HI 



Birds by Land and Sea 



domesticated young hen, which for months previously 

 might always be found on one side or the other of a 

 secluded strip of hedge, as lonely as Marianna in her 

 moated grange. These hedge-sparrows have beats as 

 defined as those of robins, and often more restricted. 

 Dressed in sober greys and browns ; quietly diligent 

 and stay-at-home ; with no more coquetry than the 

 continual flirt of the wings, which has earned for 

 them the title of " shuffle-wing ; " and with a cha- 

 racterless little song, of which one would fain speak 

 charitably, because it is one of the very first to 

 herald the oncoming spring, the hedge-sparrow re- 

 minds one of the good folk in whose fields it so 

 often makes its home grey, uneventful lives, which 

 seem to spring from the soil they are born to till, 

 and from which they depart as little as the dunnock 

 from its hedge, until, having known laborious days, 

 and the cares of an offspring too numerous to be 

 an unmixed blessing, they sink back in the end into 

 the last furrow of all, and become, indeed, part 

 -of it. 



One might well have expected to find missel- 

 thrushes, which usually pair early in February, an- 

 ticipating the time of building in so mild a January ; 

 yet I observe them still flying in flocks an indication 

 that birds observe times and seasons, apart from the 

 question of the conditions prevailing at the moment. 

 Although the song-thrush is in full song again, the 

 .missel still wanders about, uttering its harsh rattling 

 note, and up to the close of the month has not 



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