Here the fields are green through the coldest months.

No deep and drifting snows cover a frozen earth for ten or twelve weeks, as with us.

There is plenty of shelter and seeds for birds that can stand an occasional frost or wintry storm, and a great number of them remain the whole year around the English homesteads.
If such a difference were a full compensation, our North American birds make up in dress what they fall short of English birds in voice and musical talent.

The robin redbreast and the goldfinch come out in brighter colors than any other beaux and belles of the season here; but the latter is only a slender-waisted brunette, and the former a plump, strutting, little coxcomb, in a mahogany-colored waistcoat.

There is nothing here approaching in vivid colors the New England yellow-bird, hang-bird, red-bird, indigo-bird, or even the bluebird.