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    A Nature Puzzle Book
    A Nature Puzzle Book
    A Nature Puzzle Book
    Ebook158 pages1 hour

    A Nature Puzzle Book

    By Marcus Woodward

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    About this ebook

    “A Nature Puzzle Book” is a charming volume full of answers to some of nature's 'mysteries', including why birds sing, what actually happens in a bee-hive, and so on. Written by an experienced nature writer, this volume is highly recommended for those with a love of the great outdoors and the many animals that inhabit it. Contents include: “The Last Hour of the Red Squirrel”, “The End of the Little Foxes”, “Riddles of the Camp”, “Why Do Birds Sing?”, “Frogs, Toads, and Efts”, “Stalking Problems”, “Riddles of the Trail”, “Snake Stories”, “The Human Touch”, “The Last Black Rat”, “Three Feathered Puzzles”, “Mysteries of the Beehive”, etc. Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with the original text and artwork.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherA Thousand Fields
    Release dateFeb 7, 2018
    ISBN9781528784306
    A Nature Puzzle Book

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      A Nature Puzzle Book - Marcus Woodward

      I

      THE LAST HOUR OF THE RED SQUIRREL

      TWO men, dealers in livestock, went down a woodland ride one day in May, and stopped by a great yew tree in the heights of which they had marked a squirrel’s breeding nest. This is often built in an evergreen, which gives cover while the building goes on, and when other trees are lifeless.

      One of the men climbed the tree to the nest, while the other waited below. As the climber reached the nest, the mother squirrel popped out her head inquiringly. In an instant, the little creature was all fury. Chattering with rage, swearing in her own way—vut, vut, vut!—she sprang from the nest, landed cleanly on the man’s head, and thence sprang to the ground, instantly to bound up the tree-trunk, with a volley of abuse.

      Then out from the nest tumbled five little squirrels, the daintiest little creatures in the world, with soft brown fur, sharp little faces, minute ears, and six-inch long brushes. They leapt out blindly among the tree branches, and lightly dropped through them to the ground.

      One ran to the waiting man, hopping and frisking, and sat up on its haunches as if begging for protection. Its wish was instantly granted, and it was flung into a bag. The others quickly suffered the same fate.

      Meantime the father squirrel, larger and redder than his mate, had popped his head out of the nest. He also swore in the squirrel’s language, but in a way which was a pale reflection of the vut-vut-vuts which came from the mother, madly springing up and down the tree-trunk, as the man began to descend, his wicked deed accomplished.

      Thus the red squirrel family was broken up, and there may be no more of that family, indeed, of any other family of red squirrels, in that wood. For no sooner had the father squirrel escaped the peril of the dealers than he was aware of a new horror in the form of an animal, the exact like of which he had never seen, though it was a squirrel in form, as in fact. It was a grey squirrel, half as large again as himself.

      The grey squirrel rushed along on the red squirrel’s trail with such speed and fury as clearly suggested a murderous intent. And murder was the idea in its mind.

      The red squirrel must have known every tree and branch in the wood, where it had been reared. As it fled for its life it might have been one of the flying squirrels of Africa. And as it passed over my head, making a prodigious leap from tree-branch to tree-branch, I thought it was a bird. Sure-footed, it fled on a familiar trail through the trees, boldly running out to the slenderest twigs, or dropping twenty feet to the ground, or leaping where, in calm moments, it would have run down to the ground and climbed again. I watched it leaping and running, flitting up tree-trunks and down, head first, stopping dead—as still as a statue of a squirrel—where it was concealed by brushwood on a trunk, or in some crutch of the tree—then scurrying on again for dear life as the grey terror came along the trail.

      The grey squirrel may not have known that trail. Possibly he had but lately left Regent’s Park in London to explore the country northwards, where he found a country after his heart in the beech-covered Chiltern Hills. But he travelled fast. He was an even more lissom, more beautiful animal than the other. His leaps were as long as the red squirrel’s and his strength was greater.

      And the grey one leapt on to the back of the scared little fugitive as he scudded along a branch, bore him to the ground, and worried the last breath out of his nearly breathless body.

      It will be the widow’s turn next.

      The story I have told, a true story from life, answers the first of the nature-problems I propose to discuss in this book: What foes do squirrels fear?

      Some naturalists state that the American grey squirrel, which has been imported to this country on various occasions during the last fifty years, does not molest our native red squirrel. But ask woodland people, foresters and gamekeepers, and they will tell you that the greys ruthlessly persecute the reds. And I have seen the murder of a red squirrel by a grey with my own eyes.

      I think that the red squirrel has no other natural foe. A hawk or an owl may occasionally attack a young one; but as for owls, they usually hunt by night, when squirrels are asleep.

      II

      Has the fox any natural foe?

      What is the difference between a fox’s den and a badger’s?

      How do badgers make their beds?

      II

      THE END OF THE LITTLE FOXES

      ONE moonlit February night the shadowy red form of a vixen was heading leisurely towards a rank and dank little wood of elder-trees on a slope of the South Downs. It is a wood fit for murder. Always the air is heavy with a fetid smell. Rank herbs flourish here in summer, nettles, hemlock, and deadly nightshade, and a keen nose can detect a musky smell of animal rather than vegetable nature. Men and birds shun the wood. But it has been the home of colonies of badgers from a time beyond the memory of man.

      The vixen moved slowly, creeping stealthily along in the shadow of a line of scrubby trees at the foot of the hill, but she quickened her pace when a lantern swung from a lambing-fold, and a shepherd’s dog barked. Had she been seen in the moonlight, or winded? She paused, listening intently. Then she heard the shepherd’s voice: Have at ’m, Sirrah!

      The hills were alive with foxes. All through his nightlong vigil the old shepherd could hear the sharp, threefold bark of the dog-foxes, and the answering screeches of vixens. Let Sirrah have a hunt! That would larn the varmints to come trespassing about his sheep-fold.

      The dog shot off, giving tongue as the south wind brought him the rank scent of fox. The vixen pressed on for the haven of the badgers’ wood, but still slowly, gliding low to the ground rather than running. The sheep-dog hit her trail, his yaps became frenzied. He was almost upon her when another fox shot across her trail—her mate.

      Wah-oo! wah-oo!—his sudden bark startled the sheep-dog, he stopped short, and the dog-fox flashed with a snarl in front of him, cut a short circle round him, and headed off on a long sloping line down the hill, away from the wood and away from the sheep-fold.

      Instantly, Sirrah gave hot chase. As they came off the down to the fields below, another fox cut across between the two. Once again Sirrah changed his fox.

      And a rare dance the two led him, until they went to ground at last. Then Sirrah heard his master’s whistle. Well pleased with himself, he returned to the fold.

      The vixen reached the badgers’ wood as dawn was breaking, and explored it above and underground, penetrating to the heart of the badger’s fortress.

      Maybe she was thinking: There’s no harm in old Mr. Brock, no harm in him at all. They say he has no more than four of his thirty-eight teeth left to him. He would not dream of interfering with me, and why should he?

      We may be able to suggest several reasons why badgers might interfere with foxes which, unasked, come to share their homes.

      Is it likely, for instance, that badgers would take pleasure in the rank scent of foxes, or the stench of the remains of their feasts? remembering how remarkably clean they are themselves, and how careful not to foul their living-places with refuse. They like sweet beds of grass and fern, and often renew their bedding, they like to keep a clean and decent house, and will carry away all garbage to their middens. But the foxes fill their dens with every sort of litter, such as the bones, feathers, or skins of their prey, and know not the meaning of sanitation.

      And then the yapping and the romping and the quarrelling of a family of fox-cubs—might not this well be an annoyance to a quiet old badger?

      Nevertheless, badgers rarely interfere with their fox guests. Slow to anger, they are gentle, even rather lovable beasts. All they ask is to be allowed to follow their ancestral trails at night, seeking their food, whether beetles, snails, worms, grubs, wasps’ nests, roots, bulbs, frogs, mice, voles, birds, eggs, or young rabbits—to mate and rear their young.

      So the vixen was quite satisfied with her inspection of the badger’s fortress.

      Presently she wandered out on to the hills, and began to utter such blood-curdling screeches as would have thrilled you with horror to hear in that place at that time.

      The shepherd, hearing, cursed her. His dog, Sirrah, growled, and his eyes implored his master to give the sign for another fox-hunt.

      And the dog-fox, her mate, heard, and read in her screeches the message: Come hither, my love, for I have settled at last on the perfect place for our nursery, and I travel no more until the cubs are born.

      With ringing yap-yap-yaps he answered her message. Setting out for the badgers’ wood, he unearthed on the way a pheasant he had partly buried in a field, and, slinging it over his shoulder, bore it to the vixen’s chamber, deep down in

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