24 OUT WITH THE BIRDS 



they stop and look back from afar; then fade 

 into the dull woods and are lost. 



The sun is now low, and there is just time to 

 go back down the ravine side again and visit 

 the beaver-dam. It lies there as it has lain for 

 three months, ice-sealed, snow-clad, and with- 

 out sign of life. Yet that great mound against 

 the bank, with the brush-tops protruding thickly 

 from the ice in a strip in front of it, show re- 

 spectively the bunk-house and larder of a thriv- 

 ing beaver family; and the conical, snow- 

 covered mound heaved up in the willows, five 

 feet above the ice, out in the deeper water, is 

 the upper story of another house. But winter 

 is not a good season for studying beavers — 

 especially law-protected beavers — so the snow- 

 shoes are pointed townward again. And while 

 crossing the flat, a small voice floats down from 

 the upper air, only a faint lisping bird-note, but 

 how welcome is that first chirrup of our first 

 harbinger of returning spring — the prairie 

 horned lark. 



