SPRING IN WESTERN OREGON. 193 



the Northwest, we should meet many new birds and should 

 become more and more impressed with the effect of climate 

 upon a bird's color. A bright winter day is rare. Everything 

 is wet, mossy, oozy. Houses, rocks, and trees are covered with 

 moss. The hardwood trees are draped with moss, the ever- 

 greens with ferns that grow up the trunks and along the 

 branches, and hang down like the fringes on buckskin leggings. 

 A thousand rivulets and streams gush from the edges of the 

 forest and pour into the larger streams and rivers. A rising 

 vapor or a falling mist marks the difference between fair 

 weather and foul. The effect of all this gloom and moisture 

 becomes very apparent when we notice the birds that do not 

 migrate. The summer visitors, who stay only during the 

 bright and beautiful season, would hardly be much affected by 

 the climate. The residents, on the other hand, are apt to be 

 larger than their Eastern relatives, darker, and with a dull 

 slate-gray cast which matches well the gloomy woods about 

 them, as if the clear colors had been soaked out of their plu- 

 mage. The song-sparrow becomes a streaked brown, the flicker 

 grows dull-colored, the jays are dark, the bright rufous fox 

 sparrow turns to a slatey brown. The sooty grouse which 

 we have just been observing is notably dull-colored. There is 

 one exception. The ruffed grouse of the Northwest coast 

 loses his cool clear grays and browns and becomes distinctly 

 rufous. Why is it that the climate should affect one bird in 

 one way and another in a different way ? This is one of the 

 naturalist's problems ; even a child might ask the question, 

 but the wise men have not yet answered it. 



