378 WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 



or tree and visit gardens in the night, as the hares 

 do also. They creep about along the mounds, being 

 driven by hunger to search for food all day instead of 

 remaining part of the time in the buries. 



As to the hares, little more than a week of deep 

 snow cripples their strength : they will run but twenty 

 or thirty yards, and may be killed occasionally with 

 a stick or captured alive. They are even more 

 helpless than rabbits, because the latter still have holes 

 to take refuge in from danger ; but the hare while the 

 snow lasts is a wretched creature, and knows not 

 where to turn. Birds resort to the cattle-sheds to 

 roost among them the blackbirds, who usually 

 roost in the hedges. Birds come to the houses and 

 gardens in numbers because the snow is there cleared 

 away along the paths. 



During severe weather the water-meadows are the 

 most frequented places. They are rarely altogether 

 frozen. If in the early morning there are sheets of 

 ice, by noonday a great part will be flooded an inch 

 or two deep, the water rising over the ice, and forced 

 by it to spread further, softening the ground at the 

 sides. The water-carriers are long before they freeze. 

 Thrushes and blackbirds come to the hedges sur- 

 rounding these meadows ; the fieldfares and red- 

 wings are there by hundreds, and fly up to the trees 

 if alarmed. 



The old folks say that the irrigated meadows (and 

 other open waters) do not freeze in the evening till the 

 moon rises ; a bright, clear moon is credited with 



