first said, by a watcher of the multiform bird- At the 

 life of our winter-fields and fallow lands, one Turn of 

 who knew that the same drama of life and 

 death is enacted in midwinter as in midspring 

 or midsummer, a drama only less crowded, 

 less complex and less obvious, but not less 

 continual, not less vital for the actors. Who 

 that has watched the pee-wits seeking worms 

 on ploughed lands at midwinter, and seen 

 them poise their delicate heads and listen for 

 the phantom rustle of a worm in this clod or 

 under yonder fallow, while the greedy but 

 incapable seamews, inland come from frost- 

 bound coasts or on the front of prolonged 

 gales, hear nothing of 'the red people' and 

 trust only to bulk and fierce beak to snatch 

 the prey from hungry plover-bills . . . who 

 that has seen this can fail to recognise the 

 aptness of the saying, 'as keen in the hearing 

 as a winter-plover ' ? Who that has watched 

 the ebb and flow of lark-life, resident and 

 immigrant ; the troubled winter-days of the 

 field-travellers (as the familiar word ' fieldfare ' 

 means) and the wandering thrushes ; the 

 vagrant rooks, the barn-haunting hoodie ; the 

 yellow-hammer flocks and the tribes of the 

 finch ; the ample riverside life, where heron 

 and snipe, mallard and moor-hen, wren and 

 kingfisher, and even plover and the everywhere 



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