300 Spring Nooks in Winter 



secure a living in very hard weather. In some 

 parts of Central Europe the song- thrush is only a 

 summer visitor, while the blackbird is a resident. 

 Blackbirds have a way of quartering themselves 

 in winter in some warm corner full of dead leaves, 

 where the grip of the frost is slightest, and of 

 disinterring various forms of life which the song- 

 thrush seems not to eat or not to discover. The 

 hollows that foster the spring plants are among 

 the blackbird's refuges ; and where it has screamed 

 off in exaggerated panic and left the leaves dis- 

 turbed, we can sometimes see peeping among them 

 the pallid shoots of dog's mercury or bluebell 

 thrusting towards the light. The hedge-sparrow 

 is as quiet as the blackbird is noisy ; but it is no 

 less constant to the brambles and soft marl-slopes 

 of its chosen hollow. Often its last year's nest 

 still hangs in the naked thorns a wet and shapeless 

 cushion, with the moss of which it was built sprouting 

 green again after the autumn rains. In April it 

 will build another nest not far away, with moss 

 from the same nettle-covered bank, and twigs 

 of the same trees elder, or fir, or elm that served 

 it a year before. The pit is sufficient for it at all 

 seasons of the year ; and its constancy to this still 

 corner of English soil gives a deeper attraction of 

 contrast to the moment when the whitethroats 

 returning from Africa are first heard babbling about 

 the nettle-bed. 



An unfailing refuge for many wandering birds 

 that do not regularly leave England is a deep and 

 well-sheltered spring. Large sources generally 



