THE REDWING 
He came from a Norwegian forest, and when 
he left his birthland, or what his previous 
adventures may have been, the chronicler does 
not know. To all intents and purposes his story 
begins when he crossed the Irish Channel that 
stormy morning, and, like the Three Children, 
taking a new name in a strange land, became 
Shacaim, the frost-thrush, of Coolnabrock. 
With his fellows he dropped gratefully to the 
shelter of the sandhills, and there for the first 
time in his life he saw the sea-buckthorns in 
fruit. As far as his eye could pierce through 
the driving snow, the hillocks were clothed 
with the shrubs which glowed like live coals. 
Each twig was weighed down with a freight of 
orange berries, and to every available space, 
screaming, gobbling, fighting, clung birds. The 
tops of the bushes bent under garlands of field- 
fares ; misselthrushes fought for standing room 
upon their fellows' shoulders, while scores of 
finches stripped the lower twigs. The red- 
wing, fighting like the rest, pitched on to a 
bush and gobbled thankfully. The berries were 
acrid, but they filled his empty crop, and that 
was all he asked. Just below him, a hungry 
moorhen lurched from bough to bough ; above, 
half a dozen stolid greenfinches smashed the 
berries, and spattered their neighbours with the 
yellow juice. Farther on, half a score of mag- 
