284 A GAMEKEEPER'S NOTE-BOOK 



far from their roosting-trees, and fly high. Cock 

 pheasants will go to roost early before the storm, 

 choosing low branches, and trees that afford good 

 protection. In bitter weather, even the warm 

 feathers of birds may become ice-bound. 



Between a green and a white winter in England there 

 is a world of difference to wild creatures. There may 



come day upon day, week upon week, of 

 Winders m * st > ram > * o &* an( * blustering winds, of hail, 



sleet, and furious snow-blizzards to birds 

 and beasts these are days of prosperity and fatness. 

 Peewits, snipe, woodcock, blackbirds, and thrushes 

 then find food far more plentiful than in the hot dusty 

 days of late summer. Often, in late summer, their 

 breasts are narrowed by leanness to the shape of a 

 boat's keel. But in moist, warm winter days the 

 flesh rises roundly as if it would burst the skin the 

 breast-bone, no longer up-standing like a bare ridge, 

 is buried almost out of sight in a valley of fat, on 

 the thighs are little hillocks of fat, and the bones 

 of the back cannot be seen or felt for their thick 

 warm covering. But should there come two or three 

 days of frost, which hold through the day and increase 

 their grip on the land by night, then this loaded store 

 of fat vanishes as mist before the sun. 



