I select a striking example—the most atrocious weather, a howling wind, and sleet or sleety snow that seems, as it falls, to thaw and freeze upon one's hands, both at the same time. Later it becomes almost a storm, with more snow. It is, indeed, a day terrible to bird and beast in the general, as well as to man, yet, through it all, these tiny little bits of natural feather-work are feeding on the small February buds of some elms that roar in the wind. Wonderful it is to see them blown and swayed about, with the snow-flakes whirling about them, as they hang high up from the extremities of slender twigs, playing their little life-part (as important in the sum of things as Napoleon's) with absolute ease and well-being, whilst one is almost frozen to look at them. One must think of Shakespeare's lines about "the wet shipboy in a night so rude," but what a poor mollycoddle was he by comparison! Later they will sleep—these robust little feathered Ariels—to the tempest's lullaby, above a world all snow, and with frozen snow the whole way up the trunk of every unprotected tree, on the windward side. Now it is dinner, with appetite and entire comfort "in the cauld blast."
What insects are in these tiny little new buds, or are there insects in each one?—for these tits browse from one to another and seem equally satisfied with all. Yet it is authoritatively stated that they eat only the insects in buds, and not the buds themselves. In watching birds, however, as in other things, one should be guided by a few simple rules, and one of the most important of these is absolutely to ignore all statements whatever, without the smallest regard
