WATCHING BIRDS AT A STRAW-STACK 201 



commence. First a few greenfinches — principally 

 hens — fly down upon the heap, then chaffinches, both 

 cocks and hens, but hens predominating, with a few 

 yellow-hammers, mostly of immature plumage, and a 

 hedge-sparrow or two. These birds come and go 

 independently for some little time, and it is not till 

 the morning has grown lighter that they begin to 

 form a band, in the sense not of their numbers only, 

 but also of their actions. It is only gradually, for 

 instance, that their habit of all flying away together 

 into the neighbouring trees and returning quickly 

 again in the same way becomes at all marked. They 

 are at first independent units, but as the day 

 brightens and the numbers increase they become 

 more and more interdependent. Now, too, there is 

 more equality in the numbers of the sexes. The 

 females still predominate, but one would not always 

 think that this was the case, for as they all whirr 

 into a large oak tree that is beginning now to be 

 gilded by the beams of the tardily-rising sun, its bare 

 boughs and twigs, as well as the surrounding bushes, 

 are made suddenly lovely with bright, soft green and 

 mauvy-purplish red. A glorious winter foliage this, 

 that might make an old tree feel young again ! 



All the time the birds are down on the heap they 

 are busily feeding, seeming to put their whole soul 

 into each peck (like the single jest at the Mermaid) 

 and all in a kind of sociable, yet but half friendly, com- 

 petition with each other. Gradually they spread out 

 a little from the heap, half-a-dozen greenfinches are 

 amongst the straw that one has oneself pulled out 

 from the stack, and one of them is feeding positively 

 within three feet. To see them so near, and to think 



