4 6 
NATURE NOTES 
to beg Selbornians and others to aid in cultivating public opinion 
so that the remnant rnay be spared. Do we not all agree that 
it should be a punishable offence to injure or remove these all 
too few survivors from antiquity ? 
Walter Johnson. 
NOTES BY AN AMATEUR NATURALIST. 
TURE for the most part uses soft and subdued colours 
when she paints her wintry landscapes, and a great 
stillness and hush lie over the sleeping woods. The 
oak leaves of the past summer are fallen, and lie in 
brown masses beneath the trees, which stand like sentinels 
silent and waiting until the soft and loving touch of Spring 
re-awakens them. 
At this time of the year, when the evenings draw in, we can 
feast our eyes on the smoky blues and greys of the rising mist, 
as it creeps slowly along the valley and spreads over the 
meadows. These quiet hues are infinitely beautiful and restful, 
and cast a bluish haze over the distant brown woods as they 
dream on the far-off horizon. 
From this month of December the rattle of the Greater 
Spotted Woodpecker may be heard right on until April. It is 
a baffling call and difficult to locate. This is partly owing to 
the motions of the woodpecker as he ascends the trunk of some 
tree, and partly to his call being of a ventriloquous character. 
Sometimes it rises to such a volume of sound that it seems 
incredible that such a small bird can produce it : at others — and 
then it possesses a magic charm — it is merely a faint purr or 
vibration on the distant air. This, of course, depends on his 
whereabouts in the wood. It is never easy to find him ; but he 
is worth stalking. 
There are beautiful and interesting wild creatures all around 
us, and yet many people walk past them with wide-open, unseeing 
eyes, unconscious that they exist. The little bats that have 
ventured forth from their winter quarters, attracted by the 
warmth of the sun, how few observers have noticed them 
hawking up and down after their prey, in these last few months ! 
Watch a family of Long-tailed Tits as they play hide-and- 
seek among the twigs of some oak, and, after they have finished 
their game, fly off, one after the other, to another part of the 
wood, looking like a flight of feathered arrows, thrown with 
careless grace against the sky. They are restless and buoyant 
little birds, and never stay long in any one locality. They keep 
also to the higher branches of the trees, and, being shyer and 
less common than the Great, Blue, Cole, and Marsh Tits, would 
often pass unnoticed if it were not for their faint call-note, “ zit, 
zit,” which at once attracts a student of Nature. 
