continued
- When, just before the quarrel, Brock sought for his bone, as he was wont to do on returning home, he scented it in the litter beneath a spot completely overlapped on every side by some part or other o...
- V. Hillside Trails
- Several times during his search for a mate, Brock struck the trail of a female badger, and followed its windings through the thickets and away across the open fields towards the the distant valley, on...
- Hillside Trails. Part 2
- For a while, she was unsuccessful. She happened to frighten them by an impetuous, blustering attack in the rear, from which they easily escaped; thus her difficulties had been increased, since the obj...
- Hillside Trails. Part 3
- The Master was a rigid disciplinarian in all matters concerned with sport. His servants, one and all, from the old, white-haired family butler down to the little stable-boy, idolised him, but never pr...
- The Hedgehog. I. A Vagabond Hunter
- At the lower end of our village, the valley is joined by a deep ravine through which a sequestered road—hidden by hawthorn hedges, and crossed by numerous watercourses where the hillside streams, drop...
- A Vagabond Hunter. Continued
- By far the most intelligent and powerful enemy of the young hedgehogs was the farmer's dog; but, as he slept in the barn at night, and generally accompanied the labourers to the upland fields by day, ...
- II. An Experience In Snake Killing
- The many changes of winter passed over the countryside; tempests raged, rain beat down in slanting sheets or enveloped the fields in mist, snow fell heavily and then vanished before the breath of a we...
- An Experience In Snake Killing. Continued
- Such a struggle often happens in the fields and the woodlands. During the first few weeks of life, the hedgehog, if its parents are absent, may be at the adder's mercy; but, later, the tables are comp...
- Night In The Woods. I. Haunts Of The Badger And The Fox
- Comparatively little seems to be known of the night side of wild life in this country. Night watching involves prolonged exposure, unremitting vigilance, absolute quietness; and yet, to the most alert...
- Haunts Of The Badger And The Fox. Part 2
- With regard to the badger's habit of staying for some time in the doorway of his home, it may be mentioned that years afterwards, when one night I compared my notes with those of a companion who had h...
- Haunts Of The Badger And The Fox. Part 3
- Our patience was in vain. Once more the badger came in sight, but my companion did not see what I myself had noticed, for sleep had sealed his tired eyes, and when I nudged him he awoke with such a st...
- II. The Crag Of Vortigern
- One of the chief difficulties with which the naturalist has to contend while watching at night is the frequent invisibility of wild creatures among the shadows, even when the full moon is high and unc...
- The Crag Of Vortigern. Part 2
- The cry had scarcely gone forth, when I was startled by a voice from some hollow quite close to my side : I'm Philip. Don't move—don't speak. A man's watching you from the blackthorns at the top of t...
- The Crag Of Vortigern. Part 3
- While we stood in the wheat-field, Philip remarked: We mustn't stay long before going back to the Crag; but I'll call the doe I sent you from this 'form,' and perhaps you'll see one of her tricks to...
