122 WARWICK WOODLANDS. 



they laid up for the night soever, here was their feeding 

 ground, and here it had been through the autumn. 



But this was not all, for at every ten or twenty paces 

 was a dense tuft of willow bushes, growing for the most 

 part upon the higher knolls where it was dry and sunny, 

 their roots heaped round with drift wood, from the decay 

 of which had shot up a dense tangled growth of cat-briers. 

 In these the birds were lying, all but some five or six 

 which had run out to feed, and were flushed, fat, and 

 large, and lazy, quite in the open meadow. 



"They stay here later," Harry said, as they bagged the 

 last bird, which, be it observed, was the twenty-seventh, 

 "than any where I know. Here I have killed them when 

 there was ice thicker than a dollar on all the waters round 

 about, and when you might see a thin and smoke-like mist 

 boiling up from each springlet. Kill them all off to-day, 

 and you will find a dozen fresh birds here to-morrow, and 

 so on for a fortnight — they come down from the high 

 ground as it gets too cold for them to endure their high 

 and rarified atmosphere, and congregate hither!" 



"And why not more in number at a time?" asked A . 



"Ay! there we are in the dark — we do not know suffi- 

 cienty the habits of the bird to speak with certainty. I 

 do not think they are pugnacious, and yet you never find 

 more on a feeding ground than it will well accommodate 

 for many days, nay weeks, together. One might imagine 

 that their migrations would be made en masse, that all 

 the birds upon these neighboring hills crowd down to this 

 spot together, and feed here till it was exhausted, and then 

 on — but this is not so ! I know fifty small spots like this, 

 each a sure find in the summer for three or four broods, 

 say from eight to twelve birds. During the siynmer, when 

 you have killed the first lot, no more return — but the 

 moment tlie frost begins, there you will find them — never 

 exceeding the original eight or ten in niimber, but keep- 

 ing up continually to that mark — and whether you kill 

 none at all, or thirty birds a week, there you will always 

 find about that number, and in no case any more. Those 

 that are killed off are supplied, within two days at 

 farthest, by new comers; yet, so far as T can judge, the 

 original birds, if not killed, hold their own unmolested by 

 intruders. Whence the supplies come in — for they must 



