But it comes at last. Two really sharp frosts will cause ice thick enough to bear a lad at the edge of the lake; three will bear a man a few yards out; four, and it is safe to cross: in a week the ice is between three and four inches thick, and would carry a waggon. The character of ice varies: if some sleet has been falling--or snow, which facilitates freezing--it is thick in colour; if the wind was still it is dark, sleek, perfectly transparent. It varies, however, in different places, in some having a faint yellowish hue. There are always several places where the ice does not freeze till the last--breathing-holes in which the ducks swim; and where a brook enters it is never quite safe. The snipes come now to the brook and water-meadows. Following the course of the stream, fieldfares and redwings rise in numbers from every hawthorn bush, where they have been feeding on the peggles. Blackbirds start out from under the bushes, where there is perhaps a little moist earth still. The foam where there is a slight fall is frozen, and the current runs under a roof of ice; the white bubbles travel along beneath it. The moorhens cannot get at the water; neither can the herons or kingfishers. The latter suffer greatly, and a fortnight of such severe weather is fatal to them. I recollect walking by a brook like this, and seeing the blue plumage of a kingfisher perched on a bush. I swung my gun round ready to shoot as soon as he should fly, but the bird sat still and took no notice of my approach. Astonished at this--for the kingfisher sat in such a position as easily to see anyone coming; and these birds generally start immediately they perceive a person--I walked swiftly up opposite the bush. The bird remained on the bough. I put out the barrel of my gun and touched his ruddy breast with the muzzle: he fell on the ice below. He had been frozen on his perch during the night, and probably died more from starvation than from cold, since it was impossible for him to get at any fish. More than once afterwards the same winter I found kingfishers dead on the ice under bushes, lying on their backs with their contracted claws uppermost, having fallen dead from roost. Possibly the one found on the branch may have been partly supported by some small twig. That winter snow afterwards fell and became a few inches thick, drifting in places to several feet. Then it was the turn of the other birds and animals to feel the pain of starvation. In the meadows the tracks of rabbits crossed and recrossed till the idea of following their course had to be abandoned. At first sight it seemed as if the snow had suddenly revealed the presence of a legion of rabbits where previously no one had suspected the existence of more than a dozen. But in fact a couple of rabbits only will so run to and fro on the snow as to cover a meadow with the imprints of their feet--looking everywhere for a green blade.