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    Nature's Merry-Go-Round - A Log-Book of the Seasons
    Nature's Merry-Go-Round - A Log-Book of the Seasons
    Nature's Merry-Go-Round - A Log-Book of the Seasons
    Ebook164 pages1 hour

    Nature's Merry-Go-Round - A Log-Book of the Seasons

    By Marcus Woodward

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    About this ebook

    This vintage book contains a classic log book of the seasons, being a guide to what is to be looked for and what is to be heard in each of the seasons. It describes in detail the bird, animal, and plant life that can be found at the different times of the year, walking the reader through the transformations that occur before the eyes of those who care to look. “Nature's Merry-Go-Round” is highly recommended for lovers of nature and the countryside, and would make for a fantastic addition to related collections. Contents include: “The Snow Moon”, “The Waking Moon”, “The Roaring Moon”, “The Primrose Moon”, “The May Moon”, “The Rose Moon”, “The Corn Moon”, “The Harvest Moon”, “The Apple Moon”, “The Nut Moon”, “The Red Moon”, “The Yule Moon”, etc. Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new introduction on bird watching.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherA Thousand Fields
    Release dateFeb 7, 2018
    ISBN9781528784238
    Nature's Merry-Go-Round - A Log-Book of the Seasons

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      Nature's Merry-Go-Round - A Log-Book of the Seasons - Marcus Woodward

      PREFACE

      I HAVE founded a new society, the Order of the Little Owls. The title is, I think, happy, as Athene noctua, the Little Owl of our woods and fields is—who shall doubt?—the Owl of Wisdom, the very bird of Athens whose image is stamped on Attic coins. Ever alert, it flies by day as by night. Nobody knows about this new society yet, and its members will be unaware that I have elected them until this book is published. They number some thousands, but the roll has not yet been made out. Still, I hope that members will soon receive the badge of the Order, and take the pledge, which will be somewhat to this effect, I love Wild Life, I rejoice in the Great Outdoors, it shall be my constant habit and pleasure to study and reverence Nature, and whenever I go into field or wood, I promise to stand and stare.

      Stand and Stare is our motto:

      A poor life this if full of care

      We have no time to stand and stare.

      Though the Order of the Little Owls is yet somewhat nebulous, its Log-Book exists. This is a noble folio volume, bound in what looks like vellum, and was presented by a bank manager, which accounts for a label it bears, Cash Register. The longitudinal rulings come in handily for noting dates, and will be useful too for the record of the issue of gold badges in due time. Enormous clasps were a present from an art worker skilled in enamelling. The writing has been done with a goose-quill, and, I fear, is shocking; but the matter is pure gold, and the spirit of the whole is as lively as that of Athene noctua himself.

      The entries have been contributed by all sorts and conditions of naturalists, wise men and women, boys and girls, in every walk of life.

      ......

      In a discourse by Sir Henry Wotton, a Provost of Eton College about 1624, is a passage upon what he called the Blessing and Benefit of Seeing, by which blessing, said he, we do not only discover Nature’s secrets, but with a continued content, for the eye is never wearied of seeing. Nay, he went on, after speaking of our joy in looking upward to things celestial, if the eye look but downward it may rejoice to behold the bosom of the earth, our common mother, embroidered and adorned with numberless and various flowers.

      This Blessing and Benefit of Seeing is the very gospel of Woodcraft which our Log-Book proclaims. It is a record of things seen, little and large. One wrote in our Log:

      A pair of Ducks were courting on a pond on a bitterly cold day in December. The Mallard, during the half-hour in which I stood and stared at them, never ceased bobbing and bowing to his enchanter, cutting so gallant a figure as to be a pattern to all true lovers.

      A little thing to remember—to remember for years!

      (It brings to mind William Allingham’s miniature:

      Four ducks on a pond,

      A grass bank beyond,

      A blue sky of spring,

      White clouds on the wing—

      What a little thing

      To remember for years—

      To remember with tears.)

      In our Log will be found, I hope, the very yarns to make young eyes appreciate the Blessing and Benefit of Seeing—to set young folk longing to be out on the trail, watching and listening and, unseen and unheard, seeing and hearing—beholding the Light, whence it flows, and seeing it in their joy. They will not think of how soon their eyes will grow dim, and they may not have read that it is the boy, as the poet sings (including the girl, no doubt), who

      Still is Nature’s Priest,

      And by the Vision Splendid

      Is on the way attended.

      Our Log is not without its unconscious humour, and there are notes with morals which escaped the writer, as in this entry:

      "Walking along the road we found some wild Succory growing in profusion; we could not make a bouquet of the flowers as they had no stalks, but we picked one or two, and they closed up!"

      The moral—not to pick wild flowers—whether or not they close up in resentment—was often pressed home in our Log.

      This happy thought about the flower, Love-in-a-Mist, somehow crept into the Log, from a very young contributor:

      How this fragile, pretty flower earned its name I don’t know, but when one looks at it closely it certainly does remind one of love in a mist!

      And—somehow—I think it really does!

      One other gem—it put me in the best of tempers for a week:

      Saw a number of birds pecking a little one because it wouldn’t mate!

      I now proceed to the pleasant task of copying out a selection of yarns from the Log of the Little Owls.

      (Lest there should be any doubt of their genuine nature, I would add that many of my own Nature-notes in this book, and all the yarns here related, were printed originally under the contributors’ names or initials in the pages of the two official organs of the Guide Association, The Guide, and The Guider, thence were transferred, if not by goose-quill, by scissors and paste, to the Log-Book—for which the art-worker above-mentioned has promised to provide a richly enamelled binding. I must express my gratitude to the Editors of those papers for their kindness in giving me permission to weave the stories into this book.)

      MARCUS WOODWARD.

      Nature’s Merry-go-Round

      CHAPTER I

      THE SNOW MOON

      Ask the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea and they shall declare to thee.

      JOB.

      THE first note we entered in our new Birch-Bark Roll or Nature Log-Book reads thus:

      "New Year’s Day. Wild Violet found by a Cornish stone hedge."

      That was a froward Violet! Where was its famed modesty, of which the spring poets never tire of singing?—finding the just emblem of a demure maid in the Violet by the mossy stone, half-hidden from the eye. Still, the Cornish Violet looked forth with good effect in giving our Log-Book its start.

      The next note is more typical of New Year’s Day: Robin sang.

      He had sung the requiem of the dying year on New Year’s Eve, and he sang the first song to ring up the New Year’s curtain. But then he had been singing since the August before, as the Song-Thrush had been singing since September whenever the day inspired a song. A Sky-Lark had soared and sung on Christmas Day. Often through the Winter the Wren had obliged us with a rollicking stave, like a peal of happy laughter, as though it were beyond question that we should all be as happy as kings. And the demure little Hedge-Sparrow—whose song was also noted in our Roll on New Year’s Day—had been singing the same tune as the Wren on and off through the Winter, though not with the same trills and merriment. And down in Cornwall the stream-haunting Dipper had been singing a winter song, and we had a note in our Log of a Dipper making music while it drifted down a stream on a platform of floating ice.

      The songs we long most to hear with the New Year are those which have not been heard before in Winter, the true herald songs of better days, like those of Mistle-Thrush, Titmice and Chaffinch. The Mistle-Thrush is Spring’s own trumpeter. Its song-season is a short one, compared to that of its cousin, the Song-Thrush, and we miss its voice in the spring choir about the time when the Nightingale opens the song of songs. On New Year’s Day our Log contained this entry:

      Coal-Titmouse sang ‘che-chee, che-chee’—as if demanding more and ever more cheese—in a conservatory.

      Perhaps it was deceived by the warmth in thinking that Spring really had come. A day or two later the Great Titmouse’s sawing notes were heard, like the sound of one of its names, Ox-eye, or like the sound of a file on a saw. The Blue Titmouse soon joins the January choir, and the Marsh-Titmouse is heard crying If-he, if-he! Among the most welcome of all these first true songs of the New Year is the short, ringing, homely hymn of the Chaffinch. Tol-de-rol, lol-chick, wee-eedo it sings, or, as the children say, Sweet, sweet—bring my pretty love to meet me here. The song proclaims the character of the bird which has found a place in a proverb, As gay as a Chaffinch.

      The New Year’s Day yielded one note which we treasured more than many others: Saw a Brimstone butterfly. It seemed like a blessing on the New Year and on our new Birch-Bark Roll that it should have chosen that day to awake from winter sleep, and look for the sun and the Spring on its primrose wings, and it carried a message to us all to awake from winter discontent, and follow to the coppices where the white Violets in a little time will be blowing.

      A Queen Wasp also was seen—another courier from the Court of the Sleeping Beauty.

      Gnats were seen, dancing an up-and-down dance by a sheltered hedgerow.

      Rooks were noted, inspecting their last year’s nests.

      Besides one Violet, we found a few Primroses. Christmas Roses and Yellow Jasmine bloomed in our gardens. In the fields we found Groundsel, Chickweed, and some other humble weeds, which do good service in feeding the birds with their seeds.

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