Dec, 14.—Now that my walks are mainly confined to parks and gardens, I find an increasing difficulty in selecting little scenes or episodes to enter in my dairy. Even. in the most confined areas there are, however, still some beautiful sights to be seen, and I would, indeed, be ungrateful if I did not mention the little flocks of Webb's Crowtits which go piping through our shrubs and lower trees: often these little red-brown birds pass through my garden, calling to one another as they go (to keep in touch) and, as a friend said to me this morning, making a very large noise for such a small bird. Then we have the Siberian Bluetail (santhia cyanura) which has the Robin-like habit of jerking up its tail as it searches for food upon ihe ground: I see, just mostly females and young of this year which do not carry the beautiful blue feathers of the full-grown male; they are just the little rusty "Robins" of the hedgerows, bright-eyed and sprightly, but without any distinctive colour-pattern to attract attention. But, most remarkable of all, the birds which visit us at this time of year are the Daurian Redstarts (Phoenicurus auroreus): these beautiful little birds with their grey mantle and black throat, cut off in a straight line, look as if they could only have been designed with compass and ruler....even the brilliant white spectrum in the middle of the wing takes on a geometrical shape, while the oramge.red breast make.this bird more rebinlike than the Bluetail. Truly, I will never forget the remark of my soldier friend when I first showed him one of these birds, "Now I am fo longer satisfied with a theory of evolution". jhe certainly said a lot im a very few words, and I think of him every time I see a Redstart.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.