164 ROUND THE GREAT WHITE HORSE 



snow serves them no longer. Wood-pigeons, even in 

 the deepest snow, manage to find seeds of some kind ; 

 and though their crops are generally full of turnip- 

 leaves, there is always a mixture of some dark, shiny 

 seeds, probably charlock. Red-legged partridges are 

 much distressed by snow, not for want of food, for 

 they burrow down to the turnips and eat both leaves 

 and roots, but because they prefer running to flying, 

 and the snow sticks in heavy lumps to their feathers. 

 In Suffolk, where they are common, the unfortunate 

 redlegs can be caught by a dog, or even by hand in 

 such weather, and a heavy snow always thins their 

 numbers sadly. Once the writer caught a brace of 

 English partridges which had been flushed on the other 

 side of a valley and pitched in soft snow near him. 

 Instead of flying they crept deep into the drift, and 

 made no effort to escape. 



In the gardens and meadows the soft-billed birds 

 suffer equally with the hardier sorts in lasting snow, 

 even though in receipt of "relief" from kind friends 

 in-doors. When the missel-thrushes come to eat crumbs 

 under the window, as they have been doing lately, it is 

 a sign that the last yewberry has been eaten, and the 

 last thornbush stripped. The tits suffer less than 

 other insect-eating birds, because the lower sides of the 

 branches, in the bark of which they find most of their 

 food, are always bare of snow. The cheerful "rap, 

 rap," of the nuthatches is still to be heard, as they 

 crack the nuts they have hidden away in better weather, 

 or stolen from the squirrels. But such times are very 



