It is many years since our wild birds have had to encounter a winter of such unmitigated severity as the present. Dead rooks, blackbirds, chaffinches, and hedge sparrows are only too common in copse, hedgerow, and open field, stiffened and starved all of them, nothing but the bones, skin, and feathers remaining as you take them up and handle them, so that one only wonders how it is they did not drop and die long before reaching such a sad state of utter fleshlessness and emaciation. A whole month, however, of intense frost, making every one exposed to its direct influence, even for a moment, put their fingers to their mouths with a "poor Tom's a-cold" attitude and grin--of intense frost, in which the earth became hard and resonant as iron, clearly accounts for it all. Some idea of the keenness of the frost at times may be gathered from the following facts:--On Friday afternoon we had occasion to go to look if our boat on the beach was all right, for the darkening heavens threatened an immediate storm, a not uncommon end to such rare meteorological phenomena as long continued frosts on the West Coast. Sitting on the end of a log of wood that lay on the beach, a little above high-water mark, was a rook or crow, which, as we approached, attempted to fly away, but could not. It stretched itself, and strained, and flapped its wings frantically as we drew near, but there it was, tethered firm and fast, manifestly unable to budge an inch, unless it carried the immense log bodily along with it. We wondered for a moment what in the world could be the matter, for we could not recollect ever seeing a rook, of all our birds the most knowing, perhaps, and self-possessed, act so absurdly. Running forward and laying hold of the bird, we had a ready solution of the mystery in the fact that the poor, struggling creature's feet were firmly frozen to the log--more firmly than the best bird-lime or glue could have held them. Thawing the frozen feet with some little trouble by the warmth of our hand, we had the pleasure of setting the poor bird at liberty. He--for it was a male--did not certainly weigh more, as we poised him in our hand, than six or seven ounces, though the ordinary weight of a rook in fair condition is nearly a couple of pounds. Even within doors the frost was unusually intense. In a small room off our own kitchen--and in the latter there is, of course, always a fire, and generally a large fire, burning--the night's milk was frequently found frozen into a hard and solid mass in the morning; so thoroughly frozen that the servant girl could, by tilting up the vessel and smartly tapping its bottom get the solid contents of frozen milk into her hand, and carry it, for the amusement of the youngsters, about the house, from one room to another, as if it were a Dunlop cheese. Such a frost we have not had on the West Coast for at least a score of years. Our wild-bird levee of a morning is a most interesting scene--the most pleasant episode, perhaps, in the necessarily dull routine of a winter's day in the country. On these occasions we can depend on the presence of such birds as redbreasts, wrens, finches of all kinds, the lively and ubiquitous chaffinch, however, being most numerous; coral-billed blackbirds, shy at first, but easily made familiar and friendly enough; ox-eye tits, very pretty birds, but nervous and fidgety always; house and hedge sparrows, with a self-assertion and impudence that is most amusing, and a bold familiarity that would always place them in the front rank of bread-crumb recipients, if the redbreasts, seldom otherwise than quarrelsome and testy, did not drive them back. Most of those birds, when they found an open door or window, would boldly venture into the house, and eagerly pick up the bread crumbs from off the floor or table, undisturbed by anything one said or did, provided only you refrained from any attempt to lay hold of them; in that case they were off and out instantly, and in a manifest pet at your rudeness and inhospitality, shy to trust you again until the matter was forgotten, or perhaps only overlooked perforce of the inexorable logic of intense cold and gnawing hunger. All the birds that we have handled for more than a month past were but the merest skin and bone, emaciated to a degree altogether unknown in less severe winters. Curiously enough, however, we had a brace of woodcocks a few days ago which were as plump and fat as one could wish them; and some brace of snipe, shot in the neighbourhood of Inverness, kindly sent to us as a Christmas present, were in excellent condition, and good in every way.