306 AUTUMN AND WINTER 



also a great ratter and mouser, especially in spring when it 

 has young. Brown or wood owls prey chiefly in winter on 

 small birds caught up from the roost, though they too kill a 

 small number of rats and mice. Foxes destroy rats and 

 field-voles in large numbers ; some seem to hunt them in 

 preference to rabbits, which in most cases form the largest 

 part of their varied diet. Foxes will eat almost anything of 

 an animal nature, whether dead or living; just as otters 

 living by the sea will eat shellfish and even lobsters, foxes 

 within reach of tidal marshes feed on crabs and the dead 

 bodies of birds washed up by the tide. Pheasants in their 

 roosts on the branches to which they flitted crowing at dusk, 

 are normally out of their reach ; but now and then the cry of a 

 cock bird rings loudly from the hollow woods, and tells how a 

 fox has sprung at a pheasant roosting on some lower bough. 

 Rabbits and hares are both active on winter nights ; in 

 order to estimate how busily they run to and fro under 

 concealment of darkness, it is necessary to spend a morning 

 in following their traces after a fall of snow the previous 

 afternoon. They scrape away a thin layer of snow to feed 

 on the roots and blades of the herbage ; and when the snow 

 is too thick on the level ground to make this convenient, 

 rabbits dig by the sides of bushes and among rough herbage 

 where the snow lies hollow and bridged. By sunrise, when 

 the birds are feeding again after the long and hungry night, 

 only the footprints of the hares and rabbits remain. Except 

 at the mating-time in late February, March, and April, hares 

 are strictly nocturnal animals, lying up by day in their forms ; 

 when we see them by day at other times of year, they have 

 been disturbed from their hiding - places. Rabbits are 

 also a mainly nocturnal species, though being much more 

 plentiful and confident, they move about more freely by day 

 when they have shelter close at hand. A night when the 



