Question

Our planet has a rich variety of wildlife. Explain it in detail with reference to the world

Answer 1

close to the sands – indeed, washed by the highest tides – is a small marsh where, amidst a forest of sea club-rush and sea-plantain, both now in flower, young natterjacks, each with its yellow back-stripe, well earn their name of running toad: here a few sea asters, wild Michaelmas daisies, are already out, long before their scheduled date. A few sturdy ragworts grow on the seaward sides of the dunes which back the marsh, but little else can keep its head above the drifting sand; on the sheltered landward side, however, is a rich harvest of flowers, where blown small heaths, coppers, and blues flit from blossom to blossom, sampling their sweets. Until recently bird’s-foot trefoil monopolised the slopes and levels, at any rate in places where the burnet rose and dewberry had failed to spread; now the pink flowers of the rest-harrow mingle with the yellow pea-like flowers of the trefoil, and great pitches are still more yellow with bedstraw and stonecrop. Starting as a downy bud, the crimson flowers of the wild thyme are opening, shedding fragrance, and amongst them are the still softer and silky flowers of the hare’s-foot clover.


A wheatear, showing his white lower back as he flies from us, dodges amongst the dunes, and the meadow pipit ascends with his chittering song: surely he is singing to his mate in view of a second brood, for young titlarks are now strong on the wing. By no means all birds have ceased to sing, silent though the country is; a fine crimson-breasted linnet was in splendid song as he sat, showing off, on a gorse bush, and near by a healthy family, perhaps his own, twittered as they followed a more sombre hen.