DOUBTS AND FEARS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 822, 29 April 1955, Page 9

DOUBTS AND FEARS

by

SUNDOWNER

APRIL 7

HE doubting Thomases of the world pay too high a price for their scepticism. I have received a most interesting letter from a Fendalton correspondent who is clearly a_ better bird watcher than I am; and a better bird

tamer. His ear is better than mine, his memory (I suspect) longer. This,

for example, is quite beyond me: Blackbirds have .a ten-note refrain-all hereabouts use the same-sometimes keeping it repeated till they launch into their full notes, which sound to me more bellicose than the meilow flute tones of English blackbirds, as I remember them. Young blackbirds never "come confidently to my digging spade," as they do to his, and I have never succeeded in establishing such relations with a thrush as this paragraph indicates: For two seasons I have had a thrush that comes down on the lawn, plays a short obbligato, runs a little way, sings again, and to my "Give us another, old chap!" always responds. He likes to sing full and loud on the back of the garden seat. But my correspondent’s most interesting note describes the hypnotising of a young cuckoo by a cat: As I moved quietly to the. peach tree where the call had been heard, I saw a wellfledged young bird above my head. A warbler fed him once and went into the next garden to forage. Neither seemed scared of me. The cat came along to see what I was looking at; then jumped up on the fence. The cuckoo stopped creaking and the cat began to move along the fence, making a guttural hypnotic gentle yowling noise. There was ten feet of rambler rose between the cat and the now silent cuckoo, which sat hunched with drooping wings and staring at the staring cat. . . Suddenly from over the fence a grey warbler shot and smacked the bird in the face. It woke with a start and dashed: off with the warbler. I wish I could accept that precisely as it stands. I can’t doubt that it is

truthful, and the sentences I have quoted show that the writer is a patient, experienced, sympathetic, and disciplined observer. I can’t reject the volume of evidence available about the. hypnotic fears aroused in some wild creatures by other wild creatures-snakes in birds, cats and weasels in birds, weasels in rabbits, and so on. I once saw a halfgrown rabbit sitting squealing as a weasel circled it in some tussocks. I was, in fact, able to catch the rabbit and shoot the weasel, which did not like losing its prey, and came back to look for it. The rabbit, which I had by this time released, seemed to be quite uninjured, and when I put it down raced up the hill into a burrow. That, I have always supposed since, was a clear case of hypnotism, but to be on all fours with the cat and the cuckoo, a second rabbit would have had to dash in, not to attack the weasel, but to break the spell, I can’t help suspecting that the warbler broke the spell by accidentcame back to feed the cuckoo, suddenly saw the cat, and in its fright collided with its paralysed fosterling. * 9 a

APRIL 9

NE of the most depressing results when spring, summer, and autumn all lose half their rain is the loss of half the trees in newly-established plan-: pig It is bad when sheep spend most their time near the water troughs, af worse when cattle can’t hide their bones; but in both cases recovery is quick if rain comes and the loss tem-

porary if it does not come. Trees live longer than we do ourselves,’ and when

they die we can never be sure that we will see them replaced. Even the quick growers take 10 or 20 years to be trees, and that is a long time to wait at any stage in our lives, and an impossible time in the latter staves. Fortunately, there are trees that it is difficult to kill-some of them big like the sequoias, some small like hawthorns. Jim told me yesterday that a hormone spray which had shrivelled his willows

like a fire had no effect .at all on his hawthorns. It was good, news to me in spite of the fact that thorn hedges hatbour fireblight which may be the cause, or at least one cause, of my dead and dying chestnuts. When a tfee begins to. die before its time I feel as I do when I meet a man of 40 and notice that he has lost his hair and his teeth and his colour and his firmness and his zest and his elasticity and is rapidly losing his battle with the pull of gravity. One of the most distressing sights I ever saw in the bush was the destruction in a gale of a row of beech trees on the spine of a ridge, all of them 40 or 50 feet high, If they had crashed down suddenly the sight would have shocked me less than seeing them bend over, recover, bend again, and then fail to recover as their roots one by one gave way. The only noise was the howl of the wind high above me, and the cracking of twigs and small branches as the big trees settled down on their sides. Eo x *

APRIL 10

| WAS glancing through the Shorter Reviews of the New Statesman when I blundered on this notice of a new issue of the Poems and Songs of Robert Burns; First, a box chequered black and white in a sort of shepherd’s plaid. Next, a cellophané wrapper. Inside, a padded Royal Stewart tartan binding, in silk. Finally well printed, the poems of Burns, edited and introduced by James Barke. . . Mr, Barke’s publishers have loyally co-operated in making this wholly uncritical edition; and by serving up a Lowland poet in all this tartan nonsense they pander to a synthetic patriotism and put the poems on a level with shortbread, Edinburgh Rock, and A Present from the Trossachs. The half of me that is English laughed. the half that is Scots rejoiced.

But I wish the reviewer had signed his name. It would give me. great

pleasure to let him know that his blunderbuss was heard round the world. I hope the sound will be recorded and reproduced as often as two or three Scots are met together. in the Poet’s name. I am too poor to make extravagant promises. But if some disc-maker will imprison those words in durable material, and make them available at a reasonable price, I will present one copy every year while I live to the Society for the Propagation of Common Sense. (To be continued)