108 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



in the most direct and powerful manner to reducing 

 a local congestion of numbers. 



I remember standing on the bridge one day towards 

 the end of this bad time, and watching two herons 

 circling over the river among the screaming gulls in 

 front of me, a kestrel hovering on my left hand, 

 flocks of ducks passing overhead (doubtless on account 

 of the freezing of the Richmond and Wimbledon 

 ponds), on my right-hand lapwings, water-hens, star 

 lings, robins, thrushes and blackbirds trotting " on 

 the marge of the angry flood," and in the middle 

 of the river a pair of crows (from the Middlesex side) 

 hovering and making little dashes at the water as 

 gulls do, only much less to the manner born. It 

 would have been an impressive assembly anywhere ; 

 in London it was one to make a cockney swell with 

 pride, though the actors thus brilliantly taking their 

 parts were on a starvation wage. In the December 

 of 1920, again, a heavy snowfall one day coincided 

 with a yellow fog. I walked out into the silent fields 

 and stood up to my calves in snow. An invisible 

 heron and shortly after him a crow rasped out their 

 calls, and a company of tufted duck followed a 

 minute later by one of mallard swung out of the 

 day-in-night and, sweeping over my head, passed 

 again, like vain longings, into the unknown. In this 

 life-in-death desolation there was nothing in sight, 

 nothing in hearing, nothing in atmosphere to tell me 

 that I was not standing, a lost and solitary wanderer, 

 in the midst of the Siberian tundras. 



For one thing we may thank these recent years 

 of misery and terror. The Yuletide-cum-Pears'-Annual 

 cant has received a mortal stroke. The virus of cold 

 is now faced for what it is, the signal for the death 

 of the children of earth and air, the ally and accusa- 

 tion of our egoism, greed and more merciless indiffer- 

 ence. But let us beware of blaming nature for our 

 own frosted hearts, since neither child nor bird need 

 die, did we play the true parts in the drama of the 

 universe which the dignity of our evolution has 

 assigned to us. 



