FIELDFARES RETURN
There is not quite the same thrill in noting the arrival of winter migrants as there is in discovering that the first swallows have reached us, that the wheatear is on the upland pasture and the cuckoo is back, and 1 must confess to hearing the fieldfares with less satisfaction than I experience when the red' wings come. We are on the seaboard and when the redwings get this far it is an indication that the back of winter is almost broken. They come down to us to escape the last air' breath of winter. Shortly afterwards a thaw comes and the redwings retreat from the locality, This isn't the case with fieldfares. They are heralds of winter and belong to the greying stubble, fading hedges and folding bracken' They are here now in company. A heavy sky backgrounds a waving line of plovers, a whirl of starlings and a cross-country flight of thee speckled newcomers, the fieldfares, that find our winter less harsh than that which Os with endless night and, eternal snow flurrie • Their presence is surely a warning of the cold hand of winter even if there are still black' berries on the bush.
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