We had not walked much further when we heard a great chattering, and when we came to a young beech-tree close by the stile, we soon found the cause of the noise. About two dozen or more of a little bird called the titmouse had all perched on one tree, where they were pecking, and fighting, and love-making, and noise-making, all at the same time. Except the noise made by sparrows when they go to bed on a summer’s evening, I never heard the like.
While I was amusing myself by watching the titmice, Harry, who had rambled on a little way, came running back to ask me what the funny thing could be that he had found. It was a mole that had been caught in a trap, and was dangling in the air with a swarm of bees around. I told Harry that the moles are blind, or nearly so, and that they live under the ground, and do great good to the farmers by eating the slugs and other things that destroy the corn; but that they turn up such great mounds of earth when making their tunnels, that the farmers are often glad to get rid of them, and therefore set traps to kill them.
In the next field we came to, the young wheat had grown up higher than my knees, and Harry was greatly pleased at running down the furrows and making the blades of corn bend before him. Presently he stopped and peeped through an opening, whence he discovered a whole covey of partridges, the two old birds and seven young ones; they all rose with a whirring noise, and flew into the field we had just left.
Soon after the partridges had flown away, Harry was delighted to hear the well-known voice of the cuckoo; it sounded so near us that we both started at the first voice, and we soon found out where the cuckoo was. Like a lazy tyrant, instead of making a house for himself, the cuckoo takes the first little bird’s nest he can find, and turns the poor occupant away. When we reached the tree where the cuckoo was, we saw it sitting on a small nest throwing out the eggs of a poor little bird, who was screaming in anger at the intruder.
When I told Harry what the cuckoo had been doing, he wanted to throw a stone at it, but I told him that this cuckoo was only doing what all other cuckoos did, and that the poor little bird would soon build itself another nest. As we walked on, still by the side of the wood, Harry saw something jumping about in the boughs of a tree; and presently another followed it: they were two squirrels, with their long bushy tails curled over their backs, and their ears pricked up to hear the slightest noise. As soon as they saw Harry looking at them they both leaped away, and we lost them in the branches of a large oak. To look after the squirrels we had climbed over the hedge, so we were walking a little way in the wood. Presently I heard the call of a pheasant; and as we walked further, we came to some brush-wood, under which were two old birds and their young ones. They all flew away at our approach; but the old cock-pheasant left two of his tail-feathers in the brush-wood, which Harry soon picked up to decorate his hat with.