Some distance farther there is a stile, sitting upon which the view
ranges over two adjacent meadows. They are bounded by a copse of ash
stoles and young oak trees, and the lesser of the meads is full of rush
bunches and dotted with green ant-hills. Among these, just beyond
gunshot, two rabbits are feeding; pausing and nibbling till they have
eaten the tenderest blades, and then leisurely hopping a yard or so to
another spot. Later on in the summer this little meadow which divides
the lane from the copse is alive with rabbits.

Along the hedge the brake fern has then grown, in the corner by the
copse there is a beautiful mass of it, and several detached bunches away
from the hedge among the ant-hills. From out of the fern, which is a
favourite retreat with them, rabbits are continually coming, feeding
awhile, darting after each other, and back again to cover. To-day there
are but three, and they do not venture far from their buries.

Watching these, a green woodpecker cries in the copse, and immediately
afterwards flies across the mead, and away to another plantation.
Occasionally the spotted woodpecker may be seen here, a little bird
which, in the height of summer, is lost among the foliage, but in spring
and winter can be observed tapping at the branches of the trees.

I think I have seen more spotted woodpeckers near London than in far
distant and nominally wilder districts. This lane, for some two miles,
is lined on each side with trees, and, besides this particular copse,
there are several others close by; indeed, stretching across the country
to another road, there is a succession of copses, with meadows between.
Birds which love trees are naturally seen flitting to and fro in the
lane; the trees are at present young, but as they grow older and decay
they will be still more resorted to.