How Our Birds Spend the Winter 



In the bird world there is supposed to be no class distinction, no rich, no 

 poor; all are equipped alike for the battle of life by instinct. Yet those of us who 

 have followed the lives of even a score of the most familiar birds throughout the 

 year must confess that they are made either hard or pleasant by circumstances of 

 birth very much like our own. 



From our viewpoint in the middle and Xew England states birds classify 

 themselves roughly in two groups, — the summer, and the permanent residents. 

 I'ick half a dozen birds from each of these groups, consider their comings and 

 goings. You will presently see that neither among birds nor among men are all 

 born free and equal, and that the traveler on the wing is as much linked to law and 

 the potency of heredity as the wearer of shoes. 



The birds that we know as summer residents, such as the Baltimore Oriole. 

 Scarlet Tanager, Bobolink, Barn Swallow, Wood Thrush and Rose-breasted Gros- 

 beak, really enjoy two summers, the same as they wear two changes of clothing 

 during the year. 



When the spring impulse, let loose by melting snow, steals over the northern 

 hemisphere, it finds the birds that come to us for their home-making within our 

 borders, because it is the homestead of their tribe, already on the wing. There 

 are perils by land and sea in this journey, long flights and fastings and buffetings ; 

 but when at last they arrive it is usually to find good marketing and a roof-tree 

 waiting. 



Of course, there are sometimes ill-timed journeys, when winter has given a 

 false alarm of retreat and, coming back, locks up the larder, and the tired way- 

 farers perish by the way, — but this is the exception, not the rule. Arriving in 

 their summer haunts, these birds have a period of ecstatic song and courtsin'p 

 before settling down to the real labors of raising one. two. or sometimes, as with 

 the House Wrens, three broods. 



After the breeding season comes a period of enforced rest, called the molting 

 time. While the nest-worn feathers are being changed, the birds at this season are 

 ener\ated and lacking the strength for long flight, they mope and gossip (yes. I've 

 heard them, of this I'm positive) in well-leafed shade, all the while eating well 

 of the plenty of late summer; for August, the lazy month, is the time that Nature 

 has set apart for the feather-changing process. 



Then follows two months or more of the social and communitv life, with the 

 excitement of flocking and the southward journey ; and, when winter comes to us, 

 these summer birds are entering upon a second and tropical summer — a vacation 

 season without care or responsibility, from which they will finallv emerge 

 refreshed and provided with new spring garments for the return flight. 



But what of the other birds, winter residents with us or wandering visitor? 

 alike? Their summer cares are the same as those that fly before the frost that 

 they must face, compelled by a force outside of the region of their own will. 



Take, for example, the Tree Sparrow. Downy Woodpecker. American Gold- 



541 



