220 WAKE-ROBIN 



I first verified this observation some years ago. 

 I had long been familiar with the song, but had 

 only strongly suspected the author of it, when, as I 

 was walking in the woods one evening, just as the 

 leaves were putting out, I saw one of these birds 

 but a few rods from me. I was saying to myself, 

 half audibly, "Come, now, show off, if it is you; 

 I have come to the woods expressly to settle this 

 point,'' when it began to ascend, by short hops and 

 flights, through the branches, uttering a sharp, pre- 

 liminary chirp. I followed it with my eye; saw 

 it mount into the air and circle over the woods ; and 

 saw it sweep down again and dive through the 

 trees, almost to the very perch from which it had 

 started. 



As the paramount question in the life of a bird 

 is the question of food, perhaps the most serious 

 troubles our feathered neighbors encounter are early 

 in the spring, after the supply of fat with which 

 Nature stores every corner and by-place of the sys- 

 tem, thereby anticipating the scarcity of food, has 

 been exhausted, and the sudden and severe changes 

 in the weather which occur at this season make 

 unusual demands upon their vitality. No doubt 

 many of the earlier birds die from starvation and 

 exposure at this season. Among a troop of Canada 

 sparrows which I came upon one March day, all of 

 them evidently much reduced, one was so feeble 

 that I caught it in my hand. 



During the present season, a very severe cold 

 epell the first week in March drove the bluebirds 



