272 Seeds and Sowers 



tration of the change which high cultivation brings 

 to the habits of many birds, that some of their 

 most mischievous ways seem accidents or casual 

 vices, and not habits corresponding to their 

 structure. Assuredly the hawfinch did not acquire 

 his powerful bill by shelling out green peas ; nor 

 does the task of picking pear-buds to pieces, which 

 a tomtit can do very well, account for the peculiar 

 combination of strength and delicacy in the bull- 

 finch's black beak. 



At midwinter, when the pinch of frost is felt 

 most often and most keenly, the dwindling store 

 of food begins to be reinforced by the ripening ivy 

 berries. The ivy does not bloom until October, 

 when the richest wild berries are ripe ; and although 

 its berry is juiceless and dry, it is preferred in hard 

 weather by most of the thrushes and their kin to 

 those of the hawthorn or holly. Ivy berries ripen 

 slowly, and are often not fully swollen and blackened 

 until a mild season begins to melt into spring. But 

 in colder weather they are the first berries to be 

 seized when the frost binds the soil and drives the 

 birds from the open pastures and the fringes of 

 the thickets. Even the blackbirds, which cling 

 for the most part in winter to an animal and insect 

 diet scraped among the fallen leaves, are easily 

 tempted to join the noisy assemblages of missel- 

 thrushes in the ivy bushes that cloak the heads of 

 the hawthorns and hollies in the hedges. The 

 black berries will often be nearly gone before the 

 red ones on the outer branches are touched. But 

 the wood-pigeon, that almost omnivorous vegetable 



