TRANSACTIONS IIORTTCILTTRAL SOCIETY OF NORTHERN TEL. 269 



see in the blue and scarlet feathers flitting hither and thither among the 

 denuded branches of our orchards and forests! These gayly colored 

 visitors, the jays and woodpeckers, are not among our transient summer 

 boarders ; they come to stay, and enliven our winters — a service for which 

 they are oftener abused than praised by the wingless biped called man. 

 We propose for our toast, "Our winter birds." 



The geographical limits of our Society are most unpleasantly near 

 the "Boreal Pole" for a winter study of Ornithology, and the number 

 and variety of our constant feathered friends are limited enough. Al- 

 though extreme hardiness is required for wintering north of forty degrees 

 of latitude anywhere, yet our Eastern friends can boast of many winter 

 birds rarely if ever seen in the same latitude at the West. In accounting 

 for this, we must remember that thermal lines do not follow closely geo- 

 graphical lines, and these denizens of the air note this more carefully than 

 we, and render their knowledge of more practical avail. Yet this but 

 partially accounts for the difference; there are the peculiarities of surface 

 and soil, of exposure and shelter, which they are also quick to note, and 

 wliich predetermine their choice of habitat almost irrespective of general 

 geographical limits. Nor is the question of appropriate food an unim- 

 portant one, though not primary, in determining their choice. Nor does 

 the kind or quality of food exert so great an influence upon the hardiness 

 of the bird as we might at first suppose. The winter birds of high lati- 

 tudes are nearly equally divided between flesh-eating and seed-eating 

 birds with no appreciable advantage possessed by the former over the lat- 

 ter, so far as we can observe ; each class is well represented, both here and 

 elsewhere, among those who brave the utmost rigors of our northern win- 

 ters. Of the first class are to be found the nuthatch, the little brown 

 creeper and the titmice (black-cap and crested) with which every child is 

 familiar. These are our true tree-scavengers ; running up and down and 

 around the boles of our lawn and orchard trees, closely scanning every 

 crevice, peering carefully under every piece of loose bark, for the eggs or 

 larvje of insects which breed there, taking with a chirp of thankfulness 

 what the gods send, or accepting their want of success just as cheerily. 

 For the orchardist or fruit-grower these services have an untold money 

 value. Of the other class we need only instance the snow birds, which 

 gyrate in flocks through the snowy air during a storm, and the little tree 

 sparrow, which seems to enjoy a degree of cold that few other birds will 

 adventure ; while these, perhaps, perform as rich a service to the farmer 

 and gardener as the other class, by destroying the myriad noxious seeds 

 of all unsightly plants and weeds with which the rank luxuriance of sum- 

 mer growth has fringed our fields and hill-sides. 



Scarcely less hardy and bold than these are the less fastidious ones, 

 which, like the jays and woodpeckers, feed on whatever comes to their 

 net. They may and do prefer flesh, if it be at hand, but nothing comes 

 amiss to them, or is absolutely rejected by hunger. The red-headed wood- 

 pecker is remarkably fond of apples ; in fact, I have sometimes been sus- 

 jMcious that his apparent search for worms in decaying trees may have 

 been but a pretense of an honest livelihood, to avoid the vagrant act. 



