34 MY NATURE NOTEBOOK. 



points well above the ground. These will push 

 upward with every hour of sunshine, for they have 

 far to go. 



THE FROST'S VICTIMS. 



But to enumerate the plants that are thrusting 

 themselves forward in the shrubbery, and describe 

 their methods of warfare with each other, would be 

 an endless tale, because the plant politics of any 

 square foot of wild ground would fill a volume of 

 the struggle for existence. We have seen one hard 

 side of that struggle among the birds this winter, and 

 the last spell of frost proved more fatal than appeared 

 at first. Besides the redwings and fieldfares, which 

 could be picked up dying in the fields, sad traces 

 along the hedgerows where the hoodie crows have 

 picked what flesh there was from the bones of the 

 corpses show that blackbirds also perished by scores. 

 We see less of the starving blackbird than of the 

 foreign thrushes in like case, because his haunt lies 

 inside, and theirs outside, the hedges. But all that 

 dies on our coast lands in winter comes to the hoodie 

 at last ; and by counting the patches of feathers in 

 one thirty-acre field and multiplying this according 

 to the acreage of a county, you get some idea of the 

 appalling destruction of bird life that one spell of 

 frost can cause. 



A MALE BEAUTY COMPETITION. 



So soon as the frost departs we see a brighter 

 phase of the birds' struggle for existence. Wives 

 and nesting-sites have become their most urgent 



