At Home with Wild Nature 



from the branch of a tree overhead. She stayed for 

 quite a while, and the " gowk," as the cuckoo is known 

 in some parts of the country, with the stupidity 

 characteristic of its species, kept staring up and request- 

 ing food, for which his widely opened mouth showed 

 grand accommodation. 



Wild rabbits are supposed to be animals of rigidly 

 fixed habits instinctively ingrained by the experiences 

 of countless generations of their kind, yet individuals 

 will sometimes go off at a tangent, so to speak, and 

 behave in quite an unorthodox manner. 



Nine hundred and ninety-nine rabbits out of every 

 thousand no doubt excavate their " stops " or nesting- 

 burrows by night, but I have watched the odd one 

 industriously scratching hers out right in the middle of 

 a field in broad noonday. Somebody, I think it was 

 Richard Jeff cries, has written that rabbits shift the 

 earth with their broad hind feet. This one did not. 

 She stood on them, and with her fore feet shot the 

 mould between her legs and out behind in a thick 

 shower. 



Rabbits suckle their young by night, and upon 

 leaving the nesting-burrow bar the entrance hole up 

 securely with mould for the first eight or nine days, and 

 then leave it open, or partially so, after their offspring 

 can see. This is the rule, but I have come upon the 

 exceptions of one mother rabbit giving her babies 

 nourishment by day and of another leaving the entrance 



