Читать книгу Neighbourhood: A year's life in and about an English village онлайн

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But lucidly, these long spells of unremitting frost are rare in our country. Ordinary give-and-take winter’s weather—the alternation of cold and warmth, gloom and sunshine, wind and calm—brings little hardship to any living thing. Country children have a wonderful way of thriving and being happy, even though their diet is mainly bread-and-dripping and separated milk. As for wild life, we need expend no commiseration on any creature that can burrow; and while there are berries in the hedgerows, and water in the brooks, no bird will come to harm.

It is curious to see how Nature ekes out her winter supplies, doling out rations, as it were, from day to day. If the whole berry harvest came to ripe maturity at the same season, or were of like attractiveness, it would be squandered and exhausted by the spendthrift, happy-go-lucky hordes of birds, long before the winter was through. But many things are designed to prevent this. Under the threat of starvation, all birds will eat berries; but a great proportion of them will do so only as a last resource. At first it is the hawthorn fruit that goes. The soft flesh of the may-berry will yield to the weakest bill, and the whole crop ripens together in early winter. But even here Nature provides against the risk of immediate waste, that will mean starvation hereafter. The missel-thrushes have been given a bad name because each of them takes possession of some well-loaded stretch of hedgerow, and spends the whole day in driving off other birds. Yet, on this habit of the greedy missel, depends not only his own future sustenance but that of all the rest. For all his agility, he cannot prevent each bird snatching at least enough to keep life going, and while he is so busy, he has himself no chance for gluttony.