United States or Romania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
On the outskirts of the wood, in a rough, ivy-grown ridge where, years ago, some trees had been felled, a flourishing colony of bank-voles little creatures nearly akin, and almost similar in shape and size, to the field-voles dwelt among the roots and the undergrowth.
The fourfold track of a rabbit led the way ahead of them, as if pointing the path, to be joined by the broken footprints of another rabbit, and then by the track made by the longer leap of a hare, fourfold also. The delicate lined marks left by a wood-mouse now kept company with the others, and anon the little fairy imprints of two field-voles short-tailed field-mice, if you prefer.
The rabbits extended their galleries and dug new "breeding earths" in their warren by the wood; and often, in the deep stillness of the night, the call-note of an awakened bird echoed, murmuring, among the rocks opposite the pines far down the slope. During the past few weeks great events had happened in the new-made chamber of the field-voles' burrow.
Rabbits, as well as water-voles and field-voles, are particularly careful to nibble off wind-blown or sprouting twigs that encroach on their tracks through the undergrowth; but foxes, otters, and badgers simply brush them aside as they pass. The sun had not yet gone down when we arrived at the "set."
These bank-voles, probably because they lived in a sheltered place screened from the bitter wind by a wall of gorse and pines, moved abroad in the winter days far more frequently than did the field-voles.
The grass-spears lengthened; the moss spread in new, rain-jewelled velvet-pile over the pasture floor; the woodbine and the bramble trailed their tender shoots above the hedge; a leafy screen sheltered each woodland home; and even the narrow path from the field-voles' burrow to the corner of the copse led through a perfect bower of half-transparent greenery.
Leaving her cubs asleep, she moved along the passage, determined, if possible, to explore the thickets in hope of finding a young rabbit or a few field-voles wherewith to satisfy her increasing hunger.
Here and there it merged into the wider trail of the otter. Sometimes, near a hedge, it was joined by the track of rabbits, bank-voles, field-voles, weasels, and stoats, and sometimes, where brooks and rills trickled over the stones on their way to the river, by other main roads that had followed the smaller water-courses from the crests of the hills.
Word Of The Day