The mother hare is wise to separate her family. Many dangers threaten the leveret's life; but if families were kept together the young ones would be even more open to attack from rooks and crows, and scent-hunting vermin in fur. The leveret with its eyes pecked out by a rook, yet still living, is a sight which pleads for the mercy of a swift death at the gamekeeper's hands. The mother hare is keenly alive to the dangers besetting her family. If you find a leveret one day nestling in a tuft of grass, or against a clod of earth, whether or not you handle it the mother will certainly remove it before the morrow. She will wind danger in your scent. * * * * * Starving Birds The old name for March, "Starvation Month," is usually justified, if winter, with snow, carries on into March. Countless birds die of starvation. After a hard winter there is little food to be found; but large berries remain a long time on some of the ivy bushes, and come into favour among robins and blackbirds. There has been little green growth since September, though the larger celandine shows bigger leaves, coltsfoot is out, wild arum leaves are green in the hedges, and there is green growth on elder-bushes, woodbine, privet, and brier bushes. Insect life for food is of negligible quantity: though myriads of gnats may be hatched by the sun, they are poor eating. Of flowers there are hardly any, and the sparrow, pecking at the crocuses in his need, earns the hatred of gardeners. It is a time of hunger with many animals awakening out of sleep; with the field-voles uncurling from their beds of grass, and with the hedgehogs shaking themselves free of their balls of leaves. A new activity is stirring, birds are living at pressure, many animals have young, hundreds of birds come in daily from overseas--but supplies for all seem at the lowest ebb. * * * * * The Egg of Eggs