40 JANUARY 



bird of a slate-blue tint, standing so still that he seemed 

 as lifeless as a stuffed bird in a museum ; and I could 

 study his plumage as easily, until he flew off in sluggish 

 flight to the nearby dell-hole, where the sun had melted 

 the snow and the world was livelier. He was the first 

 individual fieldfare I had watched, though little gangs 

 had been heard and seen about the fields. In his de 

 meanour, as in the fact of his presence, he expressed very- 

 winter. This is one of the few winter visitors recognised 

 by the villagers. The &quot; old fellfares &quot; are as familiar 

 almost as their cousin the squorking thrush. This thrush, 

 whose song no English dweller has ever heard, nor his 

 nest seen, was seeking escape from winter in our southern 

 fields. So it happened, as often, that one encounter 

 with bird, or beast, or even bout of weather could put 

 a new complexion on the year ; and our island became, 

 on a sudden, an expansion of the Arctic circle, or a suburb 

 of tropical Africa. 



In the ordinary inland English places we can infer 

 winter from the presence and behaviour of this animal 

 and that. As soon as those vaporous shocks and stacks 

 of cloud pile up, and grow luminous with an orange 

 light peculiar to their sort, and the north-west wind wails 

 overhead, we foretaste more than the snow and frost, 

 which every villager expects. We look forward to the 

 flocks of plover descending on the eighteen-acre glebe, 

 to the host of finches hawfinch and northern brambling, 

 along with chaffinch, bullfinch, and native buntings 

 rising from the stackyard like chaff-dust from the 

 thresher. Flocks of fieldfare will gather on the line of 

 maybushes, and redwings, too tame to be sure of life, 

 will flock over the meadow. Partridge coveys or, it 

 may be, packs, will be down in the water-meadows, and 

 we shall stir wild duck from the very garden, if we walk 



