Twice Only Have I Deliberately Tried To Run
Down, To Tread On Coat-Tails So To Speak, Of Any Wild
Creature.
One was a weasel, the other a stoat, running along
at a hedge-side before me.
In both instances, just as the
front wheel was touching the tail, the little flat-headed
rascal swerved quickly aside and escaped.
Even some of the less common and less tame birds care as
little for a man on a bicycle as they do for a cow. Not long
ago a peewit trotted leisurely across the road not more than
ten yards from my front wheel; and on the same day I came upon
a green woodpecker enjoying a dust-bath in the public road.
He declined to stir until I stopped to watch him, then merely
flew about a dozen yards away and attached himself to the
trunk of a fir tree at the roadside and waited there for me to
go. Never in all my wanderings afoot had I seen a yaffingale
dusting himself like a barn-door fowl!
It is not seriously contended that birds can be observed
narrowly in this easy way; but even for the most conscientious
field naturalist the wheel has its advantages. It carries him
quickly over much barren ground and gives him a better view of
the country he traverses; finally, it enables him to see more
birds. He will sometimes see thousands in a day where,
walking, he would hardly have seen hundreds, and there is joy
in mere numbers.
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