18 Minstrels of the Winter. 



bitter with, dissatisfaction at the rapid growth of towns and 

 the change which is passing over all things rural. I am often 

 amused at the look of astonishment with which friends some- 

 times receive my verbal accounts of birds that visit my garden, 

 but I am not surprised that they find it hard to believe, and 

 disposed to receive the narrative as a joke, for I sometimes 

 hear one say, " I haven't seen a robin the whole winter 

 through," though the speaker lives, perhaps, in an open rural 

 spot, where a bird-catcher could make a good living, if 

 allowed to put down traps in the garden for robins. only. The 

 fact is, the majority of people go through the world with their 

 eyes shut. Intellectual observers are thinly scattered, and it 

 is as yet known but to few how abundant and how cheap v are 

 the sources of human happiness. 



Not that an observer now pressing- his nose to the window 

 pane, or chattering his teeth on a bleak common, would see or 

 hear a great many birds. The great flocks of harvest finches 

 that winged their way across the stubbles like driving- 

 showers, appearing and re-appearing- as they were disturbed 

 by the sound of wheels, or voices, or guns, have all dispersed ; 

 the plough has broken up their pastures, and they, for the 

 most part, forage for themselves singly, or in very small 

 parties, the males and females being for the present separated. 

 In the gardens there are fewer birds of all kinds, even black- 

 birds, thrushes, and sparrows are scarce, and, what is worse, 

 they are quiet. From the end of October to the end of 

 January, the country is as quiet as it is leafless, indeed, more 

 quiet than leafless, and the silence is oftentimes oppressive, 

 especially when far into November and December the 

 meadows are still as ij;rccn as in April, many trees still 

 holding their leaves, and the sky bright and blue, with 

 soft breezes blowing, and everything, except the birds, affecting 

 to consider winter an impossibility. But there is no hypo- 

 crisy among the birdies, their winter has come, and they wait 

 without murmuring the return of spring; and because of this 

 silence I think it well be gossip a little on the song birds of 

 winter; for happily there are a lew, and Nature has ordered 

 it that no day or hour in the whole year round should pass 

 without some sort of voice to serve it for a chronicle. 



" What are the birds now bo be beard? Tell us," you say, 



"a hoi it the minstrels of fche v* inter, their names, tlieir feat ures, 

 and their songs." On just such a day as I write this, 

 December 18th — barometer 80*41 3 thermometer in the shade, 



42° — Hie sun shining brightly in a, cloudless grey sky. breeze 



from the nni-t ! i -east, brisk enough to keep all the windmills clack - 



— OB just such a day 1 was sauntering beside the Avon at 



RmgWOOQj in the JS'ew Forest, wondering how the cows could 



