Country Life Ti th third south-westerly gale in less than
week raged through the night and did a gr deal of damage to trees by all reports, for t shallow-rooted fir, the treacherously unsou elm or the easily shattered poplar falls to force of the storm. Such tough trees hawthorn, sinuous ones like birch or Oa sturdy giant beeches rarely tumble or sr When I went out to inspect our tiles a timbers I looked across the road at the v old and bare ash tree. It held the lars number of jackdaws 1 have ever seen in o tree. They were all tunied into the wind a perched there as a child might have paint them. Now and again, when an unusua heavy gust struck the tree, the lila ornaments bobbed as one and then floated a sort of undulation that made it all look VC Unreal. Just why so many had chosen tree I could not make out, but gradually discovered that the population fluctuate Five or six more. birds would sail down an as many rise and turn over into the win which took them off at fi great speed. Aft seeing the jackdaws I looked about for moo birds. Not one was to be seen anywhe but I guessed that they were in the holl busheS or the thick ornamental conifers a yews as well as in the ivy on the old tre No small bird could have survived for I out of shelter, and I could hardly imagl that the jackdaws had weathered such a nith in the open.
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