Weihaiwei, Jan, 22—Walking through my garden this evening, I was astonished to find a Peregrine Falcon perched on the fence gazing hungrily down on the trees in the ravine where sparrows and other small birds come home to roost. She did not move far when I disturbed her and I got the impression that she was too cold and hungry to be very active... all of which makes me wonder how birds feed here when everything is frozen stiff with twelve to fourteen degrees of frost each morning: birds of, prey have the smaller birds to feed on, but it is a mystery to me how such birds as Magpice find their food... except for their chance of digging up grubs from the soil when the sun softens the hard surface. At sea the Cormorants and Mergansers can still find fish, while Pochards, Scaup and similar small "fish-ducks" stay in the shallow waters near the rocks and dive for the marine malluses of which there must be plenty: if they can, for example, feed as handsomely on oysters and prawns as I do, they are not doing badly. But what of the smaller birds on land? The Thrushes, I know, resort to the few berried trees such as the Candleberry and the Barberry, but I still fail to see how the smallest and weakest of our birds keep body and soul together: I know at least one mob of sparrows who find a scanty living in a yard where (foreign-owned) corn-fed ponies are kept; but as the native ponies, mules and, donkeys are fed mainly on chopped straw and the tough vines of sweet potatoes, our sparrows must suffer from the same food-shortage which their London cousins did when, the coming of the motor-car abolished horse traffic. Yet bird-life carries on somehow, and if the Hawks which hover over my garden complain that the sparrows are remarkably thin, they are probably no worse off than many house wives who are convinced that the market chickens have adopted a Hollywood diet.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.