294 THE RING OF NATURE 



to find worms and grubs. The starlings drill an 

 infinite number of little holes in the turf, and no 

 doubt drag out from them many small grubs, 

 but the blackbird will soon turn over a barrowful 

 of leaves or rotting manure and take the fruit 

 of his digging. 



Every other bird in the wood has had the example 

 of the blackbird before it, through its ancestors, 

 for thousands of years, and has profited nothing 

 by it. It is not as though the blackbird had 

 special tools for the work, as the woodpecker has 

 for carpentry, or the woodcock for probing in mud. 

 It is just a winter expedient of a bird with the 

 same equipment and summer habits as the thrush, 

 the redwing, the field-fare, and some others. It 

 is easier to understand how the thrush holds the 

 monopoly of the trade of opening snails, because 

 that is a summer accomplishment, and when snails 

 are plentiful so are worms, but to-day thrushes are 

 starving only because they cannot copy this simple 

 expedient of the blackbird. 



There are plenty of other birds on the floor 

 of the wood, searching in a haphazard way for 

 whatever may have been disturbed by a chance 

 movement of the leaves. Many of them are 

 finches, and they, no doubt, are mainly looking 

 for seed of one kind and another. With the 

 chaffinches are bramblings on their winter visit 

 to this country. The moderately careful observer 

 distinguishes them at once from the chaffinches 

 by a mottling of reddish-browns and greys all over 



