FEBRUARY IN B1WADLAND. 19 



lings, which, unsavoury though they be, have gladly been found by the speckled 

 stares. The earthworms have become cognisant of the slight change in the atmos- 

 phere, and are working upwards. The moles have followed them, and are making 

 the path side hillocky with their landmarks. Some remnants of snow, soiled and 

 melting, lie piled beneath the hedgerow, where the rough winds but recently 

 drifted it. A pale yellow primrose has ventured to open its delicate petals, and 

 close beside it the young leaves of the coltsfoot are peering above the withered 

 grassbents that the rains and snows of winter have levelled. The hazel on our 

 right is already pushing its catkins out from their winter hiding-places. 



The loud report of a gun in an adjacent market-garden startles us, as it does 

 a number of little birds that dash over the hedge in precipitate flight. One of 

 them, vainly striving to keep up with the others, staggers in its flight, and falls 

 to the earth, which it reddens with its life's blood. A slight flutter and the poor 

 birdie is dead. It is a bullfinch. Peering through the hawthorns we find the gar- 

 dener picking up two or three other victims, and apparently well satisfied with 

 the accuracy of his aim. ' Blood-ulf,' as the bird is named in Norfolk, is no favour- 

 ite visitant to the orchard just now, for the plum and cherry, and even the goose- 

 berry buds are set upon by those hard destructive mandibles ; they say the good 

 he does in other seasons is counterbalanced by the mischief he commits in winter, 

 a statement that is very much open to question. 



Watch that grey bird, with black wings and tail, and a dash of sable hue 

 beneath the eyes ! But he's watching us and takes to wing, disappearing in the 

 orchard. It is a great grey shrike, or butcher-bird. Lanius excubiter, the ' Sen- 

 tinel butcher,' as his Latin cognomen denotes, is expressive of his habits and his 

 occupation. Here is a poor little wren he has impaled upon a thorn. We have 

 disturbed him at his repast. Hearken to the tapping of the woodpecker; but we 

 may not loiter to discover him. The rooks cawing noisily overhead are evidently 

 commencing nesting operations. What an uproar to be sure! The redwings and 

 fieldfares, busy still among the hawthorns, and their cousins the blackbirds and 

 thrushes amongst the roots below, are passed unheeded by, as are the missel- 

 thrushes already nest-building in the topmost branches of an old pear tree. 



We loiter just a moment when passing a keeper's lodge, with its interesting 

 surroundings. Yon outhouse door is his ' museum.' On it are nailed many a real 

 and supposed foe and depredator, from the marauding tabby-cat to the harmless 

 kestrel, at whose hands or rather claws and mandibles his precious pheasants 

 may or may not have suffered. Surely those barn-owls could never have con- 

 ceived a thought of molestation. The rats on which, with field-mice, they almost 



