DECEMBER. 193 



love-songs or at least his brothers and sisters and 

 parents. They have no means of sorting themselves 

 out except by shouting ; and when a few thousand 

 birds are all shouting out each other's names at once 

 there is bound to be some noise. 



BIRDS AND WEATHER. 



December 1 1. By sudden frosts and storms many 

 time-honoured traditions, which draw weather fore- 

 casts from wild life, have been justified. When rare 

 seagulls are shot in our harbours and stormy petrels 

 are driven ashore, when common gulls appear in 

 the fields far inland, and companies of geese, with 

 multitudes of lesser wildfowl, visit unaccustomed 

 rivers, then the oldest inhabitant of every village 

 will tell you to expect hard weather ; and so it has 

 been. The same winds that brought business to the 

 bird-stuffers on our south-west coasts scattered wreck- 

 age on the shore ; and a few days later the east-coast 

 farmer takes down his gun for a try after the wild 

 geese with a better conscience because frost holds 

 the ground and the plough stands idle. 



WINTER AUGURIES. 



The movements of birds are often used for weather 

 prophecies on a larger scale. Thus, because many 

 more pink-footed geese than usual appeared in 

 October, 1902, on the north coast of Norfolk, the 

 local augurs predicted a winter of Arctic severity ; 

 and they saw confirmation of the forecast in the 



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