CHAPTER VIII 



Watching Birds at a Straw^Stack 



One of the most interesting ways of watching birds 

 at very close quarters is to conceal oneself in one of 

 the corn-stacks or wheat-ricks that in the autumn 

 begin to spring up like mushrooms all over the 

 country-side. This is a winter pastime, and the 

 harder the weather the greater will be the results 

 yielded. To have chaffinches, greenfinches, bram- 

 blings, tree - sparrows, buntings, yellow - hammers, 

 blue - tits, starlings, perhaps a blackbird or two, 

 pheasants and partridges, all about one and quite 

 near, one should choose a bitterly cold day with a 

 biting wind driving the snowflakes before it, and the 

 snow itself whitening the landscape, but not so deeply 

 as to cover things beyond a bird's power of scratching. 

 Rising early, one gets to the stack whilst it is still dark. 

 At one side there is always a great heap of refuse 

 material of the stack, threshed ears of corn, chopped 

 and winnowed straw, as well as — at least where pic- 

 turesque farming prevails (and may it long prevail) — 

 199 



