them. When six or eight hares are thus seen near the centre of a
single field, they and their shadows seem to take possession of and
occupy it.

Pheasants, though they retire to roost on the trees, often before rising
come forth into the meadows adjacent to the coverts. The sward in front
of the pollard ash sloped upwards gradually to the foot of a low hill
planted with firs, and just outside these about half a dozen pheasants
regularly appeared in the early evening. As the sun sank below the hill,
and the shadow of the great beeches some distance away began to extend
into the mead, they went back one by one into the firs. There they were
nearly safe, for no trees give so much difficulty to the poacher. It is
not easy even to shoot anything inside a fir plantation at night: as for
the noose, it is almost impossible to use it. The lowest pheasant is
taken first, and then the next above, like fowls perched on the rungs of
a ladder; and, indeed, it is not unlikely that those who excel in this
kind of work base their operations upon previous experiences in the hen
roost.

The wood pigeons begin to come home, and the wood is filled with their
hollow notes: now here, now yonder, for as one ceases another takes it
up. They cannot settle for some time: each as he arrives perches awhile,
and then rises and tries a fresh place, so that there is a constant
clattering. The green woodpecker approaches at a rapid pace--now
opening, now closing his wings, and seeming to throw himself forward
rather than to fly. He rushes at the trees in the hedge as though he
could pierce the thick branches like a bullet. Other birds rise over or
pass at the side: he goes through, arrow-like, avoiding the boughs.
Instead of at once entering the wood, he stays awhile on the sward of
the mead in the open.

As the pheasants generally feed in a straight line along the ground, so
the lesser pied woodpecker travels across the fields from tree to tree,
rarely staying on more than one branch in each, but, after examining it,
leaves all that may be on other boughs and seeks another ahead. He rises
round and round the dead branch in the elm, tapping it with blows that
succeed each other with marvellous rapidity. He taps for the purpose of
sounding the wood to see if it be hollow or bored by grubs, and to
startle the insects and make them run out for his convenience. He will
ascend dead branches barely half an inch thick that vibrate as he
springs from them,