BIRD LIFE IN WINTER 95 



the cattle were left to take their chance. The stone 

 hedge was covered with a thick growth of furze, and 

 the ground inside, protected as it was from the cattle 

 and sheltered by the wall from the furious winds, had 

 become a dense and in places impenetrable thicket of 

 blackthorn, bramble, furze and ivy. So close did the 

 blackthorn bushes grow with their upper branches 

 tightly interwoven that it would have been possible to 

 walk on the top of the thicket at a height of twelve 

 or fourteen feet from the ground without the foot 

 slipping through. There were three pits, and one, 

 very much enlarged owing to the quantity of earth 

 which had fallen in, was entirely occupied with a big 

 elder bush, or tree a curiosity in this treeless dis- 

 trict. It was rooted in the side of the pit about 

 fourteen feet below the surface, and its whole height 

 was about thirty feet. Near the root the trunk 

 divided into three great branches, or boles, and on 

 the middle one there was an old magpie's nest on a 

 level with my shoulders and a little beyond the reach 

 of my hand. The birds were perhaps wise to build 

 in such a place, since a boy could not easily rob it 

 without danger of falling into the pit. 



On going to this walled-in thicket one evening 

 I observed a vast concourse of sparrows. They were 

 sitting on the bushes in thousands, and more birds in 

 small companies of a dozen or so, and in small flocks 

 of fifty to a hundred, were continually arriving and 

 settling down among the others to add their voices to 

 the extraordinary hubbub they kept up. It was like 

 a starling's winter roosting-place, and the birds must 



