Birds and Seasons in My Garden 



283 



hulled buckwheat to the food-supply, and do not forget to save the 'nubby' 

 ears of chicken corn and put them in the haunts of the gray squirrels. 



As for the rabbits, do not pull up all the old cabbages, spinach and 

 seeded lettuce until spring, and then the bark of your young peach trees will 

 be spared. 



Will the Screech Owl come back to his winter box, from which a gray 

 squirrel drove him in March, only, in turn, to be dispossessed by a Flicker 

 in April? 



This morning, very early, I saw a brown bird fluttering inside the well- 

 house, where a claw caught in the net held it prisoner. Quickly grasping it, 



THE WINTER BROOK IX BLUEBIRD FARM, WHERE THE MEADOW-LARK 

 TAKES HIS LAST DRINK AND THE RED-WING HIS FIRST 



I freed the claws, and held the tired, fluttering thing loosely between my hands, 

 until it should recover itself; and then, as it seemed numb with cold, I breathed 

 softly upon it, holding it to my face until it quite relaxed — a beautiful Hermit 

 Thrush! All day it has been in and out among the dogwoods feeding upon 

 the berries. Is it the pioneer of a flock, and wUl tomorrow bring its companions? 

 It is such expectations as these that make the winter birds of a garden 

 so precious; for there is no really dead season, with the Winter Wren in the 

 wood-pile, the Chickadee and Tree Sparrow chattering overhead, when any 

 day, on looking closely at what a careless glance named a flock of English 

 Sparrows in the bare ash, you find two-score Cedar Waxwings, who have 

 spied the berries on the mountain cranberry; while in February, the dreariest 



