Big stories about nature. Fairy tales and stories about nature. Mikhail Prishvin “Overlooked mushrooms”

Many parents take the choice of children's books very seriously and carefully. Publications for children should awaken the warmest feelings in the tender souls of children. Therefore, it is best to choose short stories about nature, its greatness and beauty. A true naturalist, connoisseur of swamps and forests, an excellent observer of the living life of nature is the famous writer Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin (1873 - 1954). His stories, even the smallest ones, are simple and understandable. The author's skill, his manner of conveying all the unsurpassedness surrounding nature admire! He describes the sound of the wind, the smells of the forest, the habits of animals and their behavior, the rustling of leaves with such accuracy and authenticity that when reading, you involuntarily find yourself in this environment, experiencing everything along with the writer.

One day I walked through the forest all day and in the evening I returned home with rich booty. I took the heavy bag off my shoulders and began to lay out my belongings on the table. Read...

In one swamp, on a hummock under a willow, wild mallard ducklings hatched. Soon after this, their mother led them to the lake along a cow path. I noticed them from a distance, hid behind a tree, and the ducklings came right to my feet. Read...

A small wild teal duck finally decided to move her ducklings from the forest, bypassing the village, into the lake to freedom. Read...

We wandered in the forest in the spring and observed the life of hollow birds: woodpeckers, owls. Suddenly, in the direction where we had previously planned interesting tree, we heard the sound of a saw. Read...

Once I was walking along the bank of our stream and noticed a hedgehog under a bush. He noticed me too, curled up and started tapping: knock-knock-knock. It was very similar, as if a car was walking in the distance. Read...

My brother and I always had fun with them when dandelions ripened. It used to be that we were going somewhere on our business, he was in front, I was at the heel. Read...

Once we had it - we caught a young crane and gave it a frog. He swallowed it. They gave me another - I swallowed it. The third, fourth, fifth, and then we didn’t have any more frogs at hand. Read...

I’ll tell you an incident that happened to me during the hungry year. A young yellow-throated rook got into the habit of flying onto my windowsill. Apparently he was an orphan. Read...

Yarik became very friendly with young Ryabchik and played with him all day. So, he spent a week in the game, and then I moved with him from this city to a deserted house in the forest, six miles from Ryabchik. Before I had time to get settled and properly look around the new place, Yarik suddenly disappeared. Read...

My dog ​​puppy is called Romulus, but I prefer to call him Roma or just Romka, and occasionally I call him Roman Vasilich. Read...

All hunters know how difficult it is to teach a dog not to chase animals, cats and hares, but to look only for birds. Read...

A dog, just like a fox and a cat, approaches its prey. And suddenly it freezes. Hunters call this a stance. Read...

Three years ago I was in Zavidovo, the farm of the Military Hunting Society. Gamekeeper Nikolai Kamolov invited me to look at his nephew’s one-year-old pointer dog, Lada, at the forest lodge. Read...

You can easily understand why a sika deer has frequent white spots scattered everywhere on its skin. Read...

I heard in Siberia, near Lake Baikal, from one citizen about a bear and, I admit, I didn’t believe it. But he assured me that in the old days this case was even published in a Siberian magazine under the title: “A man with a bear against wolves.”

Hunting foxes with flags is fun! They will go around the fox, recognize its bed, and from the bushes a mile or two around the sleeping one will hang a rope with red flags. The fox is very afraid of colored flags and the smell of red, frightened, looking for a way out of the terrible circle. Read...

I got a speck of dust in my eye. While I was taking it out, another speck got into my other eye. Read...

The hazel grouse has two salvations in the snow: the first is to sleep warmly under the snow, and the second is that the snow drags with it to the ground from the trees various seeds for the hazel grouse to eat. Under the snow, the hazel grouse looks for seeds, makes passages there and opens upward for air. Read...

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 the fall, ate them right away - I found the shells. Read...

At midday the snow began to melt from the hot rays of the sun. Two days will pass, sometimes three, and spring will begin to hum. At midday the sun is so steamy that all the snow around our house on wheels is covered with some kind of black dust. Read...

Stories and novellas by Mikhail Prishvin are intended for readers of all ages. You can start reading a huge number of stories in kindergarten. At the same time, children are imbued with the secrets of nature, respect for it and its inhabitants is fostered. Other works are studied even at school. And for adults, Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin left his legacy: his diaries and memoirs are distinguished by a very detailed narrative and description of the environment in the difficult twenties and thirties. They are of interest to teachers, local historians, memory buffs and historians, geographers and even hunters. Mikhail Prishvin's short but very meaningful stories vividly convey to us what we so rarely encounter today. The beauty and life of nature, remote unfamiliar places - all this today is so far from dusty and noisy megacities. Maybe many of us would be happy to immediately go on a short trip through the forest, but it won’t work out. Then we’ll open Prishvin’s book of stories and be transported to places far away and desired by our hearts.

Mikhail Prishvin “My Motherland” (From childhood memories)

My mother got up early, before the sun. One day I also got up before the sun to set a snare for quails at dawn. Mother treated me to tea with milk. This milk was boiled in a clay pot and always covered with a ruddy foam on top, and under this foam it was incredibly tasty, and it made tea wonderful.

This treat decided my life in good side: I started getting up before the sun to get drunk with my mom delicious tea. Little by little, I got so used to this morning getting up that I could no longer sleep through the sunrise.

Then in the city I got up early, and now I always write early, when I’m all animal and vegetable world awakens and also begins to work in its own way. And often, often I think: what if we rose with the sun like this for our work! How much health, joy, life and happiness would come to people then!

After tea I went hunting for quails, starlings, nightingales, grasshoppers, turtle doves, and butterflies. I didn’t have a gun then, and even now a gun is not necessary in my hunting.

My hunt was then and now - in finds. It was necessary to find something in nature that I had not yet seen, and perhaps no one had ever encountered this in their life...

My farm was large, there were countless paths.

My young friends! We are the masters of our nature, and for us it is a storehouse of the sun with great treasures of life. Not only do these treasures need to be protected, they must be opened and shown.

Needed for fish pure water- We will protect our reservoirs.

There are various valuable animals in the forests, steppes, and mountains - we will protect our forests, steppes, and mountains.

For fish - water, for birds - air, for animals - forest, steppe, mountains. But a person needs a homeland. And protecting nature means protecting the homeland.

Mikhail Prishvin “Hot Hour”

It is melting in the fields, but in the forest the snow still lies untouched in dense pillows on the ground and on the branches of trees, and the trees stand in captivity in the snow. Thin trunks bent to the ground, frozen and waiting from hour to hour for release. Finally this hot hour comes, the happiest for motionless trees and terrible for animals and birds.

The hot hour has come, the snow is melting imperceptibly, and now in the complete silence of the forest it seems to move by itself. spruce branch and will rock. And just under this tree, covered with its wide branches, a hare sleeps. In fear, he gets up and listens: the twig cannot move by itself. The hare is scared, and then before his eyes another, third branch moved and, freed from the snow, jumped. The hare darted, ran, sat down again and listened: where is the trouble, where should he run?

And as soon as he stood on his hind legs, he just looked around, how he would jump up in front of his very nose, how he would straighten up, how a whole birch tree would sway, how a Christmas tree branch would wave nearby!

And it went and went: branches were jumping everywhere, breaking out of the snow captivity, the whole forest was moving around, the whole forest was moving. And the maddened hare rushes about, and every animal gets up, and the bird flies away from the forest.

Mikhail Prishvin “Conversation of trees”

The buds open, chocolate, with green tails, and on each green beak hangs a large transparent drop. You take one bud, rub it between your fingers, and then for a long time everything smells like the fragrant resin of birch, poplar or bird cherry.

You sniff a bird cherry bud and immediately remember how you used to climb up a tree for berries, shiny, black-varnished. I ate handfuls of them right with the seeds, but nothing but good came from it.

The evening is warm, and there is such silence, as if something should happen in such silence. And then the trees begin to whisper among themselves: a white birch with another white birch call to each other from afar; a young aspen came out into the clearing, like a green candle, and called the same green aspen candle to itself, waving a twig; The bird cherry gives the bird cherry a branch with open buds. If you compare with us, we echo sounds, but they have aroma.

Mikhail Prishvin “The Forest Master”

That was on a sunny day, otherwise I’ll tell you what it was like 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 was trying to be the first and catch the first drop of rain. And so it became in the forest, as if every smallest entity had received its own, separate expression.

So I come to them at this time, and it seems to me: they all, like people, turned their faces to me and, out of their stupidity, ask me, like God, for rain.

“Come on, old man,” I ordered the rain, “you will make us all tired, go, go, start!”

But this time the rain did not listen to me, and I remembered my new straw hat: it would rain and my hat would disappear. But then, thinking about the hat, I saw an extraordinary tree. It grew, of course, in the shade, and that is why its branches were once down. Now, after selective felling, it found itself in the light, and each of its branches began to grow upward. Probably, the lower branches would have risen over time, but these branches, having come into contact with the ground, sent out roots and clung to them... So under the tree with the branches raised up, a good hut was made at the bottom. Having chopped spruce branches, I sealed it, made an entrance, and laid a seat underneath. And just sat down to start a new conversation with the rain, as I see, it’s burning very close to me a big tree. I quickly grabbed a spruce branch from the hut, collected it in a broom and, lashing it at the burning place, little by little extinguished the fire before the flames burned through the bark of the tree all around and thereby made it impossible for the movement of sap.

The area around the tree was not burned by a fire, no cows were grazed here, and there could not have been shepherds on whom everyone blames for the fires. Remembering my childhood robber years, I realized that the resin on the tree was most likely set on fire by some boy out of mischief, out of curiosity to see how the resin would burn. Going back to my childhood years, I imagined how pleasant it would be to strike a match and set fire to a tree.

It became clear to me that the pest, when the resin caught fire, suddenly saw me and immediately disappeared somewhere in the nearby bushes. Then, pretending that I was continuing on 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 didn't have to wait long for the robber. A blond boy of about seven or eight years old, with a reddish sunny complexion, bold, open eyes, half naked and with an excellent build, came out of the bush. 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 it so much that he even turned around himself. This didn't bother him; on the contrary, he, like a real owner of the forests, 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,” said the boy, “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 man hadn’t come and put out the fire, then, perhaps, the whole forest would have burned from this tree.” If only we could have seen it then!

- You are an idiot! - said Zina.

“It’s 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, “fled away.”

And Zina, apparently, did not even think about answering for the robber; she looked at me calmly, only her eyebrows rose a little in surprise.

Seeing such an intelligent girl, I wanted to turn this whole story into a joke, win her over, and then work on the owner of the forests together.

Just at this time, the tension of all living 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 and smiled graciously 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 and began to fall. And the girl seriously, thoughtfully focused on me and pursed her lips, as if she wanted to say: “Jokes aside, but still it started to rain.”

“Zina,” I said hastily, “tell me what you have in this big basket?”

She showed: there were two porcini mushrooms. We put my new hat in the basket, covered it with ferns and headed out of the rain to my hut. Having broken some more spruce branches, we covered it well and climbed in.

“Vasya,” the girl shouted. - He’ll be fooling around, come out!

And the owner of the forests, driven by the pouring rain, was not slow 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 goo-goo!

And all three of us froze.

It is impossible to convey the delights of being in the forest under a Christmas tree during a warm summer rain. A tufted hazel grouse, driven by the rain, burst into the middle of our dense fir tree and sat down right above the hut. A finch nestled in full view under a branch. The hedgehog has arrived. A hare hobbled past. And for a long time the rain whispered and whispered something to our Christmas tree. And we sat for a long time, and it was as if the real owner of the forests was whispering, whispering, whispering to each of us separately...

Mikhail Prishvin “Dead tree”

When the rain stopped and everything around sparkled, we followed a path made by the feet of passers-by and emerged from the forest. Right at the exit there stood 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.”

Having looked at this tree, I said to the children:

“Perhaps a passerby, wanting to rest here, stuck an ax into this tree and hung his heavy bag on the ax.” The tree then became ill and began to heal the wound with resin. Or maybe, fleeing from a hunter, a squirrel hid in the dense crown of this tree, and the hunter, in order to drive it out of its shelter, began to bang on the trunk with a heavy log. Sometimes just one blow is enough for a tree to get sick.

And many, many things can happen to a tree, as well as to a person and to any living creature, that can cause illness. Or maybe lightning struck?

Something started, and the tree began to fill its wound with resin. When the tree began to get sick, the worm, of course, found out about it. Zakorysh climbed under the bark and began to sharpen there. In his own way, the woodpecker somehow found out about the worm and, in search of a thorn, began to chisel a tree here and there. Will you find it soon? Otherwise, it may be that while the woodpecker is chiseling and chiseling so that he could grab it, the bark will advance at this time, and the forest carpenter must chisel again. And not just one bark, and not just one woodpecker either. This is how woodpeckers peck at 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 lighting fires in the forest, collect firewood and set it on fire. To make it ignite faster, they scrape off the resinous crust from the tree. So, little by little, a white ring formed around the tree from the chipping, the upward movement of sap stopped, and the tree withered. Now tell me, who is to blame for the death of a beautiful tree that stood in place for at least two centuries: disease, lightning, bark, woodpeckers?

- Zakorysh! - Vasya said quickly.

And, looking at Zina, he corrected himself:

The children were probably very friendly, and the quick Vasya was used to reading the truth from the face of the calm, smart Zina. So, he probably would have licked the truth from her face this time, but I asked her:

- And you, Zinochka, how do you think, my dear daughter?

The girl put her hand around her mouth, looked at me with intelligent eyes, like at a teacher at school, and answered:

— People are probably to blame.

“People, people are to blame,” I picked up after her.

And, like a real teacher, he told them about everything, as I think for myself: that woodpeckers and the bark 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 is born a master of nature, but we just have to learn a lot to understand the forest in order to gain the right to manage it and become a real master of the forest.

I didn’t forget to tell you about myself that I still study constantly and without any plan or idea, I don’t interfere with anything in the forest.

Here I did not forget to tell you about my recent discovery of fiery arrows, and how I spared even one cobweb. After that we left the forest, and this is what happens to me now all the time: in the forest I behave like a student, but I come out of the forest like a teacher.

Mikhail Prishvin “Floors of the Forest”

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; blackbirds - even higher, on the bushes; hollow birds - woodpeckers, titmice, owls - even higher; At different heights along the tree trunk and at the very top, predators settle: hawks and eagles.

I once had the opportunity to observe in the forest that they, animals and birds, have floors that are not like our skyscrapers: with us you can always change with someone, with them each breed certainly lives in its own floor.

One day while hunting we came to a clearing with dead birches. It often happens that birch trees grow to a certain age and dry out.

Another tree, having dried out, drops its bark to the ground, and therefore the uncovered wood soon rots and the whole tree falls, but the bark of a birch does not fall; This resinous bark, white on the outside - birch bark - is an impenetrable case for a tree, and a dead tree stands for a long time as if it were alive.

Even when the tree rots and the wood turns into dust, weighed down with moisture, the white birch appears to stand as if alive.

But as soon as you give such a tree a good push, it suddenly breaks into heavy pieces and falls. Cutting down such trees is a very fun activity, but also dangerous: a piece of wood, if you don’t dodge it, can hit you hard 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 quite tall birch. Falling, in the air it broke into several pieces, and in one of them there was a hollow with a nut nest. The little chicks were not injured when the tree fell; they only fell out of the hollow together with their nest.

Naked chicks, covered with feathers, opened their 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 snack, they ate, swallowed and squeaked again.

Very soon the parents arrived, titmouse chickadees with white chubby cheeks and worms in their mouths, and sat down on nearby trees.

“Hello, dears,” we told them, “a misfortune has happened; we didn't want that.

The Gadgets couldn’t answer us, but, most importantly, they couldn’t understand what had happened, where the tree had gone, where their children had disappeared. They were not at all afraid of us, they fluttered from branch to branch in great anxiety.

- Yes, here they are! — we showed them the nest on the ground. - Here they are, listen to how they squeak, how they call you!

The Gadgets didn’t listen to anything, they fussed, worried, and didn’t want to go down and go beyond their floor.

“Or maybe,” we said to each other, “they are afraid of us.” Let's hide! - And they hid.

No! The chicks squealed, the parents squeaked, fluttered, but did not go down.

We guessed then that the birds, unlike ours in skyscrapers, cannot change floors: now it just seems to them that the entire floor with their chicks has disappeared.

“Oh-oh-oh,” said my companion, “what fools you are!”

It became pitiful and funny: so nice and with wings, but they don’t want to understand anything.

Then we took that one big piece, in which the nest was located, they broke the top of a neighboring birch tree and placed our piece with the nest on it exactly at the same height as the destroyed floor.

We didn't have to wait long in ambush: after a few minutes happy parents met our chicks.

Mikhail Prishvin "Old Starling"

The starlings hatched and flew away, and their place in the birdhouse has long been taken by sparrows. But still, on a nice dewy morning, an old starling flies to the same apple tree and sings.

That's strange! It would seem that everything is already over, the female hatched the chicks long ago, the cubs grew up and flew away... Why does the old starling fly every morning to the apple tree where he spent his spring and sing?

Mikhail Prishvin “Spiderweb”

It was a sunny day, so bright that the rays penetrated even the darkest forest. I walked forward along such a narrow clearing that some trees on one side 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 it was still there: the aspens were babbling above, and below, as always, the ferns were swaying importantly. Suddenly I noticed: from side to side across the clearing, from left to right, some small fiery arrows were constantly flying here and there. As always in such cases, I focused my attention on the arrows and soon noticed that the arrows were moving with the wind, from left to right.

I also noticed that on the trees, their usual shoots-legs came out of their orange shirts and the wind blew away these no longer needed shirts from each tree in a great multitude: each new paw on the tree was born in an orange shirt, and now as many paws, as many shirts flew off - thousands, millions...

I saw how one of these flying shirts met 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 that was invisible to me, and this gave me the opportunity to approach the cobweb point-blank and fully understand the phenomenon of the arrows: the wind blows the cobweb towards a sunbeam, the shiny cobweb flashes from the light, and this makes it seem 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 apart, 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 force all the forest spiders to 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 it, helped me unravel the phenomenon of the arrows.

Was I cruel, tearing apart thousands of webs? Not at all: I didn’t see them - my cruelty was a consequence of my physical strength.

Was I merciful, bending my weary back to save the web? I don’t think so: in the forest I behave like a student, and if I could, I wouldn’t touch anything.

I attribute the salvation of this web to the action of my concentrated attention.

Mikhail Prishvin “Flappers”

The green pipes are growing, growing; heavy mallards come and go from the swamps here, waddling, and behind them, whistling, are black ducklings with yellow paws between the hummocks behind the queen, as if between mountains.

We are sailing on a boat across the lake into the reeds to check how many ducks there will be this year and how they, young ones, are growing: how do they fly now, or are they still just diving, or running away through the water, flapping their short wings. These flappers are a very entertaining crowd. To the right of us, in the reeds, there is a green wall and to the left a green one, but we are driving along a narrow strip free of aquatic plants. Ahead of us, two of the smallest teals covered in black fluff swim out onto the water from the reeds and, when they see us, they begin to run away as fast as they can. But, pressing our oar hard into the bottom, we gave our boat a very fast move and began to overtake them. I was about to reach out my hand to grab one, but suddenly both little teals disappeared under the water. We waited a long time for them to emerge, when suddenly we noticed them in the reeds. They hid there, sticking their noses out between the reeds. Their mother, the teal, flew around us all the time, and very quietly - something like what happens when a duck, deciding to go down to the water, at the very last moment before contacting the water, seems to stand in the air on its legs.

After this incident with the little chiryats, a mallard duckling appeared in front, on the nearest reach, very large, almost as big as the womb. We were sure that such a big one could fly perfectly, so we hit it with an oar to make it fly. But, it’s true, he hasn’t tried to fly yet and took off from us like a clapper.

We also set off after him and began to quickly overtake him. His situation was much worse than those little ones, because the place here was so shallow that he had nowhere to dive. Several times, in final despair, he tried to peck his nose at the water, but land appeared there, and he was only wasting time. During one of these attempts, our boat caught up with him, I extended my hand...

At this moment of final danger, the duckling gathered his strength and suddenly flew. But this was his first flight, he did not yet know how to control it. He flew in exactly the same way as we, having learned to sit on a bicycle, let it go with the movement of our legs, but are still afraid to turn the steering wheel, and therefore the first ride is all straight, straight until we bump into something - and crash on its side. So the duckling kept flying straight, and in front of him was a wall of reeds. He did not yet know how to soar over the reeds, he caught his paws and fell down.

This is exactly what happened to me when I was jumping, jumping on a bicycle, falling, falling and suddenly sat down and with great speed rushed straight towards the cow...

Mikhail Prishvin “Golden Meadow”

My brother and I always had fun with them when dandelions ripened. It used to be that we were going somewhere to do our fishing - he was in front, I was in the heel.

“Seryozha!” - I’ll call him in a businesslike manner. He will look back, and I will blow a dandelion right in his face. For this, he begins to watch for me and, like a gape, he also makes a fuss. And so we picked these uninteresting flowers just for fun. But once I managed to make a discovery. We lived in a village, in front of our window there was a meadow, all golden with many blooming dandelions. It 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 on the side of the palm were yellow and, clenching into a fist, we would close the yellow one. In the morning, when the sun rose, I saw the dandelions opening their palms, and this made the meadow turn golden again.

Since then, dandelion has become one of the most interesting colors, because dandelions went to bed with us children, and got up with us.

Sergey Aksakov “Nest”

Having noticed the nest of some bird, most often a dawn or redstart, we always went to watch the mother sitting on her eggs.

Sometimes, through carelessness, we scared her away from the nest and then, carefully pushing aside the prickly branches of barberry or gooseberry, we looked at how small, small, colorful eggs lay in the nest.

It sometimes happened that the mother, bored with our curiosity, abandoned the nest; then, seeing that the bird had not been in the nest for several days and that it was not calling or hovering around us, as always happened, we took out the testicles or the entire nest and took it to our room, considering that we were the rightful owners of the home left by the mother .

When the bird safely, despite our interference, hatched its testicles and we suddenly found instead of them naked cubs, constantly opening their huge mouths with a plaintive quiet squeak, we saw how the mother flew in and fed them flies and worms...

My God, what joy we had!

We never stopped watching how the little birds grew, gave gifts and finally left their nest.

Konstantin Paustovsky “Gift”

Every time autumn approached, conversations began that much in nature was not arranged the way we would like. Our winter is long and protracted, summer is much shorter than winter, and autumn passes instantly and leaves the impression of a golden bird flashing outside the window.

The forester’s grandson Vanya Malyavin, a boy of about fifteen, loved to listen to our conversations. He often came to our village from his grandfather’s lodge on Lake Urzhenskoe and brought either a bag of porcini mushrooms or a sieve of lingonberries, or he would just come running to stay with us: listen to conversations and read the magazine “Around the World.”

Thick bound volumes of this magazine lay in the closet along with oars, lanterns and an old beehive. The hive was painted with white glue paint. It fell off the dry wood in large pieces, and the wood under the paint smelled like old wax. One day Vanya brought a small birch tree that had been dug up by the roots. He covered the roots with damp moss and wrapped them in matting.

“This is for you,” he said and blushed. - Present. Plant it in a wooden tub and place it in a warm room - it will be green all winter.

- Why did you dig it up, weirdo? - Reuben asked.

“You said that you feel sorry for summer,” Vanya answered. “My grandfather gave me the idea.” “Run,” he says, to last year’s burnt area, two-year-old birches there grow like grass—there’s no way through them. Dig it up and take it to Rum Isaevich (that’s what my grandfather called Reuben). He worries about summer, so he will have a summer memory for the cold winter. It’s certainly fun to look at a green leaf when the snow is pouring out of a bag outside.”

“Not only about summer, I regret autumn even more,” said Reuben and touched the thin leaves of the birch.

We brought a box from the barn, filled it to the top with earth and transplanted a small birch tree into it. The box was placed in the brightest and warmest room by the window, and a day later the drooping branches of the birch rose up, she was all cheerful, and even her leaves were already rustling when a draft wind rushed into the room and slammed the door in anger. Autumn settled in the garden, but the leaves of our birch remained green and alive.

The maples burned dark purple, the euonymus turned pink, and the wild grapes on the gazebo withered. Even here and there on the birch trees in the garden yellow strands appeared, like the first gray hair of a still young person. But the birch tree in the room seemed to be getting younger. We did not notice any signs of fading in her.

One night the first frost came. He breathed cold air onto the windows in the house, and they fogged up, sprinkled grainy frost on the roofs, and crunched under his feet.

Only the stars seemed to rejoice at the first frost and sparkled much brighter than on warm summer nights. That night I woke up from a drawn-out and pleasant sound - a shepherd's horn sang in the darkness. Outside the windows the dawn was barely noticeable blue.

I got dressed and went out into the garden. The harsh air washed over my face cold water— the dream passed immediately. Dawn was breaking. The blue in the east gave way to a crimson haze, similar to the smoke of a fire.

This darkness brightened, became more and more transparent, through it distant and gentle lands of golden and pink clouds were already visible.

There was no wind, but the leaves kept falling and falling in the garden. Over that one night, the birches turned yellow to the very tops, and the leaves fell from them in frequent and sad rain.

I returned to the rooms: they were warm and sleepy. In the pale light of dawn there was a small birch tree standing in a tub, and I suddenly noticed that almost all of it had turned yellow that night, and several lemon leaves were already lying on the floor.

Room warmth did not save the birch. A day later, she flew around all over, as if she did not want to lag behind her adult friends, who were crumbling in cold forests, groves, and spacious clearings damp in autumn. Vanya Malyavin, Reuben and all of us were upset. We have already gotten used to the idea that on snowy winter days the birch tree will turn green in rooms illuminated by the white sun and the crimson flame of cheerful stoves. The last memory of summer has disappeared.

A forester I knew grinned when we told him about our attempt to save green foliage on a birch tree.

“It’s the law,” he said. - Law of nature. If the trees did not shed their leaves for the winter, they would die from many things - from the weight of the snow, which would grow on the leaves and break the thickest branches, and from the fact that by autumn a lot of salts harmful to the tree would accumulate in the foliage, and, finally, from the fact that the leaves would continue to evaporate moisture in the middle of winter, and the frozen ground would not give it to the roots of the tree, and the tree would inevitably die from winter drought, from thirst.

And grandfather Mitri, nicknamed “Ten Percent,” learned about this little story with the birch tree and interpreted it in his own way.

“You, my dear,” he said to Reuben, “live with mine, then argue.” Otherwise, you keep arguing with me, but it’s clear that you haven’t had enough time to think through it yet. We, the old ones, are more capable of thinking. We have little to worry about - so we figure out what’s done on earth and what its explanation is. Take, say, this birch tree. Don’t tell me about the forester, I know in advance everything he will say. The forester is a cunning guy; when he lived in Moscow, they say he cooked his food using electric current. Could this be or not?

“Maybe,” Reuben answered.

- “Maybe, maybe”! - his grandfather mimicked him. - And you are this one? electricity did you see? How did you see him when he has no visibility, like air? Listen to the birch tree. Is there friendship between people or not? That's what it is. And people get carried away. They think that friendship is given to them alone, and they boast before every living creature. And friendship, brother, is all around, wherever you look. What can I say, a cow is friends with a cow, and a finch with a finch. Kill a crane, and the crane will wither away, cry, and won’t find a place for herself. And every grass and tree, too, must sometimes have friendship. How can your birch tree not fly around when all its companions in the forests have flown around? With what eyes will she look at them in the spring, what will she say when they have suffered in the winter, and she warmed herself by the stove, warm, well-fed, and clean? You also need to have a conscience.

“Well, grandfather, you screwed it up,” said Reuben. - You won't get along.

Grandfather chuckled.

— Weak? - he asked sarcastically. -Are you giving up? Don't get involved with me, it's a useless matter.

Grandfather left, tapping his stick, very pleased, confident that he had won all of us in this argument and, along with us, the forester.

We planted a birch tree in the garden, under the fence, and collected its yellow leaves and dried them between the pages of “Around the World.”

Konstantin Paustovsky “Collection of Miracles”

Everyone, even the most serious person, not to mention, of course, the boys, has his own secret and slightly funny dream. I had the same dream - to definitely get to Borovoe Lake.

From the village where I lived that summer, the lake was only twenty kilometers away. Everyone tried to dissuade me from going - the road was boring, and the lake was like a lake, all around there were only forests, dry swamps and lingonberries. The picture is famous!

- Why are you rushing there, to this lake! - the garden watchman Semyon was angry. -What didn’t you see? What a fussy, grasping people, oh my God! You see, he needs to touch everything with his own hand, look out with his own eye! What will you look for there? One pond. And nothing more!

- Were you there?

- Why did he surrender to me, this lake! I don't have anything else to do, or what? This is where they sit, all my business! - Semyon tapped his brown neck with his fist. - On the hill!

But I still went to the lake. Two village boys, Lyonka and Vanya, tagged along with me.

Before we had time to leave the outskirts, the complete hostility of the characters of Lyonka and Vanya was immediately revealed. Lyonka calculated everything he saw around him into rubles.

“Look,” he told me in his booming voice, “the gander is coming.” How long do you think he can handle?

- How do I know!

“It’s probably worth a hundred rubles,” Lyonka said dreamily and immediately asked: “But how much will this pine tree last?” Two hundred rubles? Or for all three hundred?

- Accountant! - Vanya remarked contemptuously and sniffed. “He’s worth a dime’s worth of brains, but he’s asking prices for everything.” My eyes would not look at him.

After that, Lyonka and Vanya stopped, and I heard a well-known conversation - a harbinger of a fight. It consisted, as is customary, only of questions and exclamations.

- Whose brains are they worth for a dime? My?

- Probably not mine!

- Look!

- See for yourself!

- Don't grab it! The cap was not sewn for you!

- Oh, I wish I could push you in my own way!

- Don’t scare me! Don't poke me in the nose!

The fight was short but decisive.

Lyonka picked up his cap, spat and went, offended, back to the village. I began to shame Vanya.

- Of course! - said Vanya, embarrassed. - I fought in the heat of the moment. Everyone is fighting with him, with Lyonka. He's kind of boring! Give him free rein, he puts prices on everything, like in a general store. For every spikelet. And he will certainly clear the entire forest and chop it down for firewood. And I’m afraid more than anything in the world when the forest is being cleared. I'm so afraid of passion!

- Why so?

— Oxygen from forests. The forests will be cut down, the oxygen will become liquid and smelly. And the earth will no longer be able to attract him, to keep him close to him. Where will he fly? — Vanya pointed to the fresh morning sky. - The person will have nothing to breathe. The forester explained it to me.

We climbed the slope and entered an oak copse. Immediately red ants began to eat us. They stuck to my legs and fell from the branches by the collar. Dozens of ant roads, covered with sand, stretched between oaks and junipers. Sometimes such a road passed, as if through a tunnel, under the gnarled roots of an oak tree and rose again to the surface. Ant traffic on these roads was continuous. The ants ran in one direction empty, and returned with goods - white grains, dry beetle legs, dead wasps and a furry caterpillar.

- Bustle! - said Vanya. - Like in Moscow. An old man comes to this forest from Moscow to collect ant eggs. Every year. They take it away in bags. This is the best bird food. And they are good for fishing. You need a tiny little hook!

Behind an oak copse, on the edge of a loose sandy road, stood a lopsided cross with a black tin icon. Red ladybugs with white speckles were crawling along the cross.

A quiet wind blew in my face from the oat fields. The oats rustled, bent, and a gray wave ran over them.

Beyond the oat field we passed through the village of Polkovo. I have long noticed that almost all of the regiment’s peasants differ from the surrounding residents in their tall stature.

- Stately people in Polkovo! - our Zaborievskys said with envy. - Grenadiers! Drummers!

In Polkovo we went to rest in the hut of Vasily Lyalin, a tall, handsome old man with a piebald beard. Gray strands stuck out in disarray in his black shaggy hair.

When we entered Lyalin’s hut, he shouted:

- Keep your heads down! Heads! Everyone is smashing my forehead against the lintel! The people in Polkov are painfully tall, but they are slow-witted - they build huts according to their short stature.

While talking with Lyalin, I finally learned why the regimental peasants were so tall.

- Story! - said Lyalin. - Do you think we went so high in vain? It’s in vain that even the little bug doesn’t live. It also has its purpose.

Vanya laughed.

- Wait until you laugh! - Lyalin remarked sternly. “I’m not yet learned enough to laugh.” You listen. Was there such a foolish tsar in Russia - Emperor Paul? Or wasn't it?

“It was,” said Vanya. - We studied.

- Was and floated away. And he did such a lot of things that we still have hiccups to this day. The gentleman was fierce. The soldier at the parade squinted his eyes in the wrong direction - he now gets excited and begins to thunder: “To Siberia! To hard labor! Three hundred ramrods!” This is what the king was like! Well, what happened was that the grenadier regiment did not please him. He shouts: “March in the indicated direction for a thousand miles!” Let's go! And after a thousand miles, stop for an eternal rest!” And he points in the direction with his finger. Well, the regiment, of course, turned and walked. What are you going to do? We walked and walked for three months and reached this place. The forest all around is impassable. One wild. They stopped and began cutting down huts, crushing clay, laying stoves, and digging wells. They built a village and called it Polkovo, as a sign that a whole regiment built it and lived in it. Then, of course, liberation came, and the soldiers took root in this area, and, almost, everyone stayed here. The area, as you can see, is fertile. There were those soldiers - grenadiers and giants - our ancestors. Our growth comes from them. If you don’t believe it, go to the city, to the museum. They will show you the papers there. Everything is spelled out in them. And just think, if only they could walk two more miles and come out to the river, they would stop there. But no, they didn’t dare disobey the order—they just stopped. People are still surprised. “Why are you guys from the regiment, they say, running into the forest? Didn't you have a place by the river? They say they are scary, big guys, but apparently they don’t have enough guesses in their heads.” Well, you explain to them how it happened, then they agree. “They say you can’t fight against an order! It is a fact!"

Vasily Lyalin volunteered to take us to the forest and show us the path to Borovoe Lake. First we passed through a sandy field overgrown with immortelle and wormwood. Then thickets of young pines ran out to meet us. The pine forest greeted us with silence and coolness after the hot fields. High in the slanting rays of the sun, blue jays fluttered as if on fire. Clear puddles stood on the overgrown road, and clouds floated through these blue puddles. It smelled of strawberries and heated tree stumps. Drops of either dew or yesterday’s rain glistened on the leaves of the hazel tree. Cones fell loudly.

- Great forest! - Lyalin sighed. “The wind will blow, and these pines will hum like bells.”

Then the pines gave way to birches, and water sparkled behind them.

- Borovoe? - I asked.

- No. It’s still a walk and a walk to get to Borovoye. This is Larino Lake. Let's go, look into the water, take a look.

The water in Larino Lake was deep and clear to the very bottom. Only near the shore she shuddered a little - there, from under the moss, a spring flowed into the lake. At the bottom lay several dark large trunks. They sparkled with a weak and dark fire when the sun reached them.

“Black oak,” said Lyalin. — Stained, centuries-old. We pulled one out, but it’s difficult to work with. Breaks saws. But if you make a thing - a rolling pin or, say, a rocker - it will last forever! Heavy wood, sinks in water.

The sun shone in the dark water. Beneath it lay ancient oak trees, as if cast from black steel. And butterflies flew over the water, reflected in it with yellow and purple petals.

Lyalin led us onto a remote road.

“Step straight,” he showed, “until you run into mosslands, a dry swamp.” And along the moss there will be a path all the way to the lake. Just be careful, there are a lot of sticks there.

He said goodbye and left. Vanya and I walked along the forest road. The forest became higher, more mysterious and darker. Streams of golden resin froze on the pine trees.

At first, the ruts that had long ago been overgrown with grass were still visible, but then they disappeared, and the pink heather covered the entire road with a dry, cheerful carpet.

The road led us to a low cliff. Beneath it lay mosshars - thick birch and aspen undergrowth warmed to the roots. The trees grew from deep moss. Small ones were scattered here and there on the moss. yellow flowers and there were dry branches with white lichen lying around.

A narrow path led through the mshars. She avoided high hummocks. At the end of the path, the water glowed black and blue—Borovoe Lake.

We walked carefully along the mshars. Pegs, sharp as spears, stuck out from under the moss - the remains of birch and aspen trunks. Lingonberry thickets have begun. One cheek of each berry - the one turned to the south - was completely red, and the other was just beginning to turn pink.

A heavy capercaillie jumped out from behind a hummock and ran into the small forest, breaking dry wood.

We went out to the lake. The grass stood waist-high along its banks. Water splashed in the roots of old trees. A wild duckling jumped out from under the roots and ran across the water with a desperate squeak.

The water in Borovoe was black and clean. Islands of white lilies bloomed on the water and smelled sweetly. The fish struck and the lilies swayed.

- What a blessing! - said Vanya. - Let's live here until our crackers run out.

I agreed.

We stayed at the lake for two days. We saw sunsets and twilight and a tangle of plants appearing before us in the light of the fire. We heard the cries of wild geese and the sounds of night rain. He walked for a short time, about an hour, and quietly rang across the lake, as if he was stretching thin, cobweb-like, trembling strings between the black sky and water.

That's all I wanted to tell you.

But since then I will not believe anyone that there are boring places on our earth that do not provide any food for the eye, the ear, the imagination, or human thought.

Only in this way, by exploring some piece of our country, can you understand how good it is and how our hearts are attached to its every path, spring, and even to the timid squeaking of a forest bird.

Konstantin Paustovsky “Farewell to Summer”

It poured for several days without stopping, cold rain. A wet wind rustled in the garden. At four o'clock in the afternoon we were already lighting the kerosene lamps, and it involuntarily seemed that summer was over forever and the earth was moving further and further into the dull fogs, into the uncomfortable darkness and cold.

It was the end of November - the saddest time in the village. The cat slept all day, curled up on an old chair, and shuddered in his sleep when dark water rushed through the windows.

The roads were washed away. The river carried yellowish foam, similar to a shot down squirrel. The last birds hid under the eaves, and for more than a week now no one has visited us: neither grandfather Mitri, nor Vanya Malyavin, nor the forester.

It was best in the evenings. We lit the stoves. The fire was noisy, crimson reflections trembled on the log walls and on the old engraving - a portrait of the artist Bryullov.

Leaning back in his chair, he looked at us and, it seemed, just like us, having put aside the open book, he was thinking about what he had read and listening to the hum of the rain on the plank roof. The lamps burned brightly, and the disabled copper samovar sang and sang his simple song. As soon as he was brought into the room, it immediately became cozy - perhaps because the glass was fogged up and the lonely birch branch that knocked on the window day and night was not visible.

After tea we sat by the stove and read. On such evenings, the most pleasant thing was to read the very long and touching novels of Charles Dickens or leaf through the heavy volumes of the magazines “Niva” and “Picturesque Review” from the old years.

At night, Funtik, a small red dachshund, often cried in his sleep. I had to get up and wrap him in a warm woolen rag. Funtik thanked him in his sleep, carefully licked his hand and, sighing, fell asleep. The darkness rustled behind the walls with the splash of rain and blows of the wind, and it was scary to think about those who might have been overtaken by this stormy night in the impenetrable forests.

One night I woke up with a strange feeling.

It seemed to me that I had gone deaf in my sleep. I lay with my eyes closed, listened for a long time and finally realized that I was not deaf, but that there was simply an extraordinary silence outside the walls of the house. This kind of silence is called “dead”. The rain died, the wind died, the noisy, restless garden died. You could only hear the cat snoring in its sleep.

I opened my eyes. White and even light filled the room. I got up and went to the window - everything was snowy and silent behind the glass. In the foggy sky, a lonely moon stood at a dizzying height, and a yellowish circle shimmered around it.

When did the first snow fall? I approached the walkers. It was so light that the arrows showed clearly. They showed two o'clock.

I fell asleep at midnight. This means that in two hours the earth changed so unusually, in two short hours the fields, forests and gardens were bewitched by the cold.

Through the window I saw a large gray bird land on a maple branch in the garden. The branch swayed and snow fell from it. The bird slowly rose and flew away, and the snow kept falling like glass rain falling from a Christmas tree. Then everything became quiet again.

Reuben woke up. He looked outside the window for a long time, sighed and said:

— The first snow suits the earth very well.

The earth was elegant, looking like a shy bride.

And in the morning everything crunched around: frozen roads, leaves on the porch, black nettle stems sticking out from under the snow.

Grandfather Mitri came to visit for tea and congratulated him on his first trip.

“So the earth was washed,” he said, “with snow water from a silver trough.”

- Where did you get this, Mitri, such words? - Reuben asked.

- Is there anything wrong? - the grandfather grinned. “My mother, the deceased, told me that in ancient times, beauties washed themselves with the first snow from a silver jug, and therefore their beauty never faded. This happened even before Tsar Peter, my dear, when robbers ruined merchants in the local forests.

It was difficult to stay at home on the first winter day. We went to the forest lakes. Grandfather walked us to the edge of the forest. He also wanted to visit the lakes, but “the ache in his bones did not let him go.”

It was solemn, light and quiet in the forests.

The day seemed to be dozing. Lonely snowflakes occasionally fell from the cloudy high sky. We carefully breathed on them, and they turned into pure drops of water, then became cloudy, froze and rolled to the ground like beads.

We wandered through the forests until dusk, going around familiar places. Flocks of bullfinches sat, ruffled, on rowan trees covered with snow.

We picked several bunches of red rowan, caught by the frost - this was the last memory of summer, of autumn. On the small lake - it was called Larin's Pond - there was always a lot of duckweed floating around. Now the water in the lake was very black and transparent - all the duckweed had sank to the bottom by winter.

A glass strip of ice has grown along the coast. The ice was so transparent that even close up it was difficult to notice. I saw a flock of rafts in the water near the shore and threw a small stone at them. The stone fell on the ice, rang, the rafts, flashing with scales, darted into the depths, and a white grainy trace of the impact remained on the ice. That’s the only reason we guessed that a layer of ice had already formed near the shore. We broke off individual pieces of ice with our hands. They crunched and left a mixed smell of snow and lingonberries on your fingers.

Here and there in the clearings birds flew and squealed pitifully. The sky overhead was very light, white, and towards the horizon it thickened, and its color resembled lead. Slow snow clouds were coming from there.

The forests became increasingly gloomy, quieter, and, finally, thick snow began to fall. It melted in the black water of the lake, tickled my face, and powdered the forest with gray smoke.

Winter began to rule the earth, but we knew that under the loose snow, if you rake it with your hands, you could still find fresh forest flowers, we knew that the fire would always crackle in the stoves, that tits remained with us to winter, and winter seemed the same to us beautiful like summer.

Konstantin Ushinsky “The Mischief of the Old Woman-Winter”

The old woman-winter got angry, she decided to squeeze every breath from the light. First of all, she began to get to the birds: she was tired of them with their screaming and squeaking. Winter blew cold, tore leaves from forests and oak forests and scattered them along the roads. There is nowhere for the birds to go; They began to gather in flocks and think little thoughts. They gathered, shouted and flew for high mountains, behind blue seas, V warm countries. The sparrow remained, and it hid under the eagles.

Winter sees that it cannot catch up with the birds: it attacked the animals. She covered the fields with snow, filled the forests with snowdrifts, covered the trees with icy bark and sent frost after frost. The frosts are getting fiercer than the other, jumping from tree to tree, crackling and clicking, scaring the animals. The animals were not afraid: some had warm fur coats, others hid in deep holes; a squirrel in a hollow is gnawing nuts, a bear in a den is sucking a paw; The little bunny is jumping and warming himself, and the horses, cows, and sheep have long been chewing ready-made hay in warm barns and drinking warm swill.

Winter is even more angry - it gets to the fish: it sends frost after frost, one more severe than the other. Frosts run briskly, tapping loudly with hammers: without wedges, without wedges, they build bridges across lakes and rivers.

The rivers and lakes froze, but only from above, but the fish all went deeper into the depths: they are even warmer under the icy roof.

“Well, wait,” winter thinks, “I’ll catch people, and it sends frost after frost, each one angrier than the other.” The frosts covered the windows with patterns; They knock on the walls and on the doors, so that the logs burst. And people lit the stoves, baked hot pancakes and laughed at winter. If someone goes to the forest for firewood, he will put on a sheepskin coat, felt boots, warm mittens, and when he starts swinging an ax, he will even break out in a sweat. Along the roads, as if to laugh at the winter, the carts pulled out: the horses were steaming, the cab drivers were stamping their feet, clapping their mittens. They shrug their shoulders, the frosty people praise.

The most offensive thing about winter seemed to be that even small children were not afraid of it!

They go skating and sledding, play in the snow, make women, build mountains, water them with water, and even call out to the frost: “Come help!”

Out of anger, winter will pinch one boy by the ear, another by the nose, they will even turn white, and the boy will grab the snow, let’s rub it - and his face will flare up like fire.

Winter sees that she can’t take anything, and she starts crying with anger.

Winter tears began to fall from the eaves... apparently spring is not far away!

Konstantin Ushinsky “Four Wishes”

Mitya sledded down an icy mountain and skated on a frozen river, ran home rosy, cheerful and said to his father:

- How fun it is in winter! I wish it were all winter.

“Write your wish in my pocket book,” said the father.

Mitya wrote it down.

Spring came.

Mitya ran to his heart’s content in the green meadow for colorful butterflies, picked flowers, ran to his father and said:

- What a beauty this spring is! I wish it were still spring.

The father again took out the book and ordered Mitya to write down his wish.

Summer has come. Mitya and his father went to haymaking.

The boy had fun all long day: he fished, picked berries, tumbled in the fragrant hay, and in the evening he said to his father:

- I had a lot of fun today! I wish there was no end to summer.

And this desire of Mitya was written down in the same book.

Autumn has come. Fruits were collected in the garden - ruddy apples and yellow pears.

Mitya was delighted and said to his father:

— Autumn is the best of all seasons!

Then the father took out his notebook and showed the boy that he had said the same thing about spring, and winter, and summer.

Once I was walking along the bank of our stream and noticed a hedgehog under a bush. He noticed me too, curled up and started tapping: knock-knock-knock. It was very similar, as if a car was walking in the distance. I touched him with the tip of my boot - he snorted terribly and pushed his needles into the boot.

- Oh, you’re like 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 there were needles on its back. I took a stick, rolled the hedgehog into my hat and took it home. I had a lot of mice, I heard that a hedgehog catches them, and I 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 kept looking at the hedgehog out of the corner of my eye. He did not lie motionless for long: as soon as I quieted down at the table, the hedgehog turned around, looked around, tried to go there, here, and finally chose a place under the bed and became completely quiet there.

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 the moon had risen in the forest: in the moonlight, hedgehogs like to run around forest clearings. And so he started running around the room, imagining that it was a forest clearing.

I took the pipe, lit a cigarette and blew a cloud near the moon. It became just like being in the forest: the moon and the clouds, and my legs were like tree trunks and the hedgehog probably really liked them, he just 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. He struck a match, lit the candle and only noticed how the 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 didn’t sleep myself, thinking: “Why did the hedgehog need the newspaper?” Soon my tenant ran out from under the bed - and straight to the newspaper, hovered around it, made noise, made noise and finally managed to 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 to him, he was dragging it for himself for a nest, and it turned out that it was true: soon the hedgehog wrapped himself in newspaper and made himself a real nest out of it. Having finished this important task, he left his home and stood opposite the bed, looking at the candle - the moon.

I let the clouds in and ask:

- What else do you need?

The hedgehog was not afraid.

- Do you want something to drink?

I wake up. The hedgehog doesn't 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 was a stream splashing.

“Well, go, go...” I say. “You see, I made the moon for you, and sent up the clouds, and here is water for you...”

I look: it’s like he’s moved forward. And I also moved my lake a little towards it. He moves, and I move, and that’s how we agreed.

“Drink,” I say finally.

He began to cry.

And I ran my hand over the thorns so lightly, as if I was stroking them, and I kept saying:

- You’re a good guy, you’re a good one!

The hedgehog got drunk, I say:

- Let's sleep.

He lay down and blew out the candle.

I don’t know how long I slept, but I hear: I have work in my room again.

I light a candle - and what do you think? A hedgehog is running around the room, and there is an apple on its thorns.

He ran to the nest, put it there and ran into the corner after another, and in the corner there was a bag of apples and it fell over. So the hedgehog ran up, curled up near the apples, twitched and ran again - on the thorns he dragged another apple into the nest.

So the hedgehog settled down to live with me. And now, when drinking tea, I will certainly bring it to my table and either pour milk into a saucer for him to drink, or give him some buns for him to eat.

What do crayfish whisper about?

I’m surprised at crayfish - how much they seem to be confused with unnecessary things: how many legs, what whiskers, what claws, and they walk tail first, and the tail is called a neck. But what amazed me most as a child was that when the crayfish were collected in a bucket, they began to whisper to each other. They whisper, they whisper, but you don’t understand what.

And when they say: “The crayfish whispered,” it means that they died, and their whole crayfish life disappeared into a whisper.

In our river Vertushinka, earlier, in my time, there were more crayfish than fish. And then one day, grandmother Domna Ivanovna and her granddaughter Zinochka came to our Vertushinka for crayfish. Grandmother and granddaughter came to us in the evening, rested a little - and went to the river. There they placed their crawfish nets. Our crayfish nets do everything themselves: a willow twig is bent into a circle, the circle is covered with a mesh from an old seine, a piece of meat or something is placed on the mesh, and best of all, a piece of fried and fragrant frog for crayfish. The nets are lowered to the bottom. Smelling the smell of a fried frog, crayfish crawl out of the coastal caves and crawl onto the nets.

From time to time, the nets are pulled up by the ropes, the crayfish are removed and lowered again.

This is a simple thing. All night the grandmother and granddaughter pulled out crayfish, caught a whole large basket and in the morning they packed up to go back ten miles to their village. The sun has risen, the grandmother and granddaughter are walking, steamed, and worn out. Now they have no time for crayfish, just to get home.

“The crayfish wouldn’t whisper,” said the grandmother.

Zinochka listened.

The crayfish in the basket whispered behind the grandmother's back.

-What are they whispering about? – Zinochka asked.

- Before death, granddaughter, they say goodbye to each other.

And the crayfish did not whisper at all at this time. They only rubbed against each other with rough bone barrels, claws, antennae, necks, and from this it seemed to people that a whisper was coming from them. The crayfish did not intend to die, but wanted to live. Each crayfish used all its legs to find a hole somewhere, and a hole was found in the basket, just enough for the largest crayfish to get through. One large crayfish came out, followed by smaller ones that jokingly climbed out, and it went on and on: from the basket - onto grandma’s katsaveyka, from the katsaveyka - onto a skirt, from the skirt - onto the path, from the path - into the grass, and from the grass a river was just a stone’s throw away.

The sun is burning and burning. The grandmother and granddaughter walk and walk, and the crayfish crawl and crawl.

Here Domna Ivanovna and Zinochka approach the village. Suddenly the grandmother stopped, listened to what was going on in the crayfish basket, and heard nothing. And she had no idea that the basket had become light: after not sleeping all night, the old woman was so tired that she couldn’t even feel her shoulders.

“The crayfish, granddaughter,” said the grandmother, “must have whispered.”

- Are you dead? – the girl asked.

“They fell asleep,” answered the grandmother, “they don’t whisper anymore.”

They came to the hut, the grandmother took off the basket, picked up the rag:

- Dear fathers, where are the crayfish?

Zinochka looked in - the basket was empty.

The grandmother looked at her granddaughter and just threw up her hands.

“Here they are, the crayfish,” she said, “whispering!” I thought they were saying goodbye to each other before they died, and they were saying goodbye to us fools.

Has anyone seen a white rainbow? This happens in the swamps at the most good days. To do this, it is necessary that the fogs rise in the morning, and the sun, when it appears, pierces them with its rays. Then all the fogs gather into one very dense arc, very white, sometimes with a pink tint, sometimes creamy. I love the white rainbow.

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 the fall, ate them right away - I found the shells. Then she ran ten meters away, dived again, again left a shell on the snow and after a few meters made a third climb.

What kind of miracle? It’s impossible to think that she could smell the nut through a thick layer of snow and ice. This means that since the fall I remembered about my nuts and the exact distance between them.

I heard in Siberia, near Lake Baikal, from one citizen about a bear and, I admit, I didn’t believe it. But he assured me that in the old days this case was even published in a Siberian magazine under the title: “A man with a bear against wolves.”

There lived a watchman on the shore of Lake Baikal, he caught fish and shot squirrels. And then once this watchman seems to see it through the window - he runs straight to the hut A big bear, and a pack of wolves is chasing him. That would be the end of the bear. He, this bear, don’t be bad, is in the hallway, the door closed behind him, and he still leaned on it with his paw.

All night long in the forest, straight wet snow pressed on the twigs, broke off, fell, rustled.

The rustling drove the white hare out of the forest, and he probably realized that by morning black field will turn white and he, completely white, can lie quietly. And he lay down on a field not far from the forest, and not far from him, also like a hare, lay weathered over the summer and whitened sun rays horse skull.

I found an amazing birch bark tube. When a person cuts himself a piece of birch bark on a birch tree, the rest of the birch bark near the cut begins to curl into a tube. The tube will dry out and 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, grabbed so tightly that it was difficult to push it out with a stick. There were no hazel trees around the birch tree. How did he get there?

“The squirrel probably hid it there, making its winter supplies,” I thought. “She knew that the tube would roll up tighter and tighter and grab the nut tighter and tighter so that it wouldn’t fall out.”

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. I have often noticed that the first note in this concert, far before the very first hint of light, is taken by a curlew. This is a very thin trill, completely different from the well-known whistle. Afterwards, when the white partridges cry, the black grouse begin to chuff, and the lek, sometimes right next to the hut, begins its muttering, there is no time for the curlew, but then at sunrise, at the most solemn moment, you will certainly pay attention to the new song of the curlew, very cheerful and similar to dance: this dance is as necessary for meeting the sun as the cry of a crane.

When the snow ran into the river in the spring (we live on the Moscow River), onto the dark hot earth White chickens came out everywhere in the village.

Get up, Zhulka! - I ordered.

And she came up to me, my beloved young dog, a white setter with frequent black spots.

I fastened a long leash wound on a reel to the collar with a carabiner and began to teach Zhulka how to hunt (train), first on chickens. This training consists of having the dog stand and look at the chickens, but not try to grab the chicken.

So we use this stretch of the dog so that it indicates the place where the game is hidden, and does not poke forward after it, but stands.

A golden network of sunbeams trembles on the water. Dark blue dragonflies in reeds and horsetail trees. And each dragonfly has its own horsetail tree or reed: it flies off and will certainly return to it.

The crazy crows brought out the chicks and are now sitting and resting.

At night, with electricity, snowflakes were born out of nothing: the sky was starry and clear.

The powder formed on the asphalt not just like snow, but an asterisk upon an asterisk, without flattening one another. It seemed that this rare powder came straight out of nowhere, and yet as I approached my home in Lavrushinsky Lane, the asphalt from it was gray.

I was happy when I woke up on the sixth floor. Moscow lay covered with star powder, and, like tigers on mountain ridges, cats walked everywhere on the roofs. How many clear traces, how many spring romances: in the spring of light all the cats climb onto the roofs.

Works are divided into pages

Stories by Prishvin Mikhail Mikhailovich

Many parents take the choice of children's books quite seriously. Books for children should definitely awaken good feelings in tender children's heads. Therefore, many people choose short stories about nature, its splendor and beauty.

No matter who M. M. Prishvina love read our children, who else could create such wonderful works. Among the huge number of writers, although he doesn’t have many, he did come up with some stories for little children. He was a man of extraordinary imagination; his children's stories are truly a storehouse of kindness and love. M. Prishvin like his fairy tales already for a long time remains an inaccessible author for many modern writers, since he has practically no equal in children's stories.

The Russian writer is a naturalist, an expert on the forest, and a remarkable observer of the life of nature. Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin(1873 – 1954). His stories and stories, even the smallest ones, are simple and immediately understandable. The author's skill and ability to convey the immensity of the surrounding nature is truly admirable! Thanks to stories about nature Prishvin children take a sincere interest in it, developing respect for it and its inhabitants.

Small, but filled with extraordinary colors stories by Mikhail Prishvin wonderfully convey to us what we so rarely encounter in our time. The beauty of nature, remote forgotten places - all this today is so far from dusty megacities. It’s quite possible that many of us are happy to go hiking in the forest right now, but not everyone will be able to. In this case, let’s open the book of Prishvin’s favorite stories and be transported to beautiful, distant and dear places.

Stories by M. Prishvin designed to be read by both children and adults. Even preschoolers can safely start reading a huge number of fairy tales, stories and short stories. Other Read Prishvin's stories possible, starting from school. And even for the oldest Mikhail Prishvin left his legacy: his memoirs are distinguished by a very meticulous narration and description of the surrounding atmosphere in the unusually difficult twenties and thirties. They will be of interest to teachers, lovers of memories, historians and even hunters. On our website you can see online a list of Prishvin's stories, and enjoy reading them absolutely free.

Option 1. Unique and indescribably beautiful nature in autumn. Despite the fact that rain and fog are quite common, there are also clear, quiet days for a walk in the nearest forest. Sit down and admire golden robe of the forest, listen to the singing of birds, watch the birds fly away. Somewhere in the distance thunder roared. Drop by drop it began to rain. Hiding under a tree, he looked around. How beautiful it is all around I like it autumn nature . The air is so fresh! I don't want to go home at all.

Option 2. Human and nature are closely related to each other. Nature creates all the conditions for human life, which is why it is so important to live in harmony with it. Beautiful landscapes of nature fill a person’s soul with delight, only this beauty is truly mesmerizing. Man's interest in nature is limitless; how many secrets and mysteries the forests and seas contain. There's a lot we don't know yet about nature. To enjoy the beauty of nature, you don’t need to travel far, just go to a park or forest. Nature is especially beautiful in the fall, when you want to sit on benches and absorb all its beauty and enjoy it. It is then that you feel how your soul is filled with new colors, how it is saturated with the beauty of the world around you. At these moments you realize how closely people are connected with nature.