WINTER BIRDS. 231 



buried deep, and the trees stand starkly out- 

 lined against the sky. Millions of snow-crystals 

 glint athwart the fields. Birds swarm in the 

 garden — the home birds more confiding, and 

 the wild birds tame. Tits hang to the suet 

 bags, and a general assembly flock to the corn- 

 sheaf. A Ring-ouzel flies wildly from a rowan- 

 tree, and four or five species of thrushes are 

 among the berries of the shrubs. So softly 

 winnowed is the falling snow, that it scarce 

 bends the few grasses and dead plants that 

 appear above its surface. 



The kindly snow obliterates the torn and 

 abraded scars of nature, but it not the less 

 effectually reproduces the prints of her children. 

 To the light the snow reveals the doings of the 

 night. Does a mouse so much as cross, she 

 leaves her delicate tracery on the white coverlet. 

 Away from the homestead, rabbits have crossed 

 and recrossed the fields in a perfect maze. That 

 ill-defined " pad " tracks a Hare to the turnips. 

 Pheasants and Wood-pigeons have scratched for 

 mast beneath the beeches, and we find red blood- 

 drops by the fence. These are tracked to a 

 colony of Weasels in the old wall. Last night a 

 piteous squeal might have been heard from the 



