Fairy tales about nature are a pantry of kindness and wisdom. Stories about the nature of Russian writers A work about nature for children
Mikhail Prishvin "Forest Master"
That was on a sunny day, otherwise I’ll tell you how it was in the forest just before the rain. There was such silence, there was such tension in anticipation of the first drops, that it seemed that every leaf, every needle tried to be the first and catch the first drop of rain. And so it became in the forest, as if each smallest essence received its own, separate expression.
So I go in to them at this time, and it seems to me: they all, like people, turned their faces to me and, out of their stupidity, they ask me, like a god, for rain.
“Come on, old man,” I ordered the rain, “you will torment us all, go, go, start!”
But the rain did not listen to me this time, and I remembered my new straw hat: it will rain - and my hat is gone. But then, thinking about the hat, I saw an unusual Christmas tree. She grew up, of course, in the shade, and that is why her branches were once lowered down. Now, after selective felling, she found herself in the light, and each branch of her began to grow upwards. Probably, the lower boughs would have risen over time, but these branches, having touched the ground, released their roots and clung ... So, under the tree with the branches raised up below, a good hut turned out. Having cut the spruce branches, I compacted it, made an entrance, and laid the seat below. And as soon as I sat down to start a new conversation with the rain, as I see, it is burning very close against me a big tree. I quickly grabbed a spruce branch from the hut, gathered it into a broom and, quilting over the burning place, little by little extinguished the fire before the flame burned through the bark of the tree around and thus made it impossible for the juice to flow.
Around the tree, the place was not burned by a fire, cows were not grazed here, and there could not be undershepherds on which everyone blamed for the fires. Remembering my childhood robber years, I realized that the tar on the tree was most likely set on fire by some boy out of mischief, out of curiosity to see how the tar would burn. As I descended into my childhood years, I imagined how pleasant it was to strike a match and set fire to a tree.
It became clear to me that the pest, when the tar caught fire, suddenly saw me and disappeared immediately somewhere in the nearest bushes. Then, pretending that I was continuing my way, whistling, I left the place of the fire and, having taken several dozen steps along the clearing, jumped into the bushes and returned to the old place and also hid.
I did not have long to wait for the robber. A fair-haired boy of seven or eight years old came out of the bush, with a reddish sunny bake, bold, open eyes, half-naked and with excellent build. He looked hostilely in the direction of the clearing where I had gone, picked up a fir cone and, wanting to throw it at me, swung so hard that he even turned over around himself.
This didn't bother him; on the contrary, like a real master of the forests, he put both hands in his pockets, began to look at the place of the fire and said:
- Come out, Zina, he's gone!
A girl came out, a little older, a little taller, and with a large basket in her hand.
“Zina,” the boy said, “you know what?
Zina looked at him with large calm eyes and answered simply:
— No, Vasya, I don't know.
- Where are you! said the owner of the forests. “I want to tell you: if that person hadn’t come, if he hadn’t put out the fire, then, perhaps, the whole forest would have burned down from this tree.” If only we could have a look!
- You are fool! Zina said.
“True, Zina,” I said, “I thought of something to brag about, a real fool!”
And as soon as I said these words, the perky owner of the forests suddenly, as they say, "flee away."
And Zina, apparently, did not even think of answering for the robber, she calmly looked at me, only her eyebrows rose a little in surprise.
At the sight of such a reasonable girl, I wanted to turn the whole story into a joke, win her over and then work together on the master of the forests.
Just at this time, the tension of all sentient beings waiting for rain reached its extreme.
“Zina,” I said, “look how all the leaves, all the blades of grass are waiting for the rain. There, the hare cabbage even climbed onto the stump to capture the first drops.
The girl liked my joke, she graciously smiled at me.
- Well, old man, - I said to the rain, - you will torment us all, start, let's go!
And this time the rain obeyed, went. And the girl seriously, thoughtfully focused on me and pursed her lips, as if she wanted to say: “Jokes are jokes, but still it started to rain.”
“Zina,” I said hurriedly, “tell me, what do you have in that big basket?”
She showed: there were two white mushrooms. We put my new hat in the basket, covered it with a fern, and headed out of the rain to my hut. Having broken another spruce branch, we covered it well and climbed in.
“Vasya,” the girl shouted. - It will fool, come out!
And the owner of the forests, driven by the pouring rain, did not hesitate to appear.
As soon as the boy sat down next to us and wanted to say something, I raised my index finger and ordered the owner:
- No hoo-hoo!
And all three of us froze.
It is impossible to convey the delights of being in the forest under the Christmas tree during a warm summer rain. A crested hazel grouse, driven by the rain, burst into the middle of our thick Christmas tree and sat down right above the hut. Quite in sight under a branch, a finch settled down. The hedgehog has arrived. A hare hobbled past. And for a long time the rain whispered and whispered something to our tree. And we sat for a long time, and everything was as if the real owner of the forests was whispering to each of us separately, whispering, whispering ...
Mikhail Prishvin "Dead Tree"
When the rain passed and everything around sparkled, we went out of the forest along the path broken by the feet of passers-by. At the very exit, there was a huge and once mighty tree that had seen more than one generation of people. Now it stood completely dead, it was, as the foresters say, "dead."
Looking around this tree, I said to the children:
“Perhaps a passer-by, wanting to rest here, stuck an ax into this tree and hung his heavy bag on the ax. After that, the tree got sick and began to heal the wound with resin. Or maybe, fleeing from the hunter, a squirrel hid in the dense crown of this tree, and the hunter, in order to drive it out of the shelter, began to knock on the trunk with a heavy log. Sometimes just one blow is enough to make a tree sick.
And many, many things can happen to a tree, as well as to a person and to any living creature, from which the disease will be taken. Or maybe lightning struck?
It started with something, and the tree began to fill its wound with resin. When the tree began to fall ill, the worm, of course, found out about it. The bark climbed under the bark and began to sharpen there. In its own way, the woodpecker somehow found out about the worm and, in search of a stub, began to hollow out a tree here and there. Will you find it soon? And then, perhaps, it’s so that while the woodpecker is hammering and gouging so that it could be grabbed by him, the stump will advance at that time, and the forest carpenter needs to hammer again. And not just one shorthand, and not one woodpecker too. This is how woodpeckers hammer a tree, and the tree, weakening, fills everything with resin.
Now look around the tree at the traces of fires and understand: people walk along this path, stop here to rest and, despite the ban on making fires in the forest, they collect firewood and set it on fire. And in order to quickly kindle, they cut off a resinous crust from a tree. So, little by little, from the cutting, a white ring formed around the tree, the upward movement of the juices stopped, and the tree withered. Now tell me, who is to blame for the death of a beautiful tree that has stood for at least two centuries in place: disease, lightning, stalks, woodpeckers?
- A shorthand! Vasya said quickly.
And, looking at Zina, he corrected himself:
The children were probably very friendly, and fast Vasya was used to reading the truth from the face of the calm, clever Zina. So, probably, he would have licked the truth from her face this time, but I asked her:
- And you, Zinochka, what do you think, my dear daughter?
The girl put her hand around her mouth, looked at me with intelligent eyes, as at school at a teacher, and answered:
“Maybe people are to blame.
“People, people are to blame,” I picked up after her.
And, like a real teacher, I told them about everything, as I think for myself: that the woodpeckers and the squiggle are not to blame, because they have neither a human mind nor a conscience that illuminates the guilt in a person; that each of us will be born a master of nature, but only has to learn a lot to understand the forest in order to get the right to dispose of it and become a real master of the forest.
I didn’t forget to tell about myself that I still study constantly and without any plan or idea, I don’t interfere in anything in the forest.
Here I did not forget to tell about my recent discovery of fiery arrows, and about how I spared even one cobweb.
After that, we left the forest, and it always happens to me now: in the forest I behave like a student, and I leave the forest as a teacher.
Mikhail Prishvin "Forest floors"
Birds and animals in the forest have their own floors: mice live in the roots - at the very bottom; various birds, like the nightingale, build their nests right on the ground; thrushes - even higher, on bushes; hollow birds - woodpecker, titmouse, owls - even higher; at different heights along the tree trunk and at the very top, predators settle: hawks and eagles.
I once had to observe in the forest that they, animals and birds, with floors are not like ours in skyscrapers: we can always change with someone, with them each breed certainly lives on its own floor.
Once, while hunting, we came to a clearing with dead birches. It often happens that birch trees grow to a certain age and dry up.
Another tree, having dried up, drops its bark on the ground, and therefore the uncovered wood soon rots and the whole tree falls, while the bark of a birch does not fall; this resinous, white bark on the outside - birch bark - is an impenetrable case for a tree, and a dead tree stands for a long time, like a living one.
Even when the tree rots and the wood turns into dust, weighed down by moisture, in appearance White birch stands as if alive. But it is worthwhile, however, to give such a tree a good push, when suddenly it will break everything into heavy pieces and fall. Felling such trees is a very fun activity, but also dangerous: a piece of wood, if you don’t dodge it, can really hit you on the head. But still, we, hunters, are not very afraid, and when we get to such birches, we begin to destroy them in front of each other.
So we came to a clearing with such birches and brought down a rather tall birch. Falling, in the air it broke into several pieces, and in one of them there was a hollow with a nest of a Gadget. Little chicks were not injured when the tree fell, only fell out of the hollow together with their nest. Naked chicks, covered with feathers, opened wide red mouths and, mistaking us for parents, squeaked and asked us for a worm. We dug up the earth, found worms, gave them a snack, they ate, swallowed and squeaked again.
Very soon, parents flew in, titmouse, with white puffy cheeks and worms in their mouths, sat on nearby trees.
“Hello, dear ones,” we said to them, “misfortune has come; we didn't want that.
The Gadgets could not answer us, but, most importantly, they could not understand what had happened, where the tree had gone, where their children had disappeared. They were not at all afraid of us, fluttering from branch to branch in great alarm.
- Yes, here they are! We showed them the nest on the ground. - Here they are, listen how they squeak, what your name is!
Gadgets did not listen to anything, fussed, worried and did not want to go downstairs and go beyond their floor.
“Maybe,” we said to each other, “they are afraid of us. Let's hide! - And they hid.
Not! The chicks squeaked, the parents squeaked, fluttered, but did not go down.
We guessed then that the birds are not like ours in skyscrapers, they cannot change floors: now it just seems to them that the whole floor with their chicks has disappeared.
“Oh-oh-oh,” said my companion, “well, what fools you are! ..
It became a pity and funny: they are so nice and with wings, but they don’t want to understand anything.
Then we took that large piece in which the nest was located, broke the top of the neighboring birch and put our piece with the nest on it just at the same height as the destroyed floor.
We did not have to wait long in ambush: in a few minutes, happy parents met their chicks.
Mikhail Prishvin "Old Starling"
The starlings hatched and flew away, and their place in the birdhouse has long been occupied by sparrows. But until now, on the same apple tree, on a good dewy morning, an old starling flies and sings.
That's strange!
It would seem that everything is already over, the female brought out the chicks long ago, the cubs grew up and flew away...
Why does the old starling fly every morning to the apple tree where his spring passed, and sing?
Mikhail Prishvin "Spider Web"
It was a sunny day, so bright that the rays penetrated even into the darkest forest. I walked forward along such a narrow clearing that some trees on one side were bent over to the other, and this tree whispered something with its leaves to another tree on the other side. The wind was very weak, but still it was: and aspens babbled above, and below, as always, the ferns swayed importantly.
Suddenly I noticed: from side to side across the clearing, from left to right, some small fiery arrows constantly fly here and there. As always in such cases, I concentrated my attention on the arrows and soon noticed that the movement of the arrows was in the wind, from left to right.
I also noticed that on the Christmas trees their usual shoots-paws came out of their orange shirts and the wind blew away these unnecessary shirts from each tree in a great multitude: each new paw on the Christmas tree was born in an orange shirt, and now how many paws, so many shirts flew off - thousands, millions...
I could see how one of these flying shirts met with one of the flying arrows and suddenly hung in the air, and the arrow disappeared.
I realized then that the shirt was hanging on a cobweb invisible to me, and this gave me the opportunity to go point-blank to the cobweb and fully understand the phenomenon of the arrows: the wind blows the cobweb to the sunbeam, the brilliant cobweb flares up from the light, and from this it seems as if the arrow is flying.
At the same time, I realized that there were a great many of these cobwebs stretched across the clearing, and, therefore, if I walked, I tore them, without knowing it, by the thousands.
It seemed to me that I had such an important goal - to learn in the forest to be its real master - that I had the right to tear all the cobwebs and make all the forest spiders work for my goal. But for some reason I spared this cobweb that I noticed: after all, it was she who, thanks to the shirt hanging on her, helped me unravel the phenomenon of arrows.
Was I cruel, tearing thousands of cobwebs?
Not at all: I did not see them - my cruelty was the result of my physical strength.
Was I merciful in bending my weary back to save the gossamer? I don’t think: in the forest I behave like a student, and if I could, I wouldn’t touch anything.
I attribute the salvation of this cobweb to the action of my concentrated attention.
The tree with its upper whorl, like a palm, took away the falling snow, and such a lump grew from this that the top of the birch began to bend. And it happened that during the thaw snow fell again and stuck to that coma, and the upper branch with a lump arched the whole tree, until, finally, the top with that huge lump sank into the snow on the ground and was thus fixed until spring itself. Animals and people occasionally skied under this arch all winter. Nearby, proud firs looked down on the bent birch, as people born to command look at their subordinates.
In the spring, the birch returned to those firs, and if this one especially snowy winter she would not bend, then in winter and summer she would remain among the fir trees, but since she was already bent, now with the smallest snow she leaned over and in the end, without fail every year, leaned over the path like an arch.
It is terrible to enter a young forest in a snowy winter: but it is impossible to enter. Where in the summer I walked along a wide path, now bent trees lie across this path, and so low that only a hare can run under them ...
Chanterelle bread
Once I walked in the forest all day and returned home in the evening with rich booty. He took off his heavy bag from his shoulders and began to spread his belongings on the table.
What is this bird? - asked Zinochka.
Terenty, I replied.
And he told her about the black grouse: how he lives in the forest, how he mumbles in the spring, how he pecks at birch buds, picks berries in the swamps in autumn, warms himself from the wind under the snow in winter. He also told her about the hazel grouse, showed her that he was grey, with a tuft, and whistled into a pipe in a hazel grouse and let her whistle. I also poured a lot of porcini mushrooms, both red and black, on the table. I also had a bloody boneberry in my pocket, and blueberries, and red lingonberries. I also brought with me a fragrant lump of pine resin, gave the girl a sniff and said that trees are treated with this resin.
Who is treating them? - asked Zinochka.
Healing himself, I replied. - It happens that a hunter will come, he wants to rest, he will stick an ax into a tree and hang a bag on an ax, and he will lie down under a tree. Sleep, rest. He will take out an ax from a tree, put on a bag, and leave. And from the wound from the ax made of wood, this fragrant tar will run and this wound will be tightened.
Also on purpose for Zinochka, I brought various wonderful herbs by leaf, by root, by flower: cuckoo's tears, valerian, Peter's cross, hare cabbage. And just under the hare cabbage I had a piece of black bread: it always happens to me that when I don’t take bread to the forest, I’m hungry, but I take it, I forget to eat it and bring it back. And Zinochka, when she saw black bread under my hare cabbage, was stunned:
Where did the bread come from in the forest?
What is surprising here? After all, there is cabbage there!
Hare...
And the bread is chanterelle. Taste. Carefully tasted and began to eat:
Good fox bread!
And ate all my black bread clean. And so it went with us: Zinochka, such a copula, often doesn’t even take white bread, but when I bring fox bread from the forest, she always eats it all and praises:
Chanterelle's bread is much better than ours!
blue shadows
Silence resumed, frosty and bright. Yesterday's powder lies on the crust, like powder with sparkling sparkles. Nast does not fall anywhere and on the field, in the sun, it holds even better than in the shade. Each bush of the old wormwood, burdock, blade of grass, blade of grass, as in a mirror, looks into this sparkling powder and sees itself as blue and beautiful.
quiet snow
They say about silence: "Quieter than water, lower than grass..." But what could be quieter than falling snow! It snowed all day yesterday, and it was as if it had brought silence from heaven ... And every sound only intensified it: the rooster bellowed, the crow called, the woodpecker drummed, the jay sang with all voices, but the silence grew from all this. What silence, what grace.
clear ice
It's good to look at that clear ice where the frost did not make flowers and did not cover the water with them. Seen like a stream underneath that the thinnest ice drives huge herd bubbles, and drives them out from under the ice into open water, and rushes them with great speed, as if he really needs them somewhere and needs to have time to drive them all to one place.
Zhurka
Once we had it, we caught a young crane and gave it a frog. He swallowed it. Gave another - swallowed. The third, fourth, fifth, and then we didn’t have more frogs at hand.
Good girl! - said my wife and asked me; How much can he eat? Ten maybe?
Ten, I say, maybe.
What if twenty?
Twenty, I say, hardly...
We clipped the wings of this crane, and he began to follow his wife everywhere. She is milking a cow - and Zhurka is with her, she is in the garden - and Zhurka needs to go there ... His wife has got used to him ... and without him she is already bored, without him nowhere. But only if it happens - he is not there, only one thing will shout: “Fru-fru!”, And he runs to her. Such a smart one!
This is how the crane lives with us, and its clipped wings keep growing and growing.
Once the wife went down to the swamp for water, and Zhurka followed her. A small frog sat by the well and jumped from Zhurka into the swamp. Zhurka is behind him, and the water is deep, and you can’t reach the frog from the shore. Mach-mach wings Zhurka and suddenly flew. The wife gasped - and after him. Swing your arms, but you can't get up. And in tears, and to us: “Ah, ah, what a grief! Ahah!" We all ran to the well. We see - Zhurka is far away, sitting in the middle of our swamp.
Fru fru! I scream.
And all the guys behind me are also screaming:
Fru fru!
And so smart! As soon as he heard this our “frou-frou”, now he flapped his wings and flew in. Here the wife does not remember herself for joy, she tells the guys to run after the frogs as soon as possible. This year there were a lot of frogs, the guys soon scored two caps. The guys brought frogs, began to give and count. They gave five - he swallowed, they gave ten - he swallowed, twenty and thirty, - and so he swallowed forty-three frogs at a time.
squirrel memory
Today, looking at the tracks of animals and birds in the snow, this is what I read from these tracks: a squirrel made its way through the snow into the moss, got two nuts hidden there since autumn, ate them right away - I found the shells. Then she ran a dozen meters, dived again, again left the shell on the snow and after a few meters she made the third climb.
What a miracle You can't think that she could smell a nut through a thick layer of snow and ice. So, since the fall, she remembered her nuts and the exact distance between them.
But the most surprising thing is that she could not measure centimeters, as we do, but right on the eye with accuracy determined, dived and pulled out. Well, how could you not envy squirrel memory and ingenuity!
forest doctor
We wandered in the spring in the forest and observed the life of hollow birds: woodpeckers, owls. Suddenly, in the direction where we had previously planned an interesting tree, we heard the sound of a saw. It was, we were told, cutting firewood from deadwood for a glass factory. We were afraid for our tree, hurried to the sound of the saw, but it was too late: our aspen lay, and around its stump there were many empty fir cones. The woodpecker peeled all this over the long winter, collected it, wore it on this aspen, laid it between two bitches of his workshop and hollowed it out. Near the stump, on our cut aspen, two boys were only engaged in sawing the forest.
Oh you pranksters! - we said and pointed them to the cut aspen. - You are ordered dead trees, and what did you do?
The woodpecker made holes, - the guys answered. - We looked and, of course, sawed off. It will still disappear.
They all began to examine the tree together. It was quite fresh, and only in a small space, no more than a meter in length, did a worm pass through the trunk. The woodpecker, obviously, listened to the aspen like a doctor: he tapped it with his beak, understood the void left by the worm, and proceeded to the operation of extracting the worm. And the second time, and the third, and the fourth... The thin aspen trunk looked like a flute with valves. Seven holes were made by the "surgeon" and only on the eighth he captured the worm, pulled out and saved the aspen.
We carved this piece as a wonderful exhibit for the museum.
You see, - we told the guys, - a woodpecker is a forest doctor, he saved the aspen, and she would live and live, and you cut her off.
The boys marveled.
white necklace
I heard in Siberia, near Lake Baikal, from one citizen about a bear and, I confess, I did not believe it. But he assured me that in the old days, even in a Siberian magazine, this incident was published under the title: "A Man with a Bear Against Wolves."
There lived one watchman on the shore of Lake Baikal, he caught fish, shot squirrels. And once, as if he sees this watchman through the window, he runs straight to the hut A big bear followed by a pack of wolves. That would be the end of the bear. He, this bear, don’t be bad, in the hallway, the door behind him closed itself, and he also leaned on her paw himself. The old man, realizing this matter, took the rifle from the wall and said:
- Misha, Misha, hold on!
The wolves climb on the door, and the old man aims the wolf out the window and repeats:
- Misha, Misha, hold on!
So he killed one wolf, and another, and a third, all the while saying:
- Misha, Misha, hold on!
After the third flock fled, and the bear remained in the hut to spend the winter under the protection of the old man. In the spring, when the bears come out of their lairs, the old man seemed to put a white necklace on this bear and ordered all the hunters not to shoot this bear - with a white necklace - this bear is his friend.
Belyak
Direct wet snow pressed down on the branches all night in the forest, broke off, fell, rustled.
A rustle drove the white hare out of the forest, and he probably realized that by morning the black field would turn white and that he, completely white, could lie quietly. And he lay down in the field not far from the forest, and not far from it, also like a hare, lay weathered over the summer and whitewashed. sunbeams horse skull.
By dawn the whole field was covered, and both the white hare and the white skull disappeared into the white immensity.
We were a little late, and when the hound was released, the tracks had already begun to blur.
When Osman began to sort out the fat, it was still difficult to distinguish the shape of a hare paw from a hare: he walked along a hare. But before Osman had time to straighten the track, everything completely melted on the white path, and then there was no sight or smell left on the black one.
We gave up on hunting and began to return home at the edge of the forest.
“Look through binoculars,” I said to my friend, “that it is whitening there on a black field and so bright.
“Horse skull, head,” he replied.
I took the binoculars from him and also saw the skull.
“Something is still whitening there,” said the comrade, “look to the left.”
I looked there, and there, too, like a skull, bright white, lay a hare, and through prismatic binoculars one could even see black eyes on the white. He was in a desperate situation: to lie down was to be visible to everyone, to run was to leave a printed mark on the soft wet ground for the dog. We stopped his hesitation: we raised him, and at the same moment, Osman, having seen, with a wild roar, set off on the sighted man.
Swamp
I know that few people sat in the swamps in early spring, waiting for the grouse current, and I have few words to even hint at all the splendor of the bird concert in the swamps before sunrise. Often I noticed that the first note in this concerto, far from the very first hint of light, is taken by the curlew. This is a very thin trill, completely different from the well-known whistle. Later, when the white partridges cry, the black grouse and the current grouse chirp, sometimes near the hut itself, it starts its mumbling, then it’s not up to the curlew, but then at sunrise at the most solemn moment you will certainly pay attention to the new curlew song, very cheerful and similar to dancing: this dancing is as necessary for meeting the sun as the cry of a crane.
Once I saw from a hut how, among the black mass of rooster, a gray curlew, a female, settled down on a tussock; a male flew up to her and, supporting himself in the air with the flapping of his large wings, touched the back of the female with his feet and sang his dance song. Here, of course, the whole air trembled from the singing of all the swamp birds, and, I remember, the puddle, in complete calm, was all agitated by the multitude of insects that had awakened in it.
The sight of the curlew's very long and crooked beak always transports my imagination to a bygone time, when there was no man on earth yet. Yes, and everything in the swamps is so strange, the swamps are little studied, not at all touched by artists, in them you always feel as if a person on earth has not yet begun.
One evening I went out into the swamps to wash the dogs. Very steamy after the rain before the new rain. The dogs, with their tongues out, ran and from time to time lay down, like pigs, on their belly in the swamp puddles. It can be seen that the youth has not yet hatched and has not got out of the supports on open space, and in our places, overflowing with marsh game, now the dogs could not get used to anything and, in idleness, were worried even from flying crows. Suddenly a large bird appeared, began to scream in alarm and describe large circles around us. Another Curlew flew in and also began to circle with a cry, the third, obviously from another family, crossed the circle of these two, calmed down and disappeared. I needed to get a curlew egg to my collection, and, counting on the fact that the circles of birds would certainly decrease if I approached the nest, and increase if I moved away, I began, as in a blindfolded game, to wander through the swamp by sounds. So little by little, when the low sun became huge and red in the warm, abundant marsh vapors, I felt the proximity of the nest: the birds screamed unbearably and rushed so close to me that in the red sun I clearly saw their long, crooked, open for a constant alarming screaming noses. Finally, both dogs, grabbing with their upper senses, made a stance. I went in the direction of their eyes and noses and saw, right on a yellow dry strip of moss, near a tiny bush, without any devices or cover, lying two big eggs. Having ordered the dogs to lie down, I happily looked around me, the mosquitoes were biting hard, but I got used to them.
How good it was for me in impregnable marshes, and how far away the earth blew from these big birds with long crooked noses, on bent wings crossing the disk of the red sun!
I was about to bend down to the ground to take one of those big beautiful eggs for myself, when I suddenly noticed that a man was walking straight towards me in the swamp far away. He had neither a gun, nor a dog, and even a stick in his hand, there was no way for anyone from here, and I did not know people like me, who, like me, could wander through the swamp with pleasure under a swarm of mosquitoes. I felt as unpleasant as if, combing my hair in front of a mirror and making some special mug at the same time, I suddenly noticed someone else's studying eye in the mirror. I even stepped aside from the nest and did not take the eggs, so that this man would not frighten me with his questions, I felt this, dear moment of being. I told the dogs to get up and led them to the hump. There I sat down on a gray stone so covered with yellow lichens that it did not sit down coldly. The birds, as soon as I moved away, increased their circles, but I could no longer follow them with joy. Anxiety was born in my soul from the approach stranger. I could already see him: elderly, very thin, walking slowly, carefully watching the flight of birds. I felt better when I noticed that he changed direction and went to another hill, where he sat down on a stone, and also turned to stone. I even felt pleased that there was sitting there just like me, a man reverently listening to the evening. It seemed that we understood each other perfectly without any words, and there were no words for this. With redoubled attention I watched the birds cross the red disk of the sun; At the same time, my thoughts about the terms of the earth and about such a short history of mankind were strangely disposed; how, however, everything soon passed.
The sun has set. I looked back at my friend, but he was gone. The birds calmed down, obviously, sat on their nests. Then, having ordered the dogs to slink back, I began to approach the nest with inaudible steps: would it be possible, I thought, to see interesting birds up close. From the bush, I knew exactly where the nest was, and I was very surprised how close the birds let me. Finally, I got close to the bush itself and froze in surprise: behind the bush everything was empty. I touched the moss with my palm: it was still warm from the warm eggs lying on it.
I just looked at the eggs, and the birds, afraid of the human eye, hurried to hide them away.
Verkhoplavka
A golden network of sunbeams trembles on the water. Dark blue dragonflies in reeds and horsetail herringbones. And each dragonfly has its own horsetail tree or reed: it will fly off and will certainly return to it.
Crazy crows brought out the chicks and now they are sitting and resting.
The smallest leaf, on a cobweb, went down to the river and now it is spinning, it is spinning.
So I ride quietly down the river in my boat, and my boat is a little heavier than this leaf, made of fifty-two sticks and covered with canvas. There is only one paddle for it - a long stick, and at the ends there is a spatula. Dip each spatula alternately on both sides. Such a light boat that no effort is needed: he touched the water with a spatula, and the boat floats, and floats so inaudibly that the fish are not at all afraid.
What, what you just don’t see when you quietly ride on such a boat along the river!
Here a rook, flying over the river, dropped into the water, and this lime-white drop, tapping on the water, immediately attracted the attention of small top-melting fish. In an instant, a real bazaar gathered from top melters around a rook drop. Noticing this gathering, large predator- the shelesper fish - swam up and grab the water with its tail with such force that the stunned topfins turned upside down. They would come to life in a minute, but the shelesper is not some kind of fool, he knows that it does not happen so often that a rook will drip and so many fools will gather around one drop: grab one, grab another - he ate a lot, and which ones managed to get out , henceforth they will live like scientists, and if something good drips from above, they will look both ways, something bad would not come to them from below.
talking rook
I will tell you an incident that happened to me in a hungry year. A yellow-mouthed young rook got into the habit of flying to me on the windowsill. Apparently, he was an orphan. And at that time I had a whole bag of buckwheat. I ate buckwheat porridge all the time. Here, it happened, a rook would fly in, I would sprinkle cereals on him and ask;
Do you want some porridge, fool?
It pecks and flies away. And so every day, all month. I want to ensure that my question: "Do you want porridge, fool?", He would say: "I want."
And he only opens his yellow nose and shows his red tongue.
Well, okay, - I got angry and abandoned my studies.
By autumn I was in trouble. I climbed into the chest for grits, but there was nothing there. This is how the thieves cleaned it: half a cucumber was on a plate, and that one was taken away. I went to bed hungry. Spinning all night. In the morning I looked in the mirror, my face was all green.
"Knock, knock!" - someone at the window.
On the windowsill, a rook hammers at the glass.
"Here comes the meat!" - I had a thought.
I open the window - and grab it! And he jumped from me to a tree. I'm out the window behind him to the bitch. He is taller. I'm climbing. He is taller and on top of his head. I can't go there; swings a lot. He, the rogue, looks at me from above and says:
Ho-chesh, porridge-ki, du-rush-ka?
Hedgehog
Once I was walking along the bank of our stream and noticed a hedgehog under a bush. He also noticed me, curled up and mumbled: knock-knock-knock. It was very similar, as if a car was moving in the distance. I touched him with the tip of my boot - he snorted terribly and pushed his needles into the boot.
Ah, you are so with me! - I said and pushed him into the stream with the tip of my boot.
Instantly, the hedgehog turned around in the water and swam to the shore like a small pig, only instead of bristles on its back there were needles. I took a stick, rolled the hedgehog into my hat and carried it home.
I have had many mice. I heard - the hedgehog catches them, and decided: let him live with me and catch mice.
So I put this prickly lump in the middle of the floor and sat down to write, while I myself looked at the hedgehog out of the corner of my eye. He did not lie motionless for a long time: as soon as I calmed down at the table, the hedgehog turned around, looked around, tried to go there, here, finally chose a place for himself under the bed and there completely calmed down.
When it got dark, I lit the lamp, and - hello! - the hedgehog ran out from under the bed. He, of course, thought to the lamp that it was the moon that had risen in the forest: in the moonlight, hedgehogs like to run through the forest clearings.
And so he started running around the room, imagining that this forest glade.
I picked up the pipe, lit a cigarette and let a cloud near the moon. It became just like in the forest: the moon and the cloud, and my legs were like tree trunks and, probably, the hedgehog really liked it: he darted between them, sniffing and scratching the backs of my boots with needles.
After reading the newspaper, I dropped it on the floor, went to bed and fell asleep.
I always sleep very lightly. I hear some rustling in my room. He struck a match, lit a candle, and only noticed how a hedgehog flashed under the bed. And the newspaper was no longer lying near the table, but in the middle of the room. So I left the candle burning and I myself do not sleep, thinking:
“Why did the hedgehog need a newspaper?” Soon my tenant ran out from under the bed - and straight to the newspaper; spun around her, made noise, made noise, finally managed: he somehow put a corner of the newspaper on the thorns and dragged it, huge, into injection.
Then I understood him: the newspaper was like dry leaves in the forest, he dragged it to himself for a nest. And it turned out to be true: soon the hedgehog all turned into a newspaper and made a real nest out of it. Having finished this important business, he went out of his dwelling and stood opposite the bed, looking at the candle-moon.
I let the clouds in and I ask:
What else do you need? The hedgehog was not afraid.
Do you want to drink?
I wake up. The hedgehog does not run.
I took a plate, put it on the floor, brought a bucket of water, and then I poured water into the plate, then poured it into the bucket again, and I made such a noise as if it were a brook splashing.
Well, go, go. - I say. - You see, I arranged for you the moon and clouds, and here's water for you ...
I look like I'm moving forward. And I also moved my lake a little towards it. He will move, and I will move, and so they agreed.
Drink, - I say finally. He began to cry. And I so lightly ran my hand over the thorns, as if stroking, and I keep saying:
You are good, little one! The hedgehog got drunk, I say:
Let's sleep. Lie down and blow out the candle.
I don’t know how much I slept, I hear: again I have work in my room.
I light a candle and what do you think? The hedgehog runs around the room, and he has an apple on his thorns. He ran to the nest, put it there and after another runs into the corner, and in the corner there was a bag of apples and collapsed. Here the hedgehog ran up, curled up near the apples, twitched and runs again, on the thorns he drags another apple into the nest.
And so the hedgehog got a job with me. And now I, like drinking tea, will certainly put it on my table and either I will pour milk into a saucer for him - he will drink it, then I will eat the ladies' buns.
golden meadow
My brother and I, when dandelions ripen, had constant fun with them. We used to go somewhere to our trade - he was ahead, I was in the heel.
Seryozha! - I will call him busily. He'll look back, and I'll blow a dandelion right in his face. For this, he begins to watch for me and, as you gape, he also fuknet. And so we plucked these uninteresting flowers just for fun. But once I managed to make a discovery.
We lived in the village, in front of the window we had a meadow, all golden from many blooming dandelions. This was very beautiful. Everyone said: Very beautiful! The meadow is golden.
One day I got up early to fish and noticed that the meadow was not golden, but green. When I returned home around noon, the meadow was again all golden. I began to observe. By evening the meadow turned green again. Then I went and found a dandelion, and it turned out that he squeezed his petals, as if your fingers were yellow on the side of your palm and, clenched into a fist, we would close the yellow. In the morning, when the sun rose, I saw dandelions open their palms, and from this the meadow became golden again.
Since then, dandelion has become for us one of the most interesting colors because dandelions went to bed with us children and got up with us.
blue bast shoes
Through our large forest there is a highway with separate paths for cars, for trucks, for carts and for pedestrians. So far, for this highway, only the forest has been cut down by a corridor. It is good to look along the clearing: two green walls of the forest and the sky at the end. When the forest was cut down big trees they were taken away somewhere, while small brushwood - rookery - was collected in huge heaps. They also wanted to take away the rookery for heating the factory, but they could not manage it, and the heaps all over the wide clearing remained for the winter.
In the fall, the hunters complained that the hares had disappeared somewhere, and some associated this disappearance of hares with deforestation: they chopped, knocked, chattered and scared away. When the powder came up and it was possible to unravel all the tricks of the hare by the tracks, the tracker Rodionich came and said:
- The blue bast shoe is all under the heaps of Grachevnik.
Rodionich, unlike all hunters, did not call the hare "slash", but always "blue bast shoes"; there is nothing to be surprised about: after all, a hare is no more like a devil than a bast shoe, and if they say that there are no blue bast shoes in the world, then I will say that there are no slash devils either.
The rumor about the hares under the heaps instantly ran around our entire town, and on the day off the hunters, led by Rodionich, began to flock to me.
Early in the morning, at the very dawn, we went hunting without dogs: Rodionich was such a master that he could catch a hare on a hunter better than any hound. As soon as it became so visible that it was possible to distinguish between fox and hare tracks, we took hare footprint, followed him, and, of course, he led us to one heap of rookery, as high as ours wooden house with mezzanine. A hare was supposed to lie under this heap, and we, having prepared our guns, became all around.
“Come on,” we said to Rodionich.
"Get out, you blue bastard!" he shouted and thrust a long stick under the pile.
The hare didn't get out. Rodionich was taken aback. And, thinking, with a very serious face, looking at every little thing in the snow, he went around the whole pile and once again went around in a large circle: there was no exit trail anywhere.
“Here he is,” said Rodionich confidently. "Get in your seats, kids, he's here." Ready?
- Let's! we shouted.
"Get out, you blue bastard!" - Rodionich shouted and stabbed three times under the rookery with such a long stick that the end of it on the other side almost knocked one young hunter off his feet.
And now - no, the hare did not jump out!
There had never been such embarrassment with our oldest tracker in his life: even his face seemed to have fallen a little. With us, the fuss has gone, everyone began to guess something in his own way, stick his nose into everything, walk back and forth in the snow and so, erasing all traces, taking away any opportunity to unravel the trick of a smart hare.
And now, I see, Rodionich suddenly beamed, sat down, contented, on a stump at some distance from the hunters, rolled up a cigarette for himself and blinked, then winked at me and beckoned me to him. Having realized the matter, unnoticed by everyone I approach Rodionich, and he points me upstairs, to the very top of a high pile of rookery covered with snow.
“Look,” he whispers, “what a blue bast shoe is playing with us.”
Not immediately on the white snow I saw two black dots - the eyes of a hare and two more small dots - the black tips of long white ears. It was the head sticking out from under the rookery and turning in different directions after the hunters: where they are, the head goes there.
As soon as I raised my gun, the life of a smart hare would end in an instant. But I felt sorry: how many of them, stupid, lie under heaps! ..
Rodionich understood me without words. He crushed a dense lump of snow for himself, waited until the hunters crowded on the other side of the heap, and, having well outlined, let the hare go with this lump.
I never thought that our ordinary hare, if he suddenly stands on a heap, and even jumps two arshins up, and appears against the sky, that our hare might seem like a giant on a huge rock!
What happened to the hunters? The hare, after all, fell directly to them from the sky. In an instant, everyone grabbed their guns - it was very easy to kill. But each hunter wanted to kill the other before the other, and each, of course, had enough without aiming at all, and the lively hare set off into the bushes.
- Here is a blue bast shoe! - Rodionich said admiringly after him.
Hunters once again managed to grab the bushes.
- Killed! - shouted one, young, hot.
But suddenly, as if in response to the "killed", a tail flashed in the distant bushes; for some reason hunters always call this tail a flower.
The blue bast shoe only waved its "flower" to hunters from distant bushes.
Mikhail Prishvin (1873 - 1954) was in love with nature. He admired her grandeur and beauty, studied the habits of forest animals and knew how to write about it in a fascinating and very kind way. short stories Prishvina for children are written plain language understandable even to kindergartners. Parents who want to awaken in their children good relations to all living things and teach you to notice the beauty of the world around you, it is worth more stories Prishvin to read to both kids and older children. Children love this kind of reading, after which they return to it several times.
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Prishvin's stories about nature
The writer liked to observe the life of the forest. “It was necessary to find in nature something that I had not yet seen, and perhaps no one had ever met this in their lives,” he wrote. In Prishvin's children's stories about nature, the rustle of leaves, the murmur of a stream, the breeze, forest smells are so accurately and reliably described that any little reader is involuntarily transported in his imagination to where the author has been, begins to sharply and vividly feel all the beauty of the forest world.
Prishvin's stories about animals
Since childhood, Misha Prishvin treated birds and animals with warmth and love. He was friends with them, tried to learn to understand their language, studied their life, trying not to disturb. In Prishvin's stories about animals, entertaining stories about the author's meetings with various animals are conveyed. There are funny episodes that make the children's audience laugh and be surprised at the intelligence and ingenuity of our smaller brothers. And there are sad stories about animals in trouble, which evoke a feeling of empathy and a desire to help the children.
In any case, all these stories are permeated with kindness and, as a rule, have a happy ending. It is especially useful for our children growing up in dusty and noisy cities to read Prishvin's stories more often. So let's get started quickly and dive with them into Magic world nature!
Chanterelle bread
Once I walked through the forest all day and returned home in the evening with rich booty. I took off my heavy bag from my shoulders and began to spread my goods on the table.
- What kind of bird is this? Zinochka asked.
"Terenty," I replied.
And he told her about the black grouse: how he lives in the forest, how he mumbles in the spring, how he pecks at birch buds, picks berries in the swamps in autumn, warms himself from the wind under the snow in winter. He also told her about the hazel grouse, showed her that he was grey, with a tuft, and whistled into a pipe in a hazel grouse and let her whistle. I also poured a lot of porcini mushrooms, both red and black, on the table.
I also had a bloody stoneberry in my pocket, and blueberries, and red lingonberries. I also brought with me a fragrant lump of pine resin, gave the girl a sniff and said that trees are treated with this resin.
Who is treating them there? Zinochka asked.
“They are curing themselves,” I replied. - Sometimes a hunter comes, he wants to rest, he will stick an ax into a tree and hang a bag on an ax, and he will lie down under a tree. Sleep, rest. He takes out an ax from a tree, puts on a bag, leaves. And from the wound from the ax made of wood, this fragrant tar will run and this wound will be tightened.
Also on purpose for Zinochka, I brought various wonderful herbs by leaf, by root, by flower: cuckoo's tears, valerian, Petrov's cross, hare cabbage. And just under the hare cabbage I had a piece of black bread: it always happens to me that when I don’t take bread to the forest, I’m hungry, but if I take it, I forget to eat it and bring it back. And Zinochka, when she saw black bread under my hare cabbage, was stunned:
“Where did the bread come from in the forest?”
- What's so amazing about that? After all, there is cabbage there!
- Hare...
- And the bread is lisichkin. Taste.
Carefully tasted and began to eat.
- Good fox bread!
And ate all my black bread clean. And so it went with us: Zinochka, such a copula, often doesn’t even take white bread, but when I bring fox bread from the forest, she always eats it all and praises:
- Chanterelle's bread is much better than ours!
"Inventor"
In one swamp, on a hummock under a willow, wild mallard ducklings hatched.
Shortly thereafter, their mother led them to the lake along a cow trail. I noticed them from afar, hid behind a tree, and the ducklings came up to my very feet. I took three of them for my upbringing, the remaining sixteen went further along the cow path.
I kept these black ducklings with me, and soon they all turned gray.
After one of the gray ones came out a handsome multi-colored drake and two ducks, Dusya and Musya. We clipped their wings so that they would not fly away, and they lived in our yard with poultry: we had chickens and geese.
With the onset new spring we made hummocks for our savages from all sorts of rubbish in the basement, as in a swamp, and nests on them. Dusya put sixteen eggs in her nest and began to hatch ducklings. Musya put fourteen, but did not want to sit on them. No matter how we fought empty head didn't want to be a mother. And we planted our important black hen, the Queen of Spades, on duck eggs.
The time has come, our ducklings have hatched. We kept them warm in the kitchen for a while, crumbled their eggs, and took care of them.
A few days later came very good, warm weather, and Dusya led her little black ones to the pond, and Queen of Spades their own - in the garden for worms.
— Swish-swish! - ducklings in the pond.
- Quack-quack! - answers the duck.
— Swish-swish! - ducklings in the garden.
- Kwoh-kwoh! the chicken answers.
The ducklings, of course, cannot understand what “quoh-quoh” means, and what is heard from the pond is well known to them.
"Swiss-swiss" - this means: "ours to ours."
And “quack-quack” means: “you are ducks, you are mallards, swim quickly!” And they, of course, look there, to the pond.
- Yours to yours!
- Swim, swim!
And they float.
- Kwoh-kwoh! - rests an important bird chicken on the shore.
They keep swimming and swimming. They whistled, swam, joyfully accepted them into her family Dusya; according to Musa, they were her own nephews.
All day long a large combined duck family swam in the pond, and all day the Queen of Spades, fluffy, angry, cackled, grumbled, dug worms on the shore with her foot, tried to attract ducklings with worms and cackled to them that there were too many worms, so good worms!
- Dirty-dirty! the mallard answered her.
And in the evening she led all her ducklings with one long rope along a dry path. Right under your nose important bird they passed, black, with big duck noses; no one even looked at such a mother.
We collected them all in one tall basket and left them to spend the night in a warm kitchen, near the stove.
In the morning, when we were still sleeping, Dusya got out of the basket, walked around on the floor, screamed, called the ducklings to her. In thirty voices, whistlers answered her cry.
To the duck cry of the wall of our house, made of sonorous pine forest responded in their own way. And yet, in this commotion, we heard separately the voice of one duckling.
- Do you hear? I asked my guys.
They listened.
- We hear! they shouted.
And we went to the kitchen.
It turned out that Dusya was not alone on the floor. One duckling ran next to her, was very worried and whistled continuously. This duckling, like all the others, was the size of a small cucumber. How could such and such a warrior climb over the wall of a basket thirty centimeters high?
We all began to guess about it, and then a new question arose: did the duckling itself come up with some way to get out of the basket after its mother, or did she accidentally touch it somehow with its wing and throw it away? I tied the duckling's leg with a ribbon and put it into the common herd.
We slept through the night, and in the morning, as soon as the morning duck's cry was heard in the house, we went to the kitchen.
On the floor, along with Dusya, a duckling with a bandaged paw was running.
All the ducklings imprisoned in the basket whistled, rushed to freedom and could not do anything. This one got out. I said:
- He's up to something.
He is an inventor! Leva shouted.
Then I decided to see how this "inventor" solves the most difficult task: to climb a sheer wall on his webbed duck feet. I got up the next morning before light, when both my guys and
the ducklings slept soundly. In the kitchen, I sat down near the light switch so that I could turn on the light immediately, when necessary, and examine the events in the back of the basket.
And then the window turned white. It began to get light.
- Quack-quack! Dusya said.
— Swish-swish! - answered the only duckling.
And everything froze. The boys were sleeping, the ducklings were sleeping.
The factory horn blew. The world has increased.
- Quack-quack! Dusya repeated.
No one answered. I understood: the "inventor" now has no time - now, probably, he is solving his most difficult task. And I turned on the light.
Well, that's what I knew! The duck had not yet risen, and its head was still level with the edge of the basket. All the ducklings slept warmly under their mother, only one, with a bandaged paw, crawled out and, like bricks, climbed up on the mother's feathers, onto her back. When Dusya got up, she lifted him high, to the level with the edge of the basket. A duckling, like a mouse, ran along her back to the edge - and somersault down! Following him, his mother also fell out on the floor, and the usual morning commotion began: screaming, whistling for the whole house.
Two days later, in the morning, three ducklings appeared on the floor at once, then five, and it went and went: as soon as Dusya grunts in the morning, all the ducklings on her back and then fall down.
And the first duckling, who paved the way for others, my children called the Inventor.
Guys and ducks
A little wild duck, the whistling teal, finally decided to transfer her ducklings from the forest, bypassing the village, into the lake to freedom. In the spring, this lake overflowed far, and a solid place for a nest could be found only three miles away, on a hummock, in a marshy forest. And when the water subsided, I had to travel all three miles to the lake.
In places open to the eye of a man, a fox and a hawk, the mother walked behind, so as not to let the ducklings out of sight even for a minute. And near the forge, when crossing the road, she, of course, let them go forward. Here the guys saw them and threw their hats. All the time while they were catching ducklings, the mother ran after them with her beak open or flew several steps in different directions in the greatest excitement. The guys were just about to throw their hats on their mother and catch her like ducklings, but then I approached.
- What will you do with the ducklings? I asked the guys sternly.
They got scared and answered:
- Let's go.
- Here's something "let go"! I said very angrily. Why did you have to catch them? Where is mother now?
- He's sitting there! - the guys answered in unison.
And they pointed me to a close mound of a fallow field, where the duck really sat with its mouth open from excitement.
“Quickly,” I ordered the guys, “go and return all the ducklings to her!”
They even seemed to rejoice at my order, and ran straight up the hill with the ducklings. The mother flew off a little and, when the guys left, she rushed to save her sons and daughters. In her own way, she said something quickly to them and ran to the oat field. Ducklings ran after her - five pieces. And so through the oat field, bypassing the village, the family continued their journey to the lake.
Joyfully, I took off my hat and, waving it, shouted:
— Good luck, ducklings!
The guys laughed at me.
“What are you laughing at, fools? I said to the guys. “Do you think it’s so easy for ducklings to get into the lake?” Quickly take off all your hats, shout "goodbye"!
And the same hats, dusty on the road while catching ducklings, rose into the air, the guys all shouted at once:
- Goodbye, ducklings!
forest doctor
We wandered in the spring in the forest and observed the life of hollow birds: woodpeckers, owls. Suddenly, in the direction where we had previously planned an interesting tree, we heard the sound of a saw. It was, we were told, cutting firewood from deadwood for a glass factory. We were afraid for our tree, hurried to the sound of the saw, but it was too late: our aspen was lying, and around its stump there were many empty fir cones. The woodpecker peeled all this over the long winter, collected it, wore it on this aspen, laid it between two bitches of his workshop and hollowed it out. Near the stump, on our cut aspen, two boys were resting. These two boys were only engaged in sawing the forest.
- Oh, you pranksters! - we said and pointed them to the cut aspen. - You were ordered to cut dead trees, and what did you do?
“The woodpecker made holes,” the guys answered. - We looked and, of course, sawed off. It will still disappear.
They all began to examine the tree together. It was quite fresh, and only in a small space, no more than a meter in length, did a worm pass through the trunk. The woodpecker, obviously, listened to the aspen like a doctor: he tapped it with his beak, understood the void left by the worm, and proceeded to the operation of extracting the worm. And the second time, and the third, and the fourth... The thin aspen trunk looked like a flute with valves. Seven holes were made by the "surgeon" and only on the eighth he captured the worm, pulled out and saved the aspen. We carved this piece as a wonderful exhibit for the museum.
“You see,” we said to the guys, “the woodpecker is a forest doctor, he saved the aspen, and it would live and live, and you cut it off.
The boys marveled.
Hedgehog
Once I was walking along the bank of our stream and noticed a hedgehog under a bush. He also noticed me, curled up and mumbled: knock-knock-knock. It was very similar, as if a car was moving in the distance. I touched it with the tip of my boot; he snorted terribly and jabbed his needles into his boot.
- Oh, you are so with me! I said, and with the tip of my boot shoved him into the stream.
Instantly, the hedgehog turned around in the water and swam to the shore like a small pig, only instead of bristles on its back there were needles. I took a stick, rolled the hedgehog into my hat and carried it home.
I had a lot of mice, I heard - the hedgehog catches them, and decided: let him live with me and catch mice.
So, I put this prickly lump in the middle of the floor and sat down to write, while I myself looked at the hedgehog out of the corner of my eye. He did not lie motionless for a long time: as soon as I calmed down at the table, the hedgehog turned around, looked around, tried to go there, here and finally chose a place for himself under the bed and there it completely calmed down.
When it got dark, I lit the lamp and — hello! The hedgehog ran out from under the bed. He, of course, thought to the lamp that it was the moon that had risen in the forest: in the moonlight, hedgehogs like to run through the forest clearings. And so he started running around the room, imagining that it was a forest clearing. I picked up the pipe, lit a cigarette and let a cloud near the moon. It became just like in the forest: the moon and the clouds, and my legs were like tree trunks and, probably, the hedgehog really liked it, he darted between them, sniffing and scratching the back of my boots with needles.
After reading the newspaper, I dropped it on the floor, went to bed and fell asleep.
I always sleep very lightly. I hear - some rustling in my room, struck a match, lit a candle and just noticed how a hedgehog flashed under the bed. And the newspaper was no longer lying near the table, but in the middle of the room. So I left the candle burning and I don’t sleep myself, thinking: “Why did the hedgehog need a newspaper?” Soon my tenant ran out from under the bed - and straight to the newspaper, spun around near it, made noise, noise, and finally contrived: he somehow put a corner of the newspaper on the thorns and dragged it, huge, into the corner.
Then I understood him: the newspaper was like dry leaves in the forest, he dragged it to himself for a nest. And it turned out, however, that soon the hedgehog all turned into a newspaper and made a real nest out of it. Having finished this important business, he went out of his dwelling and stood opposite the bed, looking at the candle - the moon.
I let the clouds in and I ask:
— What else do you need?
The hedgehog was not afraid.
- Do you want to drink?
I wake up. The hedgehog does not run.
I took a plate, put it on the floor, brought a bucket of water, and now I pour water into the plate, then pour it into the bucket again, and I make such a noise as if it were a stream splashing.
“Well, go, go,” I say, “you see, I arranged the moon for you, and let the clouds go, and here’s water for you ...
I look like I'm moving forward. And I also moved my lake a little towards it. He will move - and I will move, and so they agreed.
“Drink,” I say finally.
He began to cry.
And I so lightly ran my hand over the thorns, as if stroking, and I keep saying:
"You're a good fellow, a good one!"
The hedgehog got drunk, I say:
- Let's sleep.
Lie down and blow out the candle.
I don’t know how much I slept, I hear: again I have work in my room.
I light a candle - and what do you think? The hedgehog runs around the room, and on the thorns he has an apple. He ran to the nest, put it there and after another runs into a corner, and in the corner there was a bag of apples and collapsed. Here the hedgehog ran up, curled up near the apples, twitched and runs again - on the thorns he drags another apple into the nest.
And so I got a hedgehog. And now, like drinking tea, I will certainly put it on my table and either I pour milk on a saucer for him - he will drink it, then I will give the ladies buns - he will eat it.
golden meadow
My brother and I, when dandelions ripen, had constant fun with them. Sometimes, we go somewhere to our craft, he is in front, I am in the heel.
"Seryozha!" - I will call him in a businesslike manner. He'll look back, and I'll blow a dandelion right in his face. For this, he begins to watch for me and, as you gape, he also fuknet. And so we plucked these uninteresting flowers just for fun. But once I managed to make a discovery.
We lived in the village, in front of the window we had a meadow, all golden from many blooming dandelions. This was very beautiful. Everyone said: “Very beautiful! Golden Meadow. One day I got up early to fish and noticed that the meadow was not golden, but green. When I returned home around noon, the meadow was again all golden. I began to observe. By evening the meadow turned green again. Then I went and found a dandelion, and it turned out that he squeezed his petals, as if our fingers were yellow from the side of the palm of our hand and, clenched into a fist, we would close the yellow. In the morning, when the sun rose, I saw how dandelions open their palms and from this the meadow becomes golden again.
Since then, the dandelion has become one of the most interesting flowers for us, because dandelions went to bed with us children and got up with us.
beast chipmunk
One can easily understand why the sika deer has frequent white spots scattered everywhere on its skin.
Once I was walking very quietly along the path in the Far East and, without knowing it myself, I stopped near the lurking deer. They hoped that I would not notice them under the broad-leaved trees, in the dense grass. But, it happened, a deer tick painfully bit a small calf; he trembled, the grass swayed, and I saw him and everyone. It was then that I realized why deer have spots. The day was sunny, and in the forest there were "bunnies" on the grass - exactly the same as those of deer and fallow deer. With such "bunnies" it is easier to hide. But for a long time I could not understand why the deer has a large white circle like a napkin on the back and near the tail, and if the deer gets scared and rushes to run, then this napkin becomes even wider, much more noticeable. Why do deer need these napkins?
I thought about it and here's how I figured it out.
Once we caught wild deer and began to feed them in the home nursery with beans and corn. In winter, when in the taiga with such difficulty the deer gets food, they ate with us the most favorite and most delicious dish in the nursery. And they are so accustomed to the fact that, when they see a bag of beans, they run to us and crowd around the trough. And they poke their muzzles so greedily and hurry that beans and corn often fall from the trough to the ground. Pigeons have already noticed this - they fly to peck grains under the very hooves of deer. Chipmunks also come running to collect falling beans, these small, very pretty striped animals that look like a squirrel. It is difficult to convey how shy these spotted deer are and what they can imagine. The female, our beautiful Hua-Lu, was especially shy.
It happened once, she ate beans in a trough next to other deer. Beans fell to the ground, pigeons and chipmunks ran close to the hooves of the deer. Here Hua-Lu accidentally stepped with her hoof on fluffy tail one animal, and this chipmunk in response dug into the leg of a deer. Hua-Lu shuddered, looked down, and she must have imagined the chipmunk as something terrible. How she throws herself! And behind it all at once on the fence, and - bang! Our fence fell down.
The little chipmunk animal, of course, immediately fell off, but for the frightened Hua-Lu, now it was not a small, but a huge chipmunk animal that was running after her, rushing in her tracks. Other deer understood her in their own way and quickly rushed after her. And all these deer would have run away and all our hard work would have been lost, but we had a German shepherd Taiga, well accustomed to these deer. We sent Taiga after them. Deer rushed in insane fear, and, of course, they thought that it was not the dog that was running after them, but the same terrible, huge beast, the chipmunk.
Many animals have such a habit that if they are driven, they run in a circle and return to the same place. This is how hare hunters chase dogs: the hare almost always runs to the same place where he lay, and then the shooter meets him. And the deer so rushed for a long time through the mountains and dales and returned to the same place where they live well - both hearty and warm.
And so the excellent, smart dog Taiga returned the reindeer to us. But I almost forgot about the white napkins, which is why I started this story. When Hua-Lu threw herself over the fallen fence and the white napkin became much wider, much more noticeable from fear behind her, then only this flickering white napkin was visible in the bushes. Another deer ran after her along this white spot, and he himself also showed his deer to the deer following him. White spot. It was then that I guessed for the first time what these white napkins serve for sika deer. In the taiga, after all, not only a chipmunk - there is a wolf, and a leopard, and the tiger itself. One deer will notice the enemy, rush, show a white spot and save the other, and this one saves the third, and all together come to a safe place.
white necklace
I heard in Siberia, near Lake Baikal, from one citizen about a bear and, I confess, I did not believe it. But he assured me that in the old days even a Siberian journal had published about this case under the title:
"The man with the bear against the wolves."
There lived one watchman on the shore of Lake Baikal, he caught fish, shot squirrels. And once this watchman seems to see through the window - a big bear runs straight to the hut, and a pack of wolves is chasing him. That would be the end of the bear ... He, this bear, don’t be bad, in the hallway, the door behind him closed by itself, and he also leaned on her paw and leaned himself. The old man, realizing this matter, took the rifle from the wall and said:
- Misha, Misha, hold on!
The wolves climb on the door, and the old man aims the wolf out the window and repeats:
- Misha, Misha, hold on!
So he killed one wolf, and another, and a third, all the while saying:
- Misha, Misha, hold on...
After the third flock fled, and the bear remained in the hut to spend the winter under the protection of the old man. In the spring, when the bears come out of their lairs, the old man seemed to put a white necklace on this bear and ordered all the hunters not to shoot this bear - with a white necklace - this bear is his friend.
The conversation of birds and animals
Fun hunting for foxes with flags! They will go around the fox, recognize her lying down and through the bushes for a verst, two around the sleeping one they will hang a rope with red flags. The fox is very afraid of colored flags and the smell of calico, frightened, looking for a way out of the terrible circle. An exit is left for her, and near this place, under the cover of a Christmas tree, her hunter is waiting.
Such a hunt with flags is much more productive than with hounds. And this winter was so snowy, with such loose snow, that the dog was drowning up to his ears, and it became impossible to chase the foxes with the dog. Once, having exhausted myself and the dog, I said to the huntsman Mikhal Mikhalych:
- Let's leave the dogs, let's start the flags - because with the flags you can kill every fox.
- How is it for everyone? asked Michal Mikhalych.
“So simple,” I replied. - After the powder, we will take a fresh trail, go around, tighten the circle with flags, and our fox.
“It was in the old days,” said the huntsman. - It used to be that the fox sat for three days and did not dare to go beyond the flags. What a fox! The wolves sat for two days! Now the animals have become smarter, often chasing right under the flags, and goodbye.
“I understand,” I replied, “that seasoned animals, which have already been in trouble more than once, have grown wiser and go under the flags, but there are relatively few of them, the majority, especially young people, have never seen flags.
- Didn't see it! They don't even need to see. They have a conversation.
- What kind of conversation?
- Ordinary conversation. It happens that you set a trap, an old, smart beast will visit near, he will not like it and will move away. Others won't get very far. Well, tell me, how do they know?
- What do you think?
- I think, - answered Mikhal Mikhalych, - animals read.
- Do they read?
- Well, yes, they read with their noses. This can be seen in dogs as well. It is known how they leave their notes everywhere on the posts, on the bushes, others then go and take everything apart. So the fox, the wolf constantly read; We have eyes, they have a nose. The second thing for animals and birds, I think, is the voice. A raven flies and screams, at least we have something. And the fox pricked up its ears in the bushes, hurries into the field. A raven flies and cries above, and below, following the cry of a raven, a fox rushes at full speed. The raven descends on the carrion, and the fox is right there. What a fox! Haven't you ever guessed something from the call of a magpie?
Of course, like any hunter, I had to use the magpie's call, but Mikhal Mikhalych told a special case. Once he had dogs in a hare race. The hare suddenly seemed to have fallen through the ground. Then a magpie tickled in the other direction. The huntsman, stealthily, goes to the magpie so that she does not notice him. And this was in winter, when all the hares had already turned white, only all the snow had melted, and the white ones on the ground became far visible. The huntsman looked under the tree on which the magpie was tickling, and he sees: the white one simply lies on the green midge, and the little eyes, black as two bobbins, are looking ...
The magpie betrayed a hare, but she gives a man to a hare and to every animal, if only she would notice someone first.
“Do you know,” said Mikhal Mikhalych, “there is a small yellow swamp porridge.” When you enter the swamp for ducks, you begin to steal quietly. Suddenly, out of nowhere, this same yellow bird sits down on a reed in front of you, swings on it and squeaks. You go further, and she flies to another reed and squeaks and squeaks. It is she who lets know the entire swamp population; you look - there the ducks guessed the approach of the hunter and flew away, and there the cranes waved their wings, there snipes began to break out. And it's all her, it's all her. So the birds say differently, and the animals read the tracks more.
Birds under the snow
A hazel grouse in the snow has two salvations: the first is to spend the night warm under the snow, and the second is that the snow drags with it various seeds from the trees to the ground for food for the hazel grouse. Under the snow, the hazel grouse looks for seeds, makes moves there and windows up for air. Sometimes you go skiing in the forest, you look - a head appeared and hid: this is a hazel grouse. Not even two, but three rescues for a hazel grouse under the snow: warmth, food, and you can hide from a hawk.
The black grouse does not run under the snow, he would only have to hide from the weather.
Black grouse does not have big moves, like hazel grouses under the snow, but the arrangement of the apartment is also neat: in the back and a latrine, in front there is a hole above the head for air.
The gray partridge does not like to burrow in the snow and flies to spend the night in the village on the threshing floor. The partridge will spend the night in the village with the peasants and in the morning flies to feed on the same place. Partridge, according to my signs, has either lost her wildness, or is naturally stupid. The hawk notices her flights, and sometimes she is just about to fly out, and the hawk is already waiting for her on a tree.
Black grouse, I think, is much smarter than partridge. Once it was with me in the forest.
I'm going skiing red day, good frost. A large clearing opens before me, there are tall birches in the clearing, and on the birches the black grouse feed on their kidneys. I admired for a long time, but suddenly all the black grouse rushed down and buried themselves in the snow under the birches. At the same moment, a hawk appears, hits the place where the black grouse burrowed, and entered. But here he walks right above the black grouse, but he cannot guess and dig with his foot and grab it. I was very curious about this, I think: “If he walks, it means that he feels them under him, and the hawk’s mind is great, but there is no such thing as to guess and dig with his paw on some inch or two in the snow, which means that it’s not for him.” given."
Walks and walks.
I wanted to help the black grouse, and I began to hide the hawk. The snow is soft, the ski does not make noise, but as soon as I started to go around the clearing with bushes, I suddenly fell into the mush up to my ear. I got out of the hole, of course, not without noise, and thought: "The hawk heard this and flew away." I got out and I don’t even think about the hawk, but when I drove around the clearing and looked out from behind the tree, the hawk right in front of me walks for a short shot over the heads of the black grouse. I fired. He lay down. And the black grouse are so frightened by the hawk that they were not afraid of the shot. I approached them, shied away with my ski, and they, one after another, began to fly out from under the snow; who has never seen - will die.
I’ve seen enough of everything in the forest, it’s all simple for me, but I still marvel at the hawk: he’s so smart, but in this place he turned out to be such a fool. But I consider the partridge the most foolish of all. She spoiled herself among people on the threshing floors, she doesn’t have, like a black grouse, to, seeing a hawk, throw herself into the snow with all her might. A partridge from a hawk will only hide its head in the snow, and its tail is all in sight. The hawk takes her by the tail and drags her like a cook in a frying pan.
squirrel memory
Today, looking at the tracks of animals and birds in the snow, this is what I read from these tracks: a squirrel made its way through the snow into the moss, took out two nuts hidden there since autumn, ate them right away - I found the shells. Then she ran a dozen meters, dived again, again left the shell on the snow and after a few meters she made the third climb.
What a miracle You can't think that she could smell a nut through a thick layer of snow and ice. So, since the fall, she remembered her nuts and the exact distance between them.
But the most amazing thing is that she could not measure centimeters, as we do, but directly by eye with accuracy determined, dived and pulled out. Well, how could one not envy the squirrel's memory and ingenuity!
Forest floors
Birds and animals in the forest have their own floors: mice live in the roots - at the very bottom; different birds like the nightingale make their nests right on the ground; thrushes - even higher, on bushes; hollow birds - woodpecker, titmouse, owls - even higher; at different heights along the tree trunk and at the very top, predators settle: hawks and eagles.
I once had to observe in the forest that they, animals and birds, with floors are not like ours in skyscrapers: we can always change with someone, with them each breed certainly lives on its own floor.
Once, while hunting, we came to a clearing with dead birches. It often happens that birch trees grow to a certain age and dry up.
Another tree, having dried up, drops its bark on the ground, and therefore the bare wood soon rots and the whole tree falls; the bark of a birch does not fall; this resinous, white bark on the outside - birch bark - is an impenetrable case for a tree, and a dead tree stands for a long time, like a living one.
Even when the tree rots and the wood turns into dust, heavy with moisture, the white birch looks like it is alive. But it is worthwhile, however, to give such a tree a good push, when suddenly it will break everything into heavy pieces and fall. Felling such trees is a very fun activity, but also dangerous: a piece of wood, if you don’t dodge it, can really hit you on the head. But still, we, hunters, are not very afraid, and when we get to such birches, we begin to destroy them in front of each other.
So we came to a clearing with such birches and brought down a rather tall birch. Falling, in the air it broke into several pieces, and in one of them there was a hollow with a nest of a Gadget. Little chicks were not injured when the tree fell, only fell out of the hollow together with their nest. Naked chicks, covered with feathers, opened wide red mouths and, mistaking us for parents, squeaked and asked us for a worm. We dug up the ground, found worms, gave them a bite to eat; they ate, swallowed and squeaked again.
Very soon, parents flew in, titmouse, with white puffy cheeks and worms in their mouths, sat on nearby trees.
“Hello, dear ones,” we said to them, “it’s a misfortune: we didn’t want this.
The Gadgets could not answer us, but, most importantly, they could not understand what had happened, where the tree had gone, where their children had disappeared.
They were not at all afraid of us, fluttering from branch to branch in great alarm.
- Yes, here they are! We showed them the nest on the ground. - Here they are, listen how they squeak, what your name is!
Gadgets did not listen to anything, fussed, worried and did not want to go downstairs and go beyond their floor.
“Maybe,” we said to each other, “they are afraid of us. Let's hide! - And they hid.
Not! The chicks squeaked, the parents squeaked, fluttered, but did not go down.
We guessed then that the birds are not like ours in skyscrapers, they cannot change floors: now it just seems to them that the whole floor with their chicks has disappeared.
“Oh-oh-oh,” said my companion, “well, what fools you are! ..
It became a pity and funny: they are so nice and with wings, but they don’t want to understand anything.
Then we took that large piece in which the nest was located, broke the top of the neighboring birch and put our piece with the nest on it just at the same height as the destroyed floor. We did not have to wait long in ambush: in a few minutes, happy parents met their chicks.
birch bark tube
I found amazing birch bark tube. When a person cuts a piece of birch bark for himself on a birch, the rest of the birch bark near the cut begins to curl up into a tube. The tube will dry out, curl up tightly. There are so many of them on birch trees that you don’t even pay attention.
But today I wanted to see if there was anything in such a tube.
And in the very first tube I found a good nut, stuck so tightly that I could hardly push it out with a stick.
There was no hazel around the birch. How did he get there?
“Probably the squirrel hid it there, making its winter supplies,” I thought. “She knew that the pipe would curl up tighter and tighter and grab the nut tighter and tighter so it wouldn’t fall out.”
But later I guessed that it was not a squirrel, but a nutlet bird stuck a nut, maybe stealing from a squirrel's nest.
Looking at my birch bark tube, I made another discovery: I settled under the cover of a walnut - who would have thought? - the spider and the entire inside of the tube tightened with its cobweb.
To portray bright world nature for the youngest readers, many writers turned to such a genre of literature as a fairy tale. Even in many folk tales main actors natural phenomena, forest, frost, snow, water, plants act. These Russian fairy tales about nature are very fascinating and informative, they talk about the change of seasons, the sun, the moon, various animals. It is worth recalling the most famous of them: "The winter hut of animals", "Sister Chanterelle and Gray wolf", "Mitten", "Teremok", "Kolobok". Tales about nature were also composed by many Russians and it is worth noting such authors as K. Paustovsky, K. Ushinsky, V. Bianki, D. Mamin-Sibiryak, M. Prishvin, N. Sladkov, I. Sokolov-Mikitov, E. Permyak Fairy tales about nature teach children to love the world around them, to be attentive and observant.
The magic of the surrounding world in the fairy tales of D. Ushinsky
Russian writer D. Ushinsky, like a talented artist, wrote fairy tales about natural phenomena, different times of the year. Children from these small works will learn about how the stream rustles, clouds float and birds sing. The most famous tales of the writer: "The Raven and the Magpie", "Woodpecker", "Goose and Crane", "Horse", "Bishka", "Wind and Sun", as well as a huge number of stories. Ushinsky skillfully uses animals and nature to reveal to young readers such concepts as greed, nobility, betrayal, stubbornness, cunning. These fairy tales are very kind, they are recommended to be read to children before going to bed. Ushinsky's books are very well illustrated.
Creations by D. Mamin-Sibiryak for children
Man and nature is a very urgent problem for modern world. Mamin-Sibiryak devoted many works to this topic, but the collection "Alyonushka's Tales" should be especially singled out. The writer himself raised and cared for a sick daughter, and this book was intended for her. interesting collection. In these fairy tales, children will get acquainted with Komar Komarovich, Ersh Ershovich, Shaggy Misha, Brave Hare. From these entertaining works, children learn about the life of animals, insects, birds, fish, plants. Since childhood, almost everyone has been familiar with a very touching cartoon filmed based on the fairy tale of the same name by Mamin-Sibiryak "The Gray Neck".
M. Prishvin and nature
Short tales about the nature of Prishvin are very kind and fascinating, they tell about habits forest dwellers about the grandeur and beauty of their native places. Little readers will learn about the rustle of leaves, forest smells, the murmur of a stream. All these stories end well, evoke in readers a feeling of empathy for the smaller brothers and a desire to help them. Most famous stories: "Pantry of the sun", "Khromka", "Hedgehog".
Tales of V. Bianki
Russian fairy tales and stories about plants and animals are presented by another wonderful writer - Vitaly Bianchi. His fairy tales teach children to unravel the mysteries of the life of birds and animals. Many of them are intended for the youngest readers: "The Fox and the Mouse", "Cuckoo", "Golden Heart", "Orange Neck", "First Hunt" and many others. Bianchi knew how to observe the life of nature through the eyes of children. Some of his tales about nature are endowed with tragedy or humor, they contain lyrical meditation and poetry.
Forest fairy tales by Nikolai Sladkov
Nikolai Ivanovich Sladkov wrote more than 60, he was also the author of the radio program "News from the Forest". The heroes of his books are kind, funny little animals. Each story is very sweet and kind, tells about funny habits and Little readers will learn from them that animals can also experience and grieve as they store food for the winter. Sladkov's favorite fairy tales: "Forest Rustles", "Badger and Bear", "Polite Jackdaw", "Hare Dance", "Desperate Hare".
Pantry of fairy tales by E. Permyak
Fairy tales about nature were composed by the famous playwright and writer Yevgeny Andreevich Permyak. They are representatives of the golden fund. These small works teach children to be hardworking, honest, responsible, to believe in themselves and their strengths. It is necessary to highlight the most famous tales of Evgeny Andreevich: " Birch Grove", "Smorodinka", "How Fire Married Water", "The First Fish", "About a Hasty Tit and a Patient Tit", "Ugly Christmas Tree". Permyak's books were very colorfully illustrated by the most famous Russian artists.