FLOCKS OF BIRD S 



facts are in favour of the belief that they also went 

 west. 



That they were killed by the frost and snow I 

 utterly refuse to credit. Some few, no doubt, 

 were I saw some greatly enfeebled by starvation 

 but not the mass. If so many had been de- 

 stroyed, their bodies must have been seen when 

 there was no foliage to hide them, and no insects 

 to quickly play the scavenger as in summer. Some 

 were killed by cats ; a few perhaps by rats, for in 

 sharp winters they go down into the ditches, and 

 I saw a dead redwing, torn and disfigured, at the 

 mouth of a drain during the snow, where it might 

 have been fastened on by a rat. But it is quite 

 improbable that thousands died as was supposed. 



Thrushes and blackbirds are not like rooks. 

 Rooks are so bound by tradition and habit that 

 they very rarely quit the locality where they were 

 reared. Their whole lives are spent in the neigh- 

 bourhood of the nest trees and the woods where 

 they sleep. They may travel miles during the 

 day, but they always come back to roost. These 

 are the birds that suffer the most during long frosts 

 and snows. Unable to break the chain that binds 

 them to one spot, they die rather than desert it. 

 A miserable time, indeed, they had of it that winter, 

 but I never heard that any one proposed feeding the 

 rooks, the very birds that wanted it most. 

 43 



