2T0 ILLINOIS STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



while he stole our apples. The little black and white woodpecker, most 

 commonly called sapsucker, one of our best known and most common 

 winter birds, though less addicted to fruit than the other, is not yet of 

 spotless reputation in that regard. These birds have no pleasant note, 

 yet their harsh cry accords well with the season, and borne along the 

 frosty air is very pleasant to hear. With field and forest robed in white we 

 might fancy nature dead, and ourselves the only watchers by her shrouded 

 corse, but for these sights and sounds of life around us. 



The jay is the most interesting, as well as the most gayly colored, of 

 our constant winter birds. He is constantly on hand, whether you par- 

 ticularly want him or not. You cannot call your fowls to their breakfast 

 without his hearing you, and answering, whether he comes or not. If he 

 has no more promising mischief on hand, he is sure to accept the invita- 

 tion, and pounce down on your corn with a sharpened appetite. One of 

 your properest partlet prudes will begin to ruffle at him, and drive him 

 away. He resents the insult, and mounts a limb just out of reach, and 

 screams back at his persecutor with all his might, until she turns again to 

 her breakfast, when he places himself at once by her side, and keeps up 

 his annoyance, perhaps during the entire meal. We are always delighted 

 with the impudent tricks and impertinent mimicry of this feathered 

 harlequin. We have for many years made it a point to be on good terms 

 with this jolly fellow, eve.n to the point of cultivating his most intimate 

 acquaintance. The thickest place in the evergreen hedge is reserved for 

 his shelter from the cold ; we allow the morning glories to run riot over 

 the latitices, in summer, in order that their seeds may be ready for his 

 winter food. We clean away the snow and feed our fowls on the open 

 ground, when it would be otherwise more convenient to feed under shelter, 

 in order that he may claim a share. We feel amply rewarded for all 

 these services by his constancy and perpetual jollity, regardless alike of 

 cold or storms. He may have his faults, and they may be manifold, but 

 in our judgment his cheerfulness, under all sorts of trials and hardships, 

 amply atones for them all. It takes a better Christian than most are to 

 receive all that is sent, or forego all that is withheld, alike with equanimity 

 and fortitude, and this little bird may well teach us a lesson in this 

 regard. 



The question of shelter is the one which most concerns our lack of 

 winter birds. Our treeless prairies are too bleak for any except the most 

 hardy kinds. Many of the most prominent northern New England birds 

 are quite uncommon here, owing to our want of shelter. The crow, one 

 of the most common winter birds in Northern Vermont, during our early 

 days, is quite uncommon in Northern Illinois, not so much because of the 

 cold as the want of shelter, and high trees for roosting and nesting. 

 About the middle of the present winter we heard the cawing of a crow, 

 and on looking up observed three individuals of that family winging 

 their flight across the heavens from west to east. These are the only 

 specimens noticed by us this winter, and a gentleman raised in Northern 

 New York spoke of the scarcity here of that bird, so common and familiar 

 there. At the East he chooses the highest pines and hemlocks, where he 



