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C. J. Cornish - The Naturalist on the Thames
are silent in autumn, whereas in spring they sing, a little, but enough to show that they are there.
Among the birds of this kind which pass up the river, but of which only a few pairs stay to breed on the
eyot, are whitethroats, blackcaps, chiff-chaffs, and, I believe, nightingales. One beautiful early morning
in spring I could not believe my ears, but I heard a nightingale in a bush by the side of the garden
overhanging the river. It sang for about an hour, "practising" as nightingales do. Another person in a
house near also heard it, and was equally astonished. It probably passed on, for next day it was inaudible.
In hard weather a migration of a different kind takes place down the river towards the sea. These birds
are recruited from the ranks of the birds that stay, with some foreign winter visitors also. They pass down
the river feeding on the mud and among the stones at ebb tide. Among those I have seen are flocks of
starlings and scattered birds, mainly redwings, thrushes, blackbirds, and occasionally robins. Sandpipers
also migrate up the Thames in spring, and down it in autumn.
WITTENHAM WOOD
In Wittenham Wood, which in our time was not spoiled, from a naturalist's point of view, by too much
trapping or shooting the enemies of game, though there was plenty of wild game in it, the balance of
nature was quite undisturbed. Of course we never shot a hawk or an owl, and I think the most important
item of vermin killed was two cats, which were hung up as an awful instance of what we could do if we
liked.
In such large isolated woods, the wild life of the ordinary countryside exists under conditions somewhat
differing from those found even in estates where the natural cover of woodland is broken up into copses
and plantations. Birds and beasts, and even vegetation, are found in an intermediate stage between the
wholly artificial life on cultivated land and the natural life in true forest districts like the New Forest or
Exmoor. Most of these woods are cut bare, so far as the underwood extends, once in every seven years.
But the cutting is always limited to a seventh of the wood. This leaves the ground covered with seven
stages of growth, the large trees remaining unfelled. With the exception of this annual disturbance of a
seventh of the area, and a few days' hunting and shooting, limited by the difficulty of beating such
extensive tracts of cover, the wood remains undisturbed for the twelve months, and all wild animals are
naturally tempted to make it a permanent home.
As I have said, the wood stands on the banks of the Thames, below the old fortress of Sinodun Hill, and
opposite to the junction of the River Thame. All the British land carnivora except the martin cat and the
wild cat are found in it. The writer recently saw the skin of a cat which had reverted to the exact size,
colouring, and length of fur of the wild species, killed in the well-known Bagley Wood, an area of
similar character, but of much greater extent, at a few miles distance in the direction of Oxford. A polecat
was domiciled in Wittenham Wood as lately as August, 1898. Though this animal is reported to be very
scarce in many counties, there is little doubt that in such woods it is far commoner than is generally
believed. Being mainly a night-hunting animal it escapes notice. But in the quiet of the wood it lays aside
its caution, and hunts boldly in the daytime. The cries of a young pheasant in distress, running through
some thick bramble patches and clumps of hazel, suggested that some carnivorous animal was near, and
on stepping into the thicket a large polecat was seen galloping through the brushwood. Its great size
showed that it was a male, and the colour of its fur was to all appearance not the rich brown common to
the polecat and the polecat cross in the ferret, but a glossy black. This, according to Mr. W.E. de Winton,
perhaps the best authority on the British mustelidae, is the normal tint of the male polecat's fur in
summer. "By the 1st of June," he writes, "the fur is entirely changed in both sexes. The female, or 'Jill,'
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