|
C. J. Cornish - The Naturalist on the Thames
narrow rides covered with short turf and almost arched over by the tall hazels; sometimes we were in low
slop or walking through last year's cuttings, shooting at impossible rabbits. There we had an occasional
rise of those most difficult of all birds to kill, partridge in cover, killing both French and English birds; or
a cock pheasant would rise and hustle forward, an agreement having been made to leave these till
properly beaten up later in the day. Two very pretty corners were perhaps the most enjoyable parts of the
sport. By the river was a flat reed-and rush-covered corner, with a ring of oaks round, the Thames at the
bottom, and some tall chestnut-trees on the outside. As the men advanced we had a regular rise of wild
pheasants, rocketing up from the reeds in every direction high over the oaks and chestnuts. A fox helped
the fun by trotting up and down in the reeds uncertain which way to go, and flushing the birds as he did
so. Then the rushes were walked out and the rabbits sent darting in every direction. After this we hardly
found a bird or rabbit in that corner during the season.
That year the wood gave constant sport, far better than in the later years. There were three times as many
rabbits, as well as hares and pheasants.
One day in January we shot it during a fall of fine, dry snow. As the day went on the ground grew white,
and our coats whiter. At luncheon the men were quite prepared for the emergency, or rather had prepared
for it the day before when the frost began. They had a bonfire of brambles a dozen feet high, and faggots
ready as seats, one set for us on one side of the fire, another for themselves on the other. The roaring
blaze of the fire warmed us through and through, and by the end of luncheon our coats, which had been
powdered with snow, were grey with wood ash descending. During this day a fox hung round us during
the whole shoot. I think he must have been picking up and burying or hiding wounded rabbits, for every
now and then he would come out into the ride, carefully smell the various places where rabbits had
crossed, and then, selecting one, would go off like a retriever into the cover.
SPORT AT WITTENHAM (continued )
A month later Mr. Harcourt was shooting his woods at Nuneham. There are more than four hundred
acres of woods round this most beautiful park, all of them giving ideal English estate scenery. The oaks
of the park are like those at Richmond, but there is not much fern except in the covers. Nuneham is the
best natural pheasant preserve in the Thames Valley, except Wytham, Lord Abingdon's place, above
Oxford. The woods lie roughly in a ring round the park, in which the pheasants sun themselves. Outside
these woods are arable fields with quantities of feed, and all along the front lies the river, which the
pheasants do not often cross. The most striking sport at Nuneham is the driving of the island by the lock
cottage. Every one who has been at Oxford has rowed down to have tea under the lovely hanging woods
by the old lock. Few see it later in the year when the island opposite is covered with masses of
silver-white clematis and thousands of red berries of the wild rose and thorn. In the late autumn
mornings, when the mists are floating among the tall trees on the hill and the sunbeams just striking
down through the vapours as they top the wood from the east, it is one of the prettiest sights on the
Thames. In November or early December, when the woods are shot, numbers of pheasants are always
found on the island. It holds a pool, in which and on the river are usually a number of wild ducks.
Shooting from the river itself is now forbidden, and these and the half-wild duck have multiplied. The
beaters, in white smocks, all cross the old rustic bridge like a procession of white-robed monks, and drive
this island, and wild ducks and pheasants come out high over the river, making for the top of the hill. The
shooting is fast and difficult, and the scene as the guns fire from the stations all along the bank is most
picturesque.
Shooting with a neighbour on some land adjoining Nuneham, my attention was drawn to the very elegant
|
