Animal and bird life was not absent.

Shy bunnies whisked away, showing a dab of white tail as they dived under the bracken; a splendid squirrel ran across the path and darted up an oak tree, a wood-pigeon whirred from a pine top, a great woodpecker, scared by their approach, started from the bushes and flew past them so near that they could see the green flash of its wings and the red markings on its head, while a whole fluttering flight of long-tailed tits were flitting like a troop of fairies round the hole of a lichen-covered beech.
Miss Lever was as enthusiastic as the girls; she climbed over fallen tree trunks, grubbed among dead leaves, jumped the brook and scaled fences with delightful energy.

It was she who pointed out the heron sailing overhead, and noticed the gold-crested wren's nest hanging under the branch of a fir, a little battered with autumn rain, and too high, alas! to be taken, but a most interesting item to go down in the note-books.

The girls could hardly be persuaded to tear themselves away from the glory of the woods, and would have spent the whole time there, but Miss Lever had other plans.
"Come along! We've scared the pheasants quite enough," she declared.

"My mind is set on fossils, and if we don't go on to Copplestones at once we shall be caught in the dark, or miss our tea or our train or something equally disagreeable." The quarry was only half a mile away, and it proved as interesting as the wood.