The lone swallows

Most of the papers in this volume are published for the first time. A few have appeared in _The Daily Express_, _The London Evening News_, _The Field_, _The Saturday Review_, _T...

The rising club of the wild arum is purple within its sheath; soon the “lords-and-ladies” will attract the children to their “river.” The stream is singing a mazed melody of sof...

All that day, sunlessness and quiet seas. I told the granfers that they were wrong (I am young and self-confident). I explained that their knowledge of nature was not great--had...

I was filled with an ecstasy; the car, ordinarily so drab with its burden of artisans and factory workers, seemed illumined and vitalised with yellow, the colour of happiness; a...

Meanwhile Tiger was spinning slowly on the rope. He started to swing, backwards and forwards, aiming for the ledge whereon was the mass of twigs and sticks comprising the ravens...

The peregrines raid from their base upon the headland to the inland villages, watching for the chance of taking a tame dove from a cot; onwards to the lonely wastes of the sandh...

I feared that the hedge-sparrows would desert the nest, which now surely was but an empty mock, with its one alien egg. In the ordinary way one will find the cuckoo’s egg amongs...

“No,” said the swallow sadly, “I want to, but they will not listen. I know that the meadow grasses want to as well, but most of the people seem to be deaf. The meadow grasses ta...

“When I was last here, the field swept away, open and free, for many miles. In summer, the wheat grew yellow in the sunshine. Now the houses are nearly to the wood, and the litt...

Unlike other birds, owls cannot exist where there is noise. Most of their hunting is done by sound, detected by the ultra-sensitive and enormous cavities in the sides of their h...