FEBRUARY. 29 



DOINGS OF THE NIGHT. 



Other acrobatic performances, which we are not 

 privileged to witness, take place upon the swinging 

 wire and twirling cocoanut. In the still watches of 

 the night little mice take the places of the tomtits, 

 and their antics, could we see them, would no doubt 

 be equally engaging. Somebody sees them some- 

 times, however ; for in the dusk of a winter evening 

 you may catch a glimpse of a ghostlike presence 

 drifting like a large, swift snowflake down the dark 

 line of the shrubbery, with a quick swerve and swoop 

 towards bird-table or swinging cocoanut. The barn 

 owl has no taste for the provender which you supply 

 to your feathered pensioners of the daytime, but he 

 likes mice as much as they like birds' food. Many a 

 mouse, I fear, twirls from that cocoanut into eternity. 

 If you examine the nut by daytime you will find it 

 daintily grooved with tiny teeth marks ; though that 

 mice, on scenting cocoanut in the air, should infallibly 

 discover that they can reach it by climbing above 

 and crawling down the string, always seems a marvel 

 of cleverness. 



BIRDS STARVED TO DEATH. 



February 20. We had reason to be grateful in the 

 middle of February that the contrary winds of the 

 previous autumn kept back most of the migrant red- 

 wings from our shores. These handsome thrushes, 

 with their ruddy flanks and yellow eyebrow-line, are 

 the feeblest of the foreign birds which visit us 

 in winter; and most of the few that were with us 

 could be picked up starving, with breast-bones like 



