The Strife of March 13 



than the mire of rainy springs. While such slight 

 snowfalls are still lying fresh and even across the 

 undisturbed soil, the ground-feeding birds search 

 out every spot where the brown stain of the earth 

 shows through the cloak of whiteness and seems 

 to promise them access to their food. Thrushes 

 hop beside the trampled lambing-folds, and 

 sparrows burrow in the pales of yellow straw that 

 make the fold conspicuous across the whitened 

 landscape. Hedge-sparrows search minutely in the 

 brown furrows sliced by the farm waggons ; and 

 where a mole has thrown up his hill of fresh earth 

 through the powdery layer, the footprints of many 

 birds are seen converging upon it from the 

 neighbouring thickets and hedges. When a deeper 

 snowfall has covered every scar of the soil, and 

 loaded the marshes to the very margin of the curdled 

 pools and streams, the birds find their last support 

 in the hawthorn and ivy berries, which in the 

 mildest winters they hardly need to attack before 

 spring is once more at hand. In such open seasons 

 the value of these berries to many of the soft-billed 

 birds seems comparatively small, since the trees 

 are but little depleted by their inroads in brief spells 

 of frost. But when there is a long spell of hard 

 weather at the end of the winter they draw upon 

 these reserves to the full, and the bushes are 

 thoroughly stripped. Even the blackbird is driven 

 to feed on the ivy clusters, when his most secret 

 and sheltered hedge-banks are over-lapped by 

 curving drifts ; and the great half-tame wood- 

 pigeons of the London parks are forced, in the 



