280 ANNALS OF BIRD LIFE. 



often feels the pinch of hunger. No birds are 

 affected so much by a long-continued frost as 

 those that seek their food in slow-running waters 

 or amongst marshy ground. The poor Kingfishers 

 fare badly at such a time, and numbers of them 

 are starved to death, whilst they have even been 

 found frozen to the twigs on which they have 

 chanced to rest. Sometimes this bird may be 

 seen sitting above the frozen pool, the banks all 

 draped with icicles, and set in a framework of 

 frost and snow, watching the tiny fish and water- 

 insects on which it feeds, but quite beyond its 

 reach, owing to the film of ice that has covered 

 the water in a single night. In the alder trees on 

 the banks of the stream, little parties of Siskins 

 are busy picking at the seeds, and here and there 

 a wandering Heron flies hurriedly away. This 

 bird will not stay by the stream if the frost 

 continues. 



If the snow is everywhere, bird life is almost 

 as ubiquitous. In the small swamp, which for 

 some unaccountable reason has escaped the finger 

 of the frost, we may flush the fat little Jack Snipe 

 from his warm corner amongst the dead grass 

 tufts. Unerringly he returns to his favourite 

 winter quarters year by year, so that each season 

 we may find him on precisely the same square 

 foot of ground. He spends his summer far away 

 on the Arctic tundras, yet with a marvellous 

 memory returns to old familiar quarters a thousand 

 miles from his nesting-place, travelling to them in 



