Bird Life in February. 



Difficult as it is to find any constant traits to 

 characterize January, not less of an uncertain quantity 

 is the second month in the year's chaplet. On the one 

 hand, its days, so evidently lengthening, may be full of 

 hopeful tokens, in the shape of budding shrubs and 

 thickening tree-tops, that the sap is on the rise, while 

 in a less genial season its sullen skies, with a cold, 

 damper and more penetrating than that of frosty 

 January, may bring the worst of the winter. Not 

 only is there no advance, but it seems at times as if 

 spring had recalled its pickets and ceased even to 

 threaten winter's reign. How sere and colourless are 

 the landscapes under drear February skies before the 

 grass shows any new growth and when one must 

 search the most sheltered hollow for half a dozen stray 

 primroses. Look on this picture and then on that of a 

 February such as that of 1891, sunny throughout, and 

 practically rainless in the London district. Yet, apart 

 from extremes, the month has a character of its own. 

 Its place is between the frost and the east winds. The 

 sun which tempers its humid airs draws a daily in- 

 increasing volume of song from the thrushes and 



