i8 ODD HOURS WITH NATURE 



There are many birds, however, which are little 

 troubled by the hardest winter, and which never 

 court the charity of man. For the most part they 

 are neither large nor strong, and rarely capable 

 of wrestling with the tiniest of physical difficulties. 

 On the contrary, they are amongst the smallest of 

 the whole race. With the first touch of autumn 

 chill the vast majority of insect -eating birds 

 depart for milder lands, but some, and these the 

 puniest of all, remain. Just now every pine wood 

 or plantation in northern shires is inhabited by 

 hundreds of golden -crested wrens. From every 

 tree their tiny cheep may be heard, though little 

 will be seen except by searching eyes. Watch the 

 needle -covered branches and the little creature will 

 be found crawling among them, sometimes back up, 

 sometimes down, never for a moment still, a marvel 

 of intent industry. There is no ca' canny policy 

 here, for, though the gold-crest's whole body 

 weighs but a fraction of an ounce, a full day's toil 

 is necessary to sustain it. Its food consists of the 

 minute insects which find a sufficient shelter at the 

 base of a pine needle, and it takes a very large 

 number of them to make even a gold-crest's meal. 

 Hence the absorbed, mouse -like creep through the 

 needles of the little green bird. Nothing that man 

 has to offer would be of the least value to it, so 

 it never joins the flock of pensioners, though some- 

 times the evergreen shrubs of a garden may tempt 

 it to a visit of even the suburb of a town. Another 

 insect-eater which relies wholly on its own exertions 

 throughout the hardest winter is the tree-creeper, 

 a tiny native which may much more fitly be likened 



