THE STRUGGLE WITH COLD 309 



garden may make quite sure of attracting the missel-thrushes. 

 They make for the fruit more greedily than a tit for a cocoa- 

 nut. The tree is a peculiarly difficult tree to perch upon, 

 and in their greed they work noisily and clumsily. The 

 only way they can pluck the berry is by fluttering violently 

 opposite it, and now and again steadying themselves with 

 their claws, but never perching. The difficulty is almost as 

 great to them as to starlings which have been seen 

 imitating the gulls in their art of picking food from the 

 surface of the water. As they catch each berry they almost 

 tumble down to the foot of the bush in their hurry to devour 

 this most delicious food, as sweet to the human palate as to 

 the birds. It is a lesson in aeronautics to watch the extreme 

 difficulty experienced by the bird in flying straight upwards. 

 The wings move at a frantic pace, and the whole effect is 

 strangely laborious ; but the greed for the berry is too great 

 to allow the bird a thought of flying even a few yards off the 

 tree. 



Naturalists have not very closely studied the feeding habits 

 of our birds, or indeed other animals in winter, except in 

 cases where they have some very apparent effect on cultivated 

 crops. The Board of Agriculture itself has come forward to 

 impress upon the community that the plover is the best of 

 the farmer's friends, and that the starling is very little less 

 useful. The crops of thousands of unfortunate pigeons have 

 been examined ; and though it has been proved against them 

 that they will eat their fill of clover and succulent green stuff, 

 they also swallow a good number of the bulbous buttercup 

 roots and arrest the spread of most pernicious weeds. The 

 Hungarian Government, through its well-equipped bird 

 department, has justified the rook, that valiant destroyer of 

 the click beetle, but confessed that when the numbers grow 

 excessive the birds may degenerate, just as children in our 



