FLOCKS OF BIRDS 



every bush, every tree, almost every clod, for the 

 larks were so many, seemed to have its songster. 

 As for nightingales, I never knew so many in the 

 most secluded country. 



There are more round about London than in all 

 the woodlands I used to ramble through. When 

 people go into the country they really leave the 

 birds behind them. It was the same, I found, 

 after longer observation, with birds perhaps less 

 widely known as with those universally recognised 



such, for instance, as shrikes. The winter 

 when the cry was raised that there were no birds, 

 that the blackbirds and thrushes had left the lawns 

 and must be dead, and how wicked it would be to 

 take a nest next year, I had not the least difficulty 

 in finding plenty of them. 



They had simply gone to the water meadows, 

 the brooks, and moist places generally. Every lo- 

 cality where running water kept the ground moist 

 and permitted of movement among the creeping 

 things which form these birds' food, was naturally 

 resorted to. Thrushes and blackbirds, although 

 they do not pack that is, regularly fly in flocks 



undoubtedly migrate when pressed by weather. 

 They are well known to arrive on the east 



coast from Norway in numbers as the cold increases. 



I see no reason why we may not suppose that in 



very severe and continued frost the thrushes and 



41 



