AUTUMN AND WINTER BIRDS 135 



These delicate footprints reproduce the long toes 

 of the lark, and those are the tracks of meadow- 

 pipits. The hedge berries are mostly gone, and the 

 redwing and fieldfare have run along the fence- 

 bottoms in search of fallen fruit. Those larger 

 tracks by the sheep-troughs show that the hungry 

 rooks have been scratching near, and the chatter 

 of magpies comes from the fir-tree tops. Scattered 

 pine-cones betoken the crossbills. The gaudily- 

 coloured yellow-hammer shows well against the snow, 

 and bathes its orange plumage in the snow. 



Along the meadow brook a stately heron has left 

 its imprints ; the water-hen's track is marked through 

 the reeds; and there upon the icy margin are the 

 blurred webs of wild-ducks. The mountain-linnets 

 have come down to the lowlands, and I flush a flock 

 from an ill-farmed field where weeds run rampant. 

 When alarmed the birds wheel aloft, uttering the 

 while soft twitterings, and then betake themselves 

 to the trees. The seeds of brooklime, flax, and 

 knap-weed the twite seems partial to, and this wild- 

 weed field is to them a very paradise. 



Just now, walking in the woods, the cry of the 

 bullfinch is heard as perhaps the most melancholy 

 of all our birds; but its bright-scarlet breast com- 

 pensates for its want of cheeriness. A flock of 

 diminutive goldcrests rush past me; and in the fir 

 wood I hear, but cannot see, a flock of long-tailed 



