296 THE RING OF NATURE 



with chaffinches and others in the thick ivy that 

 surrounds some tree in the hedge. But in London 

 on just as cold a night as this, and even in the 

 drenching rain or cold snow, thousands of birds 

 sleep in the bare branches of the planes. You 

 can see them against the sky, dots upon lines 

 like a very complicated piece of music. One 

 or two larger dots among the lesser ones indi- 

 cate starlings sleeping among the sparrows, and 

 sometimes, rather nearer the trunk, you can make 

 out a wood-pigeon or two. It speaks very highly 

 for the efficacy of feathers, and for the warmth of 

 bird circulation, that no frozen bodies are found 

 beneath the tree at dawn. 



The windfall of that kind that the lean fox 

 picks up nowadays is but slight. We see him 

 prowling about by day, and perhaps his best chance 

 among the birds is to pounce on a redwing from 

 behind an orchard tree, not waiting till the frost 

 and short commons have quite finished their 

 work. Yet there is hunting at night, as the owls 

 testify ; the tawny owls of the wood and the white 

 owls of the church tower often being heard at their 

 work, and their pellets revealing the skeletons of 

 mice and voles. 



Ugh-r-r-rumph, it makes me shudder to think of 

 anything alive being abroad on these midwinter 

 nights. As soon as the sun has finished his futile 

 journey along the horizon, the mists creep out 

 and add a rasp to the cold that cannot be measured 

 by the thermometer. The wood then seems not 



