Country Life
EXILED BIRDS.
Did hard weather in England ever influence the movements of birds in so eccentric a manner ? We have seen in inland places all sorts of rarities scarcely known before. For example, in one short walk on the London side of St. Albans a sportsman saw a stint, which he mistook for a jack snipe, and a dipper, as well as a number of snipe and some golden plover. Some of the towns, especially, of course, London, were suddenly flooded with birds. The gulls increased, the already huge roosts of starlings increased, duck were seen in multitude and in rare variety. Was ever ice blacker or harder ? and such bird haunts as the Fens were frozen so hard, both their dykes and their rare fens, that no water- or marsh-bird could get a living and they fled elsewhere, some of them into the very towns. The shock of the sudden change upset their habits and common instincts.
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