THE REDWING 
the snow pellets leaping from their feathers. 
Fieldfares in regiments two hundred strong, 
slanted over the sandhills. Cock blackbirds 
in dozens also came in ; and famine-stricken as 
they were, they were stronger than the storm- 
beaten throstles, who fluttered ashore only a few 
feet above the waves. On the sandhills among 
the buckthorn bushes, tired woodcock squatted, 
with the bones pricking through their skin ; 
and redwings lay with sand and snow sifting 
over their plumage. On the leeward side of a 
hillock sat an exhausted jack-snipe with his 
long bill laid out on the snow ; and a quartet 
of ringed plover, hardy and strong-flighted 
though they were, had been driven from the 
bleak seashore to the comparative shelter of the 
dunes, and stood head to wind upon a frozen 
hummock. Starlings, thousands of them, flew 
in, straight-flighted and still fresh, all wheeling 
promptly as the leader rose or dipped. Com- 
pared to the straggling ranks of the thrushes, 
they were as trained bands are to irregular 
levies both may start the march in order, but 
in the rout discipline will tell. And this was a 
rout a defeat, when the birds fled south in 
tumultuous confusion, with the north wind 
howling behind them : a rout where the weak- 
lings dropped out and died by the way. 
The redwings drifted over in parties of from 
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