270 ANNALS OF BIRD LIFE. 



sleet, and the biting winds return, changing the 

 fitful smiles of joy on Nature's face into aspects 

 of fear and terror. The songsters hush their 

 music, birds flock back to the shelter of the 

 shrubberies and farmyards, the animals and in- 

 sects that hibernate remain safe at home, and all 

 is desolation and ruin once more. And so the 

 long, dreary, northern winter drags its weary 

 course along, its monotony relieved by occasional 

 days of brightness ; now frost and snow, then 

 genial sunshine, anon wind and icy tempest. As 

 the days slowly, so very slowly, lengthen, the cold 

 only increases in intensity ; but we are cheered 

 now by the few extra hours of daylight that, 

 indeed, is a welcome sign the lowest depths of 

 the wintry sadness have been reached, and we 

 may now expect the spring. The sun is on his 

 way back to Cancer, and the long, fierce struggle 

 with winter has begun. Winter yields his iron 

 sway over our northern lands reluctantly, and the 

 days of February and March, the last of winter 

 and the earliest of spring, are full of the warring 

 of the elements. The warmer sunshine tempts 

 the leaves on the whitethorns and the elder trees 

 to burst their sheaths, but the night frosts shrivel 

 them remorselessly ; the early birds essay to build 

 their nests during a fitful period of calm, but the 

 last gasps of dying winter stay their labours and 

 hush their vernal song. There is a certain solemn 

 grandeur, awe-inspiring and impressive, about the 

 season of winter, which is intensified during its 



