6 BIRD-LIFE OF THE BORDERS 



so defined, any high-flown sentiment of poesy. The 

 months of March, April, and often May include some 

 of the crudest and most inclement periods of the year, 

 as regards weather, on the northern hills. Up to the 

 end of May snowfalls may yet occur, and the highlands, 

 at times, lie as white then as in December. If one of 

 these months chances to be bright and fine, the others 

 do extra penance to the Nimbi, and one has to be 

 thankful for single mercies. Jupiter Pluvius holds sway ; 

 and, as day after day, and week after week, one's 

 prospect is shut out by the cold north-easterly sleet 

 driving along the hillsides, with pitiless pelting hail- 

 storms shrouding their summits from view, and send- 

 ing down the burns in bank-high flood, there is little, it 

 will be admitted, to call forth exuberant outbursts of 

 enthusiasm at the new-born glories of the ".glad season," 

 or the revivifying effects produced by the increasing 

 powers of warmth and light. 



Unkindly, however, as may be the elements, but little, 

 if any, difference is produced by them on the seasonal 

 progress of Nature's economy' — at least as regards bird- 

 life. Thus the raven and the heron go to nest by the 

 middle of February, utterly careless of the temperature — 

 indifferent if the thermometer stands 20° below the 

 freezing-point, and if a foot of snow envelops the hills. 

 They know their appointed time to the day, and care for 

 none of these things. And so it is with bird-life generally. 

 The sequence of events, each at its own season, proceeds 

 with definite regularity and without regard for extraneous 

 conditions. But it is only the higher forms of life that 

 recognise the advent of Spring. For the herbage on the 

 northern hills hardly commences to grow before June; 

 the curved head of the bracken only emerges from the 



