"The , that common small hawk, may also be known and instantly distinguished from the — which is more of a woodland bird — by it manner of hovering in the air. The sparrow-hawk glides along, dashes round bushes, sweeps over a hedge and disappears; but the kestrel mounts to a fair height, quivers its wings, spreads its tail like a fan and hangs poised in mid-arie for what seems to the watcher a considerable time. It is watching for s in the herbage below."
Frances Pitt was a British naturalist, author and a pioneer of wildlife photography. She wrote many books and numerous popular articles in periodicals on the lives of many wild animals by observations in the wild and in the process of raising and nursing injured animals. She lived at "The Albynes", Shropshire, three miles south of Bridgnorth from 1903 until 1958 when she moved to Castle House, Har
", to say a person "carries the horn" signifies that he hunts the pack. It is often said of a that he "carries the horn," meaning that he acts as , or contrawise that he "does not carry the horn" which means he employs a huntsman to hunt hounds for him."
"The are undoubtedly direct descendants of the " forest bulls " of Norman times, but we have no evidence to prove, and a good deal to disprove, that these were the aboriginal wild cattle. The animals which roamed about the country in the Middle Ages, and which evidently were wild and fierce enough, were not the original indigenous species, the that was common during the , but merely " gone wild " or feral beasts that had escaped from domestication. Far from being of pure primigenius descent, they were certainly related to the tiny Bos longifrons, otherwise the Celtic shorthorn. This was the domestic breed of the Neolithic and early Celtic peoples. The existing , and are its descendants. It was the only domestic ox known in these islands up to the time of the Romans, but afterwards became mixed with larger breeds of the Urus type that were brought over by the Romans, Saxons, Danes, Normans, etc."
"The Greater Spotted, like all the woodpeckers, lays pure white eggs, with the faintest flush of pink from the yolk showing through the thin shell. The colourlessness of tis eggs is a characteristic that the woodpecker shares in common with most other birds that nest in holes and dark places. Colour in eggs is usually associated with exposed nesting sites, and apparently serves to camouflage the dainty morsels from the hungry gaze of the many creatures that are always ready to raid a nest. In a dark hole colour is useless, and it is a significant fact that the eggs of the majority of birds that nest in holes are white."
"It is because they kill the tiresome mice that people should not shoot, or trap, or allow the eggs to be taken, of hawks and owls. Owls, and the in particular, live almost entirely on mice and young rats, and when we kill a (the barn owl is the white owl which files about so silently over the fields) we are allowing hundreds of mice to live and thrive and eat our things."
"There are many ferocious predators in the , such as that carnivorous monster the and the bloodthirsty , with its equally predatory grub."
"... has no place beneath the trees nor where the fresh winds blow. Hunt and be hunted is the rule of wild life."