280 Darkening Skies 



clearer the night, the more ringing are the echoes ; 

 for mist checks sound as much as the summer 

 foliage. But there are few signs of life after dark 

 in December, and on a cold, clear night the earth 

 is full of sleepers hiding from the wind. The east 

 wind licks after the mounting Pleiads, and on the 

 shoulders of the hills and in the crests of the lanes 

 the ground is hardened with a shell of frost. Here 

 the feet stumble in the frozen hoof -tracks and ruts ; 

 but a few yards over the crest, and in the hollows 

 at the bottom of the lane, they sink into the familiar 

 softness of fallen leaves melting into mire. 



In the sheltered hollows and the dense thickets 

 of thorns and evergreens the birds take refuge at 

 roost, and here they sleep out nearly two-thirds of 

 the winter months, since there are sixteen hours of 

 darkness at midwinter to eight of light. Wrens 

 and long-tailed tits cluster under the cornices formed 

 by overhanging roots on the lane-banks ; hedge- 

 sparrows and robins harbour in the tangle of low 

 hollies and brambles under shelter of the hedge, or 

 in the ivy that creeps among its roots. Moorhens 

 lie snug under the banks of the ponds in the pastures, 

 planted with bushes to protect the water from the 

 summer sun ; the same covert which hides their 

 nests in April protects them from the winter winds 

 and frosts. Greenfinches and chaffinches flock to 

 evergreen thickets and garden shrubberies ; a 

 single blow upon the garden laurels raises a be- 

 wildered stir among the birds clustered almost as 

 thickly as the leaves. The most crowded roosting- 

 places are those of the starlings ; at the alarm of an 



