had established themselves as annual breeders in the Shetlands, and felt sire that the individuals I saw had nests if the places where they deposit their single egg can be called nests in the neighbourhood, and a few days later met a gentleman on a steamer conveying us south who told me that he had just taken fulmar petrels' eggs in the cliffs facing the Mucklc Flngga lighthouse.

MUCKLE FI.UGGA : THE MOST NOKTHEKN POINT OF THE KUITISH ISLANDS.

CHAPTER V,

MAMMALS.

THE list of wild mammals which we can still boast in this country. is by no means a bad one, considering the fact that we live on a couple of small, densely-populated islands. Most of the members composing the list, however, are as difficult to photograph as their habits are to study, mainly on account of the fact that nearly all their movements take place during the hours of darkness.

Hares are exceedingly interesting creatures to study on account of their curious habits, many of which seem to be based upon principles involving the use of considerable intelligence. Although they are very timid, it is under certain conditions quite possible to photograph them when young.

In the season of love-making I have watched them hunting each other and gambolling around during the hours of broad daylight in the most frolicsome fashion. Night, however, is their time of greatest activity. They rise from their forms at dusk and stretch themselves, and in hilly moorland districts descend into the valleys, where the most luscious grass grows, to feed. I have i

ii4 WILD LIFE AT HOME.

frequently traced hares from their feeding-ground, which they visited every night, at the bottom of a Yorkshire dale, to the peat-hags on the hill-tops a distance of over two miles away, where they rested during the day. When hares are going to seek their day or sleeping quarters, they practise a very ingenious trick in order to mislead and baffle their enemies. This consists of travelling for some distance in a direction they have no intention of pursuing, and then doubling back exactly along their own track for a good way, and suddenly leaving it by making a tremendous sideward bound to right or left. This being accomplished to their satisfaction, they trot off at right angles to the path they have just left, and go to their forms. Occasionally a very cautious animal will repeat the trick once or twice the same night before going to rest, and when but a light sprinkling of snow is lying upon the ground, or places have been swept bare by the wind, the "double" is very puzzling. I have always found the best way to pick up the track again is by making a circle of sixty or eighty yards round the place where I lost it.

Hares are very fond of old haunts, from which they can hardly be driven for any length of time by the most persistent persecution, but they do not like ground infested by rabbits. They have a curious habit when hunted by hounds of returning, sometimes after a very long chase, to die close to the form from which they were disturbed. I once

LEVERETS IN THEIK FOKM.

ii6 WILD LIFE AT HOME.

saw one, after giving a long run, jump on to a stone wall five feet high, and die there long before the hounds reached the spot. When they did come up she simply rolled off an inert mass into the first dog's mouth that seized her.

I have often watched both old and young hares scampering fearlessly about in Lord Aldenham's grounds, close to Elstree, during broad daylight when it would have been quite possible to photograph them with a telephoto lens.

Sometimes young hares will lie very close in their forms, and I have seen them, on several occasions, picked up when more than half-grown We were very anxious to photograph one of these close liers, and came within an ace of succeeding one day, when our purpose was defeated by a curious accident. A keeper and I had found the sitter between two rows of spring wheat, and standing back we beckoned my brother, who was searching some distance away, towards us. In advancing he disturbed an adult hare, which ran right over the leveret, and scared it away. We asked the game-watcher to telegraph to us if he should ever be fortunate enough to find any young leverets in their form, and one morning my brother received a welcome summons at his office in Fleet Street. An old shepherd had found us a couple of sweet little baby hares in a big tuft of pasture-grass at seven o'clock, but when the photographer reached the place between eleven and twelve they

had both been moved away, and his heart sank within him. Luckily, a close search revealed them, as shown in our illustration, but about a dozen yards away from the original spot. Of course, the tuft of grass was opened out so as to show the animals. As an instance of what may be done in this not inaptly-termed journalistic kind of photography, my brother was back with a negative for my inspection in the City between four and five o'clock, although he had journeyed to and from Elstree by train, and walked an aggregate of at least six miles.

Rabbits are probably the easiest British wild mammals we have to make photographic studies of, and are wonderfully interesting creatures to observe. I have lain for hours together on a summer's evening watching them play round their burrows in the ruddy glow of the sinking sun. Their gambols are infinitely pleasing. A more than ordinarily frolicsome young bunny will at times, as if in sheer mischief, jump right over the back of another of a more sedate character. I fear I must plead guilty to having often given rabbits a bad fright. I have gone and lain in a dry ditch close to a wood swarming with them of an afternoon, and when fifty or sixty got out into a field close beside me, I have squealed out in imitation of one being killed just to see them bound away. It is a great piece ot fun to steal quietly up

WILD LIFE AT HOME.

to a burrow round which young rabbits are playing, and lying down put "a ringer to the lips, and by drawing the breath sharply through them reproduce a squeaking kind of note resembling the cry of one in distress. As a rule, all the little creatures go to earth in a great hurry, and their mother, advancing boldly with her ears erect and an angry look in her eyes, kicks the ground violently with her hind feet. In this way I have drawn them to within a few yards of rne, and when they have eventually gone to seek safety in their subterranean homes, I have still heard them thumping the ground. By focussing some well-used burrow about three or four o'clock in the afternoon, and carefully hiding the camera and its operator, most interesting studies of rabbits may be made We have sometimes dug a hole for our apparatus near a much

frequented burrow, and another at some distance, for the photographer to lie in with his field-glasses and pneumatic tube; but this is not at all times necessary, as we have obtained equally good pictures by other means, such as piling up a few sticks, bushes, and sods, and leaving them a day or two before attempting to hide the camera behind them. This allows the animals to get accustomed to the sight of the obstruction.

It is very doubtful whether a successful sun picture could be obtained of either a stoat or a weasel at large, unless their nesting-places could be found and watched. A keeper of Lord Aldenham's told me that one day whilst sitting quite still near a pheasant's nest, situated in the side of a hedge-bank, he was astounded to see a stoat come along and take two eggs from beneath the brooding bird without disturbing her, and roll them into the ditch. He killed the thief, and recovering the proceeds of his robbery, neither of which was broken, placed them under a barn-door fowl, and they were hatched out in a couple of days. The pheasant also succeeded in bringing off five chicks. The same man who was a very intelligent observer, and could boast an education above his station in life also told me that he once watched a male stoat climb up to a blackbird's nest in a hedgerow and take out a young one that was almost ready to fly, and carry it off to his own home in an old stump, where he

I2O WILD LIFE AJ HOME.

had a very promising family of seven sons and daughters. We used to have a lot of stoats and weasels between Barnet and Elstree, and I have frequently had the latter chatter at me when I have disturbed them; but a change of gamekeepers soon thinned their ranks. In the winter time, when the weather is severe, weasels often take to barns, and levy toll upon the rats and mice living therein. In the days of my youth, when engaged in farming, I have traced both them and their would-be victims in what appeared to be a wholesale migration through the snow from one barn to another. They occasionally take up their quarters in a mole's nest, where they store up the bodies of their subterranean prey. I remember, whilst tracing a fox in the snow on the Yorkshire fells, I came across a place where he had scratched up a weasel's larder containing the carcases of several moles.

Great difficulties beset the path of the photographer who undertakes the task of getting a picture of an adult fox at home, although the animal may be studied sometimes at comparatively close quarters. I once watched one from behind a hedge in Surrey playing with the leg of a rabbit, just as a puppy would with an old slipper. He picked it up, shook it from side to side, flung it up in the air, and capered around in great lightness of heart, until his eye suddenly fell upon

an old cock-pheasant which had walked out of a wood bounding one side of the field. This instantly changed his behaviour from gay to grave, and dropping the rabbit's leg he crept stealthily into the ditch nearest to him and disappeared. The pheasant walked about for a few minutes with his head erect as if he smelt mischief in the air, and presently rocketed skywards. For a moment I saw the head of the fox peep up from the ditch just behind where the bird rose. He had allowed himself to be seen, and in consequence missed his quarry.

I have watched half-grown cubs playing about upon a collection of rough rocks amongst which they had been bred on a northern moor, long before my brother's photographic days, and have not the slightest doubt but a litter of young foxes at play could be photographed by the exercise of a little trouble and patience.

If wild animals could insure their lives heavy premiums would be the order of the day, for great numbers of them die through accidents. I have known two litters of young foxes drowned in a ditch into which they fell upon emerging from their parental lair, situated in a hedge-bank.

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