132 WOODLANDERS AND FIELD FOLK 



beautiful of thrushes! " said Christopher North, 

 watching one of these birds from his study window 

 at Elleray is another sufferer in hard winters. 



Looking out upon the snow, how the bird with 

 mottled breast seems oppressed with the sad labour 

 of living! What a different picture this from 

 the warm summer evening, when a flood of song 

 bursts from every copse, and the throstle was loudest 

 and clearest of all! Gone, too, are the shelled 

 snails, and here everything is iron-bound. Pugna- 

 cious no longer, the blackbird, with satiny coat and 

 orange bill, hops from beneath the laurels. His 

 strong flight is laboured, his eye askance detects no 

 food. Although an omnivorous feeder, competition 

 is keen, and the sparrows and finches leave him but 

 little. He pecks the hard ground; and the great 

 red sun goes down without his parting " clink 

 clink! " Like the rest of the thrushes, he is slowly 

 starving. 



How our British finches seem to enjoy the frost 

 and snow! Certain it is that now their stores of 

 food become scant ; but then they throw in their lot 

 with the sparrows of barn-door and rickyard. The 

 bright bachelor finch stands out from his pure 

 setting, and the daws look black against the snow. 

 " Tweet," " tweet," comes through the cold thin air, 

 and is startling in the stillness ; and now we may 

 hear as well as see the flight of a flock of linnets and 



