COUNTRY WALK.
ARLY one morning during last summer, Harry and I put on our hats, and taking some cake in our pockets for lunch set out for a good long walk. First we went through the Home Meadow, where the tall elm-trees are, and then through the gate at the bottom of the valley into the corn-fields. The sun was shining bright and clear, and a lark was singing high up in the blue sky almost beyond our sight. Harry and I stood still to watch its descent, and after many minutes we saw it alight near a tuft of grass by the hedge-side. We walked a little nearer, and then we found that there was another bird there with some young ones; so we thought that this lark had been singing its long, sweet song in the air to cheer its mate, who was feeding their little ones in the nest.
We then walked on, and soon came to the skirts of the wood, through which runs a little stream. We thought there must be some one in the wood, for we heard a smart tapping sound, like the noise of a little hammer. I climbed on the top of a hedge-bank, and, after a little while, found that the noise came from over our heads. On the trunk of a tree were two wood-peckers pecking with their long beaks at the bark of a fir-tree, in which they find a number of little insects, which serve them for their food. I lifted Harry up to see them at their work, but he did not frighten them, and at some long way off we could still hear them tapping away.
Just at the corner of the wood, as we were turning round by the side of the fence, we saw two hares and a rabbit feeding among the clover; one of them pricked up his ears and looked at us for a moment, and then all of them ran away across the field much faster than Harry, who tried all he could to catch them.
