When the Fox sleeps
The sparrow-hawk may be caught napping on some favourite perch, as on a stunted tree, in a sheltered nook. The partridge covey may be seen for a moment, as the birds revel in the powdery soil, roofed by an overhanging ledge—seeing you, they go whizzing off amid a little cloud of dust. In the dead herbage a wily old cock pheasant crouches, who long since denied himself the luxuries and the dangers of social life in the big woodlands: he crouches as he sees you, but not so quickly that you may not note the sinking of his glossy neck. Two or three rabbits scuttle off to the doors of their burrows. Through the bushes a hare steals away. No chalk-pit is complete without a rabbit-burrow, a blackbird, and a robin. If hounds came more often to the chalk-pits they would save themselves many a blank hour. There is no peace for the fox in the coverts, but the old chalk-pit is as quiet as a church.
