MY NATURE NOTEBOOK. 



FEATHERED ALIENS. 



Since the birds had eaten up their reserve of food 

 before the New Year for there was hardly a berry 

 left even upon the hawthorns one did not like to 

 contemplate their fate, if really hard weather should 

 come later. Luckily, there were very few redwings 

 with us. Just when the autumn migration was in 

 full progress, the wind unaccountably swung round 

 to the north-west, and remained there for several 

 bitterly cold days ; during which the stream of bird 

 migration to our eastern coasts was diverted to Cen- 

 tral Europe. Let us hope that there were plenty of 

 berries for the redwings there. There would have 

 been none to spare for them here in any case ; for the 

 fieldfares, which arrived in great strength just before 

 the change of wind, were more than numerous enough 

 to eat all that the quarrelsome missel-thrushes would 

 let them have, and the redwings, being the weakest, 

 would have gone hungry. It is probably from this 

 cause more than any weakness of constitution that 

 the redwings die first in hard times. 



SPRING'S FIRST FALSE START. 



But the closing year, at any rate, brought no 

 hardships for the birds. I do not recollect such an 

 amazing change of climate in winter, even in Eng- 

 land, as that which came to us with the morning of 

 December 30, 1901. At 9 a.m. the windows became 

 dimmed with moisture outside, not Inside, the glass, 

 showing that the temperature outside had risen 



