190 MY NATURE NOTEBOOK. 



THE WINTER MOTH'S HOLIDAY. 



But the mild November weather which made 

 December poppies possible is so much to the good, so 

 far as wild nature is concerned. When, next autumn, 

 we shall be complaining of the number of barren shoots 

 upon our fruit trees, it may be because the Winter 

 moth has had a high old time in the orchard during 

 last month's mild nights. For the male Winter 

 moth is a flimsy-winged, brown creature, which 

 perishes miserably by thousands when winter storms 

 prevail, drowning him in the ditches, or flinging him, 

 draggled past recovery, among the drenched tangles 

 of a rain-swept hedge. If, on the other hand, it 

 freezes hard, the female Winter moth, a little 

 spidery atom, with no wings to speak of, does not 

 venture forth. So the best part of this insect's hopes 

 of progeny are often wrecked between the Scylla and 

 Charybdis of winter's vagaries. Not that we need 

 complain. Every egg which the Winter moth lays 

 in our orchards may mean one cluster of fruit- 

 blossom the less in spring. 



WEATHER, BIRDS, AND WEEDS. 



The birds fare well, too, in the mild November, 

 with scarcely a day when gulls and plovers, rooks, 

 jackdaws, and starlings might not forage afield with 

 certainty of finding abundant food in the soft earth, 

 of earthworm and wire-worm, chafer-grub and " leather 

 jacket," the pestilent offspring of the daddy-long-legs. 

 So here we see how a mild November may have 

 exactly the opposite effect upon the farmer's fortunes 



