A Winter Morning
The morning of' December 17th was freezing white, with ice up to half an inch, the rime like snow in the grass, the furrows. sheeted with glass. Small-bird life seemed suddenly para- lysed. A walk of four or five miles over field paths and green lanes seemed barren of anything smaller than a blackbird. The sky was literally empty, the air still as death, and it was only the cracking of ice underfoot that disturbed anything. at all : great chattering flocks of wood-pigeons from the, winter cabbages, a few hysterical pheasants, a silly blackbird., It was only towards noon, when the sun was just warm enough to be felt, that the small life began to wake and twitter, . A sudden gathering of chaffinches on the bleak boughs of a ,• young ash was worth waiting for then : a party of ten or twelve all clinging sideways to the perpendicular branches, almost inverted, so many rosy-breasted buds glowing against, the iron-coloured bark and the wintry blue sky. There was a momentary flowering of wings, and they had gone.
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