THE FAERY YEAR 



On one of those December days that smoke 

 with wet from dawn till dark, the crowded thickets 

 of blackening ragwort help to make the winter scene 

 almost fearful in forlornness. It is the steaming 

 day, not the ice or snow-bound one, that gives 

 winter the truly sinister look. When there is no 

 rain, but the air is reeking and a pall is spread over 

 the entire sky, and every tree, every pallid grass- 

 head in the wood, is an alembic distilling all day 

 this is the time winter strikes at us hardest, harder 

 than in the dark east-wind days of March, because 

 then we feel that, after all, the spring is quite near. 

 On these melancholy days the landscape is a smudge. 

 A look of lifelessness is over all things. Birds that 

 sing blithely on many wild, wet days are silent now, 

 even the thrush and the redbreast. In the woods 

 the only sound is the ceaseless drip from the tree- 

 twigs. 



The Nuthatch's Force 



We can always tell now if the tawny owls are 

 astir before dark in the firs round the house by the 

 protests of nuthatch and missel-thrush. Either of 

 them acts as excubitor to those birds to which the 

 owl is a constant menace. The indignation of the 

 nuthatches is great when the owl flies before dark. 

 A pair will make between them a noise which seems 

 to come from half a dozen birds. But the nuthatch 



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