BIRD LIFE IN WINTER 93 



here. We usually think him an uninteresting bird 

 on account of his phlegmatic disposition and monoton- 

 ous song, but in this district, in winter, I found him 

 curiously attractive, and among the modestly-coloured 

 birds that were his neighbours he was certainly the 

 most splendid. That may appear a word better suited 

 to the golden oriole, but I am thinking of one of his 

 aspects, as I frequently saw him, and of a miracle of 

 the sun. Here, in winter, he congregates in small 

 companies or flocks at the farms, and at one small 

 farm where there was a rather better shelter than at 

 most of the others, owing to the way the houses and 

 outhouses and ricks were grouped together, the com- 

 pany of wintering yellowhammers numbered about 

 eighty or ninety. Every evening, when there was 

 any sun, these birds would gather on some spot a 

 rick or barn roof or on the dark green bushes 

 sheltered from the sea wind, where they could catch 

 the last rays. Sitting motionless grouped together in 

 such numbers they made a strangely pretty picture. 



One evening, at another farm-house, I was standing 

 out of doors talking with the farmer, when the sun 

 came out beneath a bank of dark cloud and shone 

 level on the slate roof of a cow-house near us. It was 

 an old roof on which the oxidised slate had taken a 

 soft blue-grey or dove colour the one beautiful 

 colour ever seen in weathered slate ; and no sooner 

 had the light fallen on it than a number of yellow- 

 hammers flew from some other point where they had 

 been sitting and dropped down upon this roof. They 

 were scattered over the slates, and, sitting motionless 



