III
VILLAGE BIRDS IN WINTER
THROUGHOUT the winter of 1915-16, and more particularly during my three months in the hospital at Hayle, from the beginning of December to March, I was greatly impressed at the perpetual state of hunger in which the birds exist, especially the three commonest species in our village--rook, daw, and starling. Little wonder that the sight of a piece of bread thrown out on the green field below my window would bring all these three and many others with a rush from all sides, every one eager to get a morsel! But the birds that live most in a groove, as it were, like the rook and starling, and have but one kind of food and one way of finding it, are always the worst off in winter. These subsist on the grubs and other minute organisms they are able to pick out of the grass roots, and are life workers paid by the
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288 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE
piece who must labour hard and incessantly to make enough to keep themselves alive; their winter life is accordingly in startling contrast to that of the daw--one that lives on his wits and fares better and altogether has an easier and more amusing time.
It was the habit of the three species named to quit the wood where they roosted as soon as it was light enough for them to feed, the time varying according to the state of the weather from half-past eight to ten o'clock, the mornings being usually wet and dark. The rooks that had their rookery in the village numbered forty or fifty birds, and these would remain at the village, getting their food in the surrounding fields for the rest of the day. The daws would appear in a body of two or three hundred birds, but after a little while many of them would go on to their own villages further away, leaving about sixty to eighty birds belonging to the village. Last of all the starlings would appear in flocks and continuous streams of birds often fighting their way against wind and rain, leaving about a couple of hundred or more behind, these being the birds that had settled in the village for the season, and