148 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



less for the credit of its people — sown with potatoes 

 alone. Blackbirds and thrushes (whose exasperating 

 beaks were specially modified to serve as spades the 

 moment Sir Walter Raleigh landed on our shores with 

 a potato tuber in his pocket) were hanging half-decom- 

 posed from wires fastened to poles stuck in the ground. 

 How much less silent are these winter months than 

 were August and July ! We hear not the bird's songs, 

 but their conversation. 



November ith. — Up in the hills I saw a solitary siskin, 

 in company with cole-tits, and a few yards further on, 

 three goldfinches sitting on a dogrose-spray in the 

 hedge. How pleasant to think that I owe the sight 

 of this feathered cherub to the efforts of Mr. W. H. 

 Hudson ! We do not see them, alas ! in their tens of 

 thousands, as Cobbett used to do. But some years 

 ago they were nearly extinct in Dorset, and Mr. Hudson 

 relates that he tramped fifty miles of Dorset soil with- 

 out seeing one. Now that the bird-catcher has been 

 slightly checked from depopulating England of its 

 loveliest small birds, the goldfinches are a little on the 

 increase. I have seen them in half a dozen different 

 places within a circuit of four miles, on the cliffs, in 

 orchards, on the uplands, and actually in the village 

 itself — sometimes in flocks of from six to a dozen. 



November Qth. — To-day I saw a sparrow-hawk hover- 

 ing (they do hover, though less obviously than the 

 kestrel) right over the farm-house where I am staying.^ 



I spent some time in the cider orchard adjoining 

 the northern outpost of my village and saw never a 

 bird. In the early summer it was a birds' club and, 

 like ancient Athenians and modern art circles, I was 

 always running after some new thing in it. A thick 

 sprawling hedge surrounded it, bulging inside with 

 bramble and pierced at intervals by tall elms. The 



^ I regret the scarcity of hawks not only for their own sake and 

 my pleasure in seeing them, but because they keep their prey 

 in health and vitality, by picking off the weaklings in the one 

 and the laggards in the other, because their removal upsets the 

 poise of life and because it shows modern man to be a wanton 

 fool. 



