Page:Bird Life Throughout the Year (Salter, 1913).djvu/27

Rh The snow is crossed in every direction by tracks, many of them made by mice. Larger spoor of the same type shows how unsuspectedly numerous rats are in the banks. Here a squirrel has paid his daily visit to a store of beech-nuts in the side of a heap of leaf-mould in the shrubbery. His prints show slender toes and long nails.

Yet another series of tracks puzzles us until we disturb various rabbits which are "lying out" amongst the brambles, showing that a stoat has driven them from their burrows. How is it, we wonder, that in the mildest winter some stoats change colour, becoming piebald or even veritable ermines, while the coats of others even in the most severe frosts show no trace of such a modification of tint. Age, sex or individual constitution may perhaps furnish the clue. A moving shadow passing swiftly up the slope calls attention to a kestrel which is quartering over the hill-side. Presently he passes in hot chase of a skylark. Kestrels undoubtedly kill many small birds in snow-time when other supplies are cut off. We have surprised them red-handed upon fresh-killed thrush and starling. Scattering the snow from the thistle-heads, a party of goldfinches takes flight with musical twitter. The robins have discovered that in the garden a manure-heap is being moved—no small stroke of fortune in times such as these; nearly a dozen of them have congregated at the spot. The gardener finds that