50 Bird - Lore 



In addition to this seed food, the Snowflake is known to eat the larvae of 

 small insects and minute shell-fish that attach themselves to the leaves of water 

 plants and rushes (upon the seeds of which they also feed), so that there is reason 

 in this varied diet for the usual plump appearance of the bird. 



Surely, if any bird could be expected to receive hospitable treatment at human 



hands, one would think it would be given to these brave children of frost and 



snow, the Snowflake and Slate-colored Junco, yet myriads of these have fallen 



into the snares of the trappers for the sake of the mere mouth- 



es rue ion o ^^j ^^ niea,t they furnish. Nuttall tells of the way in which they 



Snowflakes -^ . . ■' ^ 



were shot every winter on their return to the Scottish Highlands, 

 their compact manner of flight making them easy marks for the fowler; while in 

 other countries of Europe they were systematically caught in traps, when, after 

 being kept and fed upon millet until they had recovered from the fatigue of 

 their long flight, they became in flesh and flavor the rivals of the famous Ortolon. 

 A man from our own hill country who was a boy twenty years ago, told me 

 a few days since, as we stood watching the Juncos picking up mill-sweepings 

 from under my feeding-tree, that "at home we always used to catch lots of those 

 Gray Snowbirds every winter, in a box-trap. Good eating they were too — 'bout 

 as sweet and tasty as Reed-birds (Bobolink). T'would be a poor winter we boys 

 didn't get a couple o' hundred on em. Since the blizzard year (1888) they sort 

 o' shied off, and now that the law has set plump down on every sort o' snarin,. 

 the country fellers either has to take bad risks or do with pork meat in winter. 

 No more Partridge runs and rabbit falls, and gray squirrels can sas yer and 

 fire acorns at yer all they like after December and yer can't shoot back!" 



It was a new idea to me, this recent snaring of the welcome winter birds that 

 so many of us labor to protect. Alack! behind them the sweep of the blast to which 

 so many succumb from exhaustion, with the haven of food and promised shelter 

 sometimes leading to a trap, how much greater must be the vital power of Nature 

 than all the inventions of man, or else there would be no more Juncos or Snow- 

 flakes to fall from the very storm-clouds themselves and beg our hospitality. 



SNOWBIRDS 



Along the narrow, sandy heiglit Nearer and nearer still they sway, 



I watch them swiftly come and go, And scatter in a circled sweep. 



Or round the leafless wood. Rush down without a sound: 



Like flurries of wind-driven snow, And now I see them peer and peep 



Revolving in perpetual flight, — Across yon level bleak and gray, 



A changing multitude. Searching the frozen ground. 



Until a little wind upheaves 



And makes a sudden rustling there, 



And then they drop their play, 



Flash up into the sunless air, 

 And, like a flight of silver leaves. 



Swirl round and sweep away. 



— .\rchibald Lampman. 



