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



life of our winter-fields and fallow lands, one T ur ?r° f 



the Year 

 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 



57 



