270 NETHER LOCHABER. 



such birds as redbreasts, wrens, finches of all kinds, the lively and 

 ubiquitous chaffinch, however, being most numerous ; coral-billed 

 blackbirds, shy at first, but easily made familiar and friendly 

 enough ; ox-eye tits, very pretty birds, but nervous and fidgety 

 always ; house and hedge sparrows, with a self-assertion and 

 impudence that is most amusing, and a bold familiarity that would 

 always place them in the front rank of bread-crumb recipients, if 

 the redbreasts, seldom otherwise than quarrelsome and testy, did 

 not drive them back. Moat of .those birds, when they found an 

 open door or window, would boldly venture into the house, and 

 eagerly pick up the bread crumbs from off the floor or table, 

 undisturbed by anything one said or did, provided only you 

 refrained from any attempt to lay hold of them ; in that case they 

 were off and out instantly, and in a manifest pet at your rudeness 

 and inhospitality, shy to trust you again until the matter was for- 

 gotten, or perhaps only overlooked perforce of the inexorable logic 

 of intense cold and gnawing hunger. All the birds that we 

 have handled for more than a month past were but the merest 

 skin and bone, emaciated to a degree altogether unknown in less 

 severe winters. Curiously enough, however, we had a brace of 

 woodcocks a few days ago which were as plump and fat as one 

 could wish them ; and some brace of snipe, shot in the neighbour- 

 hood of Inverness, kindly sent to us as a Christmas present, were 

 in excellent condition, and good in every way. Why these long- 

 billed, sucking birds should be fat, when all other birds are 

 unnaturally lean, is to be accounted for by the fact that the intense 

 frost drives the worms and minute animals which constitute their 

 food into the open " eyes " and rivulets, which never freeze, like 

 sheep in a fank ; and thus the woodcock and snipe have their food 

 with rather less trouble in frost than in more open weather. Some 

 ten days ago, a very fine specimen of the jay (Gorvm glandarius, 

 Linn. ; the Scriaclian-Coille of the Gael) was sent us. This is one 



