Introduction

We three friends, Peter, Peggy and Paul, walk to school together every day.  We all love flowers and animals, and each day we try to find something new.

Peter is a little boy. He can only just read. But he has sharp eyes. He sees most things in the hedges.

Peggy’s father is a gamekeeper. She knows the birds and where to find their nests.

Paul comes from the farm. He is a big boy and will soon be a teacher.

We meet at the big pond under the elm trees. Then we walk along a narrow lane, across the common, through the woods  and over three fields to the village school. In the pond, we find all kinds of creatures. In the lane are beetles and mice, flowers and berries, birds’ nests and wasps’ nests.  On the common the spiders spin their webs on the yellow gorse. In the ploughed field the lark hides her nest. In the grass field there are buttercups and daisies. In the cornfield there are poppies and cornflowers.

Paul is going to write down for us all we see and put it in a book.

A Family Of squirrels

We have a pet called Bobby and we love him very much. He is a little squirrel, living along the beech trees of the woods. We see him every morning leaping from branch to branch, with his long furry tail stretched out behind. Sometimes he leaps right down to the ground and runs about picking up beech nuts. Sometimes he sits bolt upright on a branch, with a nut or acorn in his paws. Then his tail is bent up against his back.

We have known him for two years and when we whistle to him, he comes to us. But if anything frightens him, he darts away to the nearest tree. He climbs up in a moment and peeps back through the green leaves. We see his bright black eyes looking down at us.

His body is covered with brown red fur, but under his body the fur is white. His lovely red tail is like a brush on his back. His hind legs are long. That is why he can jump so well. On his front paws one toe stands out from the others, almost like our thumb. He uses his paws like hands, when he sits up with a nut in them, and peels off the brown skin with his teeth. Sometimes he steals birds’ eggs. Then he holds the egg in his paws, cracks the top, and sucks out the yolk. 

He has such funny ears! They have long tufts of hair behind them. He sometimes comes out of his hole in winter to eat and we see that the tufts are much longer than in the summer. But for most of the winter we never see him. He is fast asleep in a hole in a tree. We know where his hole is, for Peter found it once.

He had seen Bobby come down one mild day to feed on his store of acorns, buried at the foot of the tree and he watched him as he went back. Then he climbed the tree and in a hole in the trunk he saw Bobby’s tail curled around. So he knew that Bobby was snug and cosy in the hole.

Bobby has a little wife and they always keep near each other. But she is very shy and will not come to us. In the spring when there are no nuts, they eat the buds of the trees. About May they are very busy. They gather leaves and moss and twigs. These they weave into a nest in a fork of the tree, far from the ground. Then in June their little ones are born.

Paul climbed up and saw four such lovely little squirrels covered with soft red and white fur. They stayed in the nest for some time though we often saw them moving about among the branches. The old squirrels took such care of them and they stayed together all summer. In the autumn they hid little heaps of nuts and acorns at the foot of the tree to eat when they should awake in the mild days of winter. Then we did not see them again. We do not know whether they all crept into one hole or whether they each found a hole and curled themselves up to sleep.

The Skylark And Her Enemy

There are a great many larks near our home. They sing so gaily in the morning as we go to school. But they sing much earlier than that. We wanted once to try if we could get up before the lark. So we agreed to meet at five o’clock in the morning, in the meadow where one has been singing all year.

We heard him before we got out of the lane. There he was, rising up into the air, going a little to the right and then a little to the left, rising and singing all the time, as if he wanted to wake all the world with joy. We watched him until he was quite a tiny speck in the sky. Then he came down again. When he was only a few feet from the ground he shut his wings and dropped into the grass.

The next morning we went at four o’clock. That lark was not singing, but one in the next field was up as gay as a lark could be. Then our mothers said we must not get up any earlier. So we could not rise before the larks.

We caught a lark once to look at it and then let it fly away again. It is not a gay bird. It has brown wings marked with dark streaks. Its breast and throat are a dull white, dotted with brown spots, and it has a white streak above its eye. Its feet are curious. The toes lie flat on the ground and the hind toe has a very long claw.

If you watch a lark you will see that he runs, he does not hop. Neither does he perch in the trees, and only sometimes on a low bush. He lives on the ground, except when he rises up to sing.

In the winter as we go to school, we see large flocks of larks in the fields, looking for insects, and seeds of wheat and oats. When we come near them, they get up a few at a time and fly away a little further. Then they wheel round and settle down to feed.

In the winter they scarcely ever sing. It is in the spring, when they pair, that they sing so beautifully. About March we can often find a lark’s nest hidden in the grass. They build in a rut or hollow in the ground, often in the middle of the field.

They line their nest with dry grass and lay four or five eggs in it. The eggs are a dirty grey colour with brown spots on them and they lie very snugly in the thick tufts of grass.

When the lark comes down after singing, he does not drop close to the nest, but a little way off. Then, he runs up to the net through the grass. This is because he is afraid that the sparrow hawk might see the net and pounce on the little ones.

The sparrow hawk is the lark’s great enemy. One day we were looking at a lark rising up, and all at once, we saw a sparrow hawk just going to pounce upon it. The lark saw him too and darted up faster than the hawk could soar. Then the hawk flew away a little and hovered about till the lark was tired and was obliged to come down. Then, once more, the hawk tried to pounce. But the lark was too clever for him. He closed his wings and dropped right down into the thick grass and the hawk could not find him.

We were glad the little lark was safe, and got back to his wife and little ones.