Aurora Borealis—Unfavourable weather for Birds about St.
Valentine's Day—The Water-Vole in the Rhi—In the Eden in Fifeshire—In
the Black Water, Kinloch Leven—Does it feed on Salmon Fry and Ova?—The
Kingfisher—Character of the Water-Vole—Note about the Hedgehog.
A brilliant display
of aurora borealis on the early morning of the 8th [February 1871] led
us to conclude that a change of weather was not far distant; and before
sunset of that same day the wind had gone round from east by south to
south-west, and a drizzling rain, with a very much milder temperature
than we had known for three months, told us that, for the present at
least, King Frost had agreed to suspension of hostilities. Since then it
has been mostly wet, with occasional hailstone showers, and turbulent
withal, if not actually stormy. The revictualling of Paris under the
terms of the capitulation and armistice was not a more sensible relief
to the starving inhabitants than was the recent thaw to our wild birds
on sea and shore. The moment they became convinced that it was no sham,
but a real, veritable thaw, they revived amazingly. Shaking off the
torpidity in which cold and want had so pitilessly bound them, they took
heart, and bustled about in search of such food as might now be procured
by diligent seeking in copse and hedgerow, by pool and stream. An
occasional strophe, sadly inconsecutive and discordant, may now again be
heard when the sun shines out and the storm has lulled, from some of our
hardier warblers, and we have observed that in some instances rooks have
begun to pair; but our bird-world, upon the whole, is far from what it
should be at this date; more taken up, like vanquished
France, with the thought of the mere necessities of life
and the re-establishment of their exhausted energies, than with love or
music, or the gaiety and abandon so
characteristic in ordinary seasons of our feathered friends on the back
of St. "Valentine's Day. The meridian sun, however, is now steadily
climbing zenithwards, and the day perceptibly lengthening apace, so that
our wild birds, rapidly gathering strength, and daily improving in tone
and tune, may, after all, arrive at their day of jollity and joyousness
sooner than we anticipated. We captured a beautiful Scarlet
Emperor butterfly
a few days ago, as brisk and lively as possible, on a window pane in
Ardvulin Cottage, Ardgour. How beautiful, by the way, and how suggestive
of spring and vernal delights in a land of plenitude and peace, is the
following from, the Song of Solomon:—"For, lo, the winter is past, the
rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the
singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our
land; the fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the
tender grapes give a good smell."
Another animal besides the hedgehog has of recent years
made its appearance in Lochaber, though previously unknown, so far as we
are aware, anywhere in the West Highlands. The animal in question is the
water-rat, water-vole, or British beaver. The last is, perhaps, its most
appropriate name, for the animal is neither kith nor kin to the rat,
while very much in its economy and habits, as well as in its corporeal
structure, particularly its dentition, allies it not remotely to the
beaver tribe. In size, the water-vole is more robust in body and larger
in every way than the common rat, with a more silken pile, and a bigger
and brighter eye. It frequents the banks of streams and ponds, feeding
on the more delicate aquatic plants, and on the bark and tender shoots
of the willow, alder, and such other shrubs as love to grow
"The quiet waters by."
That such an animal inhabited Lochaber was accidentally
revealed to us two years ago, and so unmistakeably that there was no
room for doubt or hesitation in the matter. We were returning from
Fort-William on a beautiful summer afternoon, walking by the hill route
through Lundavra, when having already accomplished more than half the
distance at our best pace, we sat down to rest and solace ourselves with
a pipe—not the Arcadian musical instrument, observe, but the more
prosaic article anathematised in the royal Counterblast—by
the side of a canal-like reach in the River Rhi, as it slowly winds
through Glenshelloch, when our attention was drawn to a splash in the
water at a short distance above us, to which, however, we gave but
little heed, taking it for the lively flop of a half-pound trout engaged
in fly-catching for supper. Another and a louder splash, however,
aroused our curiosity, and induced us to creep cautiously in the
direction whence the sound proceeded, and there, sure enough, disporting
themselves round a gnarled alder stump that projected into the stream
from the water-line on the opposite bank, were a pair of water-voles,
full-grown, and brisk and lively as ever we had seen them in our younger
days in the upper reaches of the beautiful Eden in Fifeshire, a
favourite habitat. After watching their gambols for some time, we threw
a pebble into the pool, when they instantly dived and disappeared, only
to emerge in a few seconds near a large boulder further up the stream,
behind which, and cunningly concealed beneath the overhanging bank, was
their hole, into which they popped as readily as does an alarmed mouse
into a wall crevice. As they dived and pursued their subaqueous flight
in the direction of their hole, the eye could follow their every
movement, for the water was as clear as crystal. Keeping very near the
bottom, it seemed as if they progressed partly by swimming and partly by
running along the gravel, at any rate with amazing celerity and ease. We
noticed that about their necks and shoulders their pile appeared as if
adorned with numberless tiny pearls—air bubbles, in fact—that adhered to
their fur, and that, frequently shifting the position like quicksilver
drops, as the animals moved, had a very pretty effect. Since that time
the water-vole has been repeatedly seen about the lower reaches of the
same river, between the Inchree Falls and the highway. It has also been
seen in some parts of the Blackwater above Kinlochleven. Ardent
disciples of Izaak Walton and others interested in the preservation of
trout and salmon hold the water-vole in great dislike, under the belief
that it feeds largely on fry and ova. The accusation we believe to be
unfounded, as much so as the egg-eating charge against the hedgehog. We
shall not attempt to prove a negative, the onus
probandi of
their averments logically resting with the accusers; but we will say
that we have known the water-vole for many years, and at one time had
every opportunity of studying its habits, and we never had cause to
entertain the slightest suspicion that it was anything else than a
vegetable feeder. We recollect once questioning old John Robertson of
Perth, than whom a better fisher, whetherjDn lake or stream, never cast
a fly or impaled a worm, about the water-vole's alleged liking for
fish-spawn and fry. His reply was in these words, "I dinna believe it,
sir; I have fished in maist feck o' the rivers, burns, and lochs in
Perth, Fife, and Kinross, and other counties forbye, and the fish were
just as plentiful where the splash o' the gleb (a
local name for the water-vole) was heard a'maist at every cast o' the
line, as where none could be seen for days together." We know, besides,
that the late Professor John Reid of St. Andrews, one of the most
distinguished comparative anatomists of his day, and who had dissected
many of them, was of opinion that the water-vole was a vegetable feeder
and nothing else, he having never been able to detect anything to lead
him to the conclusion that it fed on fish or their spawn. Suspicion of
the water-vole's being addicted to the malpractices in question was
first of all grounded on the fact that fish-hones were frequently-found
along the hanks of the streams he inhabited, and sometimes about the
entrance of, and even in, the hole which was his habitat and home; and
on this evidence alone the water-vole soon got into very bad repute
indeed. As to the finding occasionally of fish bones along a water-vole
inhabited stream, although the fact is indisputable, it really goes for
nothing, suspicious as it looks, for similar relics of defunct trouts
and troutlets may be seen any day on the margin of streams where a
water-vole was never yet known to exist. The real culprits in such cases
are the otter, the common rat (a great fish-eater in shallow streams and
almost as expert a swimmer as the vole itself, only that it cannot dive
so well), the heron, king-fisher, and grey crow, all of whom are fond of
fish, either as an article of constant diet, or as an occasional
make-shift in default of more legitimate fare. As to the fish bones to
be sometimes met with in the water-vole's holes, the dusky-coated and
white-vested dipper and the beautiful plumaged king-fisher are alone to
blame. The castings, indeed, of a single pair of king-fishers would of
itself suffice to account for all the fish bones one meets with by the
banks of ponds and streams, for the beautiful Alcedo is
a voracious fish-devourer, and his hole going backwards and upwards some
three or four feet into the bank, invariably a perfect charnel-house of
bleached fish bones of minnows and troutlets. The number of small fish
that a pair of king-fishers, with their young, dispose of in a single
season must amount to many thousands, and as the larger bones at least
are always cast or regurgitated, their presence may always be taken as a
sure indication that the spot has recently been the haunt of the most
beautifully coloured of British birds. When the bones of larger fish,
however, are met with, the blame, if blame there be, must be shifted
from the king-fisher to the shoulders of one or other or all of the
animals above mentioned. It is only fair that the spirit of our laws,
which accounts a man innocent until he is proved guilty, should he
extended to beasts and birds as well. In this view of the matter the
water-vole has good reason of complaint that it has been over hastily
and unwarrantably condemned on insufficient evidence, without even the
form of a fair and impartial trial. Unlike Ritson, the antiquary and
balladist, who, although he was a strict vegetarian in diet, holding all
manner of animal food in utter abhorrence, and writing a volume on the
subject, was yet as cross-grained and as irascible as a wasp, the
water-vole, like a true vegetarian, is quiet and unobtrusive even to
timidity, leading an inoffensive life, and in his play hours, which—in
proof of his good sense, let us remark—are very numerous, as frolicsome
and sportive as a kitten. He will show fight, it is true, if attacked in
his hole or otherwise brought to bay, and his bite, whether on the nose
of an over-venturesome terrier, or the hand that would rashly seize him,
is very severe and difficult to heal; but it is only doing him the
merest justice that those who know him should bear witness that in
general character and disposition he is the most peaceable and harmless
of animals. |