Weihaiwei, Jan, 22—Walking through my [garden this evening, I was astonished to find a Peregrine Falcon perched on the fence gain fnungrily down on the trees in the ravine where sparrows and other small birds come home to roost. She did not move far when T disturbed her and I got the impression that she was 100 Jcold 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 lof, prey have the smaller birds to feed on, but it is a mystery to me how such birds as Magpies find their food. except for their chanco 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 rds, Seaup and similar Jsmait "Ash-ducks" stay in the shallow waters! near the rocks and dive for the marine malluses Jof which there must be plenty: if they can, for example, feed as handsomely. on oysters and Prawns as T 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 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 Jwho find a scanty living in a yard' where (foreign-owned) corn-fed ponies are kept; but fas 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 re~ markably thin, they are probably no worse off than many house wives who are convinced that the market chickens have adopted a Hollywood
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.