The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1890-07-18
MINlONS OF THE MOON.
SIGHTS AND SOUNDS BELONGING
TO NATURE BY NIGHT.

Birds Whose Sweet Notes Are Never Heard
by Those Who Retire Early-Pour Footed
Midnight Providers with Bright Eyes and
! Keen Scent.
To all inhabitants of great cities, and
| TO many jewellers even In the rural dis
tricts. the night sights and sounds BY
| river, wood and field are quite unknown.
For, during the hours when the wild
things so hidden by day are at large
and the birds whose notes are not dis
inguished In the full chorus of the day
are at their sweetest, the majority of
people are asleep, or at any rate in bed
Yet the summer nights, brief as they
are, are full Of life when the darkness is
most complete, with fullness which is
vivid in our memory of many of the
"small hours" passed in the meadow or
by lonely wood under the starlit sky.
And first of all TO be mentioned is the
amount of bird music to be heard at
night by those who are present to hear
it. Nor need one go aield for all
though some of the rarest will only be
found in the sohtudes-for some of the
songsters in the Silly night pour forth
their music in the garden-that one
compensation, however dull or common
place the locality, to all who really ''live
in the country"
NIGHTS SWEET SINGERS.
The nightingale, as every one knows,
is night singer. whose exquisite gush
of melody in the Ivory moonlight"
while the air is fragrant with the dewy
flowers, is subtly soft enough to touch
the dullest hearts with some echoes of
romance.
Beginning nearest home, in the quaint
garden, the shrill yet soft and vivacious
trilling of the whitethroat meets the ear
"a bird not very generally known, but
a haunter of the same spot year after
year, loving well an evergreen on a lawn
as a home, at whose base its we'll feath-
cred nest is built. 1t is a bird of lively
song, contrasting in the moonlight with
the most musical, most melancholy f1ut-
ing of the nightingale.
Step forth from the garden, and ira
verse the more remote ground by seques-
tered coppice or double hedgerow, where
ancient trees entwine, and the rich music.
of that shy songster the woodlark, whicht
is as little popularity knownh as its rela-
tive the skylark is, generally floats out
on the night. Cross the meadows, over
which echoes in every direction the
hor &c Slo la, h.
winding river, ripping through its rushy4
margin on either side, and shining like
silver in the moonlight. Pause, and you
will hear the humble but pretty lay of
of the reed sparrow seldom recognized
by day; and what is far rarer, and can
indeed be said to have been heard but
by few, the merry carol of the water
ousel, that snowy breasted little bird
which has such quaint ways, posing mo-
tionless in the day on some rock or stone,
and then darting under water, where, on
the shallow gravel, for brief moment it
can be seen running.
MIDNIGHT PROVIDERS.
He who wanders in a summer night
ere dawn has shown its earliest sign by
meadow, grove, and stream, Will see
strange things, not to be seen, save by
rarest chance, in the hours of day. This
is the time when the otter-littie known
of fera nature, yet far more plentiful
than supposed, indeed, one high author
ity says hardly stream exists now with
out its otter, albeit he be rarely seen
makes his journey for foraging purposes. |
Far and away from his "hoIt'' up stream
comes the swift, shadowy, stealthy am
phibious creature, nearly always going !
down stream, yet leaving that strong |
scent behind wherever he touches shore, |
which the hounds hours afterwards dis
cover. He makes his journey, feeds, |
and retires again always before dawn. !
At certain points he leaves the stream, |
and traversing the bank re-enters it fur /
Their on, and usually shows a curious /
as the hare will in the /
runs" in a hedge-for the same precise |
spot of exit and remittance. Here and |
there he may leave a fine fish with his /
pet piece bitten out of the shonlder-the
"otter's mark"
Much rarer, but still, especially in the |
wilder and more solitary parts, to be
met with is the badger, a fine young /
specimen of which was found among the /
timber loads deposited some time ago on
a timber wharf by the canal at the City |
road, London. The badger burrows in
the most lonely and isolated recesses of /
woods and bills, and those whoh have eI
plored one of the burrows can say what
a fine specimen of engineering and SAM
tation this cleanly and illuminated
dirty as badger" is simply
another exempliication Of popular fall
to his superior, man.
The badger is very little seen, being,
perhaps, the most retiring and conserva-
tive of British beasts, pursuing the even
tenor of his way much as when Cesar
landed in Kent.
But it is of his appearance as one Of
he night wanderers we would speak.
II you are lucky enough 70 be IN his To-
,aIity In the small hours, you may see
yrayish creature curiously like a little
bear waddlinS and grunting in the
very uneasy If TO your lee
ward, as its scent IS keen 1t goes long
distances at night, when humanity and
most OF the animal population with
which man is familiar are, as Carlyle
puts it, lying IL horizontal swathes.
OF the fox as night traveller it were
lite to sneak, everybody, and especially