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In this debatable land of the pasture, this Tom Tiddler’s ground where the fight between man and the encroaching wilderness goes yearly in favor of the wilderness, dwell the pasture people. The woodchuck, the rabbit, and even the fox have their burrows here, the woodchuck and the rabbit finding the farmer’s clover field and garden patch a convenient foraging ground, the fox finding the chicken coop and the rabbit equally convenient.

The pasture is the happy hunting-ground of the hawks and owls, though they dwell by preference in the deep wood, the nearer approaching to the forest primeval the better, but the crow often nests in a pine among a group of several in the pasture. The pasture is peculiarly the home of scores of varieties of what one might term the half wild birds, the thrushes from honest robin down to the catbird, warblers, finches, and a host of others who are as shy of the deep woods as they are of the highway; and here, in those magic hours that come between the first faint flush of dawn and sunrise, you may hear the full chorus of their matins swell in triumphant jubilation.