first said, by a watcher of the multiform bird- At the 

 life of our winter-fields and fallow lands, one 

 who knew that the same drama of life and 

 death is enacted in midwinter as in midspring 

 or midsummer, a drama only less crowded, 

 less complex and less obvious, but not less 

 continual, not less vital for the actors. Who 

 that has watched the pee-wits seeking worms 

 on ploughed lands at midwinter, and seen 

 them poise their delicate heads and listen for 

 the phantom rustle of a worm in this clod or 

 under yonder fallow, while the greedy but 

 incapable seamews, inland come from frost 

 bound coasts or on the front of prolonged 

 gales, hear nothing of 'the red people' and 

 trust only to bulk and fierce beak to snatch 

 the prey from hungry plover-bills . . . who 

 that has seen this can fail to recognise the 

 aptness of the saying, ' as keen in the hearing 

 as a winter-plover ' ? Who that has watched 

 the ebb and flow of lark-life, resident and 

 immigrant ; the troubled winter-days of the 

 field-travellers (as the familiar word ' fieldfare ' 

 means) and the wandering thrushes ; the 

 vagrant rooks, the barn-haunting hoodie ; the 

 yellow-hammer flocks and the tribes of the 

 finch ; the ample riverside life, where heron 

 and snipe, mallard and moor-hen, wren and 

 kingfisher, and even plover and the everywhere 



57 



