WARWICK WOODLANDS. 115 



black loam ; and the innumerable chalkings told the experienced 

 eye at half a glance, that, where they laid up for the night so- 

 ever, here was their feeding ground, and here it had been 

 through the autumn. 



But this was not all, for at every ten or twenty paces was a 

 dense tuft of willow bushes, growing for the most part upon the 

 higher knolls where it was dry and sunny, their roots heaped 

 round with drift wood, from the decay of which had shot up a 

 dense tangled growth of cat-briers. In these the birds were ly- 

 ing, all but some five or six which had run out to feed, and 

 were flushed, fat, and large, and lazy, quite in the open meadow. 



kt They stay here later," Harry said, as they bagged the last 

 bird, which, be it observed, was the twenty-seventh, "' than any 

 where I know. Here I have killed them when there was ice 

 thicker than a dollar on all the waters round about, and when 

 you might see a thin and smoke-like mist boiling up from each 

 springlet. Kill them all off to-day, and you will find a dozen 

 fresh birds here to-morrow, and so on for a fortnight they 

 come down from the high ground as it gets too cold for them 

 to endure their high and raritied atmosphere, and congregate 

 hither!" 



" And why not more in number at a time ?" asked A . 



" Ay ! there we are in the dark we do not know sufficiently 

 the habits of the bird to speak with certainty. I do not think 

 they are pugnacious, and yet you never find more on a feeding 

 ground than v it will well accommodate for many days, nay 

 weeks, together. One might imagine that their migrations 

 would be made en masse, that all the birds upon these neighbor- 

 ing hills would crowd down to this spot together, and feed here 

 till it was exhausted, and then on but this is not so ! I know 

 fifty small spots like this, each a sure find in the summer for 

 three or four broods, say from eight to twelve birds. During 

 the summer, when you have killed the first lot, no more return 

 but the moment the frost begins, there you will find them 

 never exceeding the original eight or ten in number, but keep- 

 ing up continually to that mark and whether you kill none at 

 all, or thirty birds a week, there you will always find about that 

 number, and in no case any more. Those that are killed oft' 

 are supplied, within two days at farthest, by new comers ; yet, 

 so far as I can judge, the original birds, if not killed, hold their 

 own, unmolested by intruders. Whence the supplies come in 

 for they must be near neighbors by the rapidity of their succes- 



