How Winter Thins Their Ranks ii 



while he commenced to have something Uke the hiccoughs, which deterred 

 him from drinking more, and soon hopped up to his perch and commenced 

 preening his be-draggled feathers. This occupied him the rest of the day and 

 when morning came he was the fluffiest and most beautiful creature imaginable. 

 From that time on he drank and bathed regularly. 



{To be concluded in the next issue.) 



How Winter Thins Their Ranks 



By JOSEPH W. LIPPINCOTT, Bethayres, Pa. 

 With photographs by the author 



WHENEVER in the midst of winter I come across a starved or frozen 

 feathered body, it usually occurs to me to look about for signs of 

 animal or other marauder. The cold and the snow may grip all 

 the land and there yet be sufficient shelter and food for each bird if fear of 

 insistent foes does not discourage the industrious fellow from going where he 

 can find both. 



In New Jersey and Pennsylvania one now and then picks up in the snow 

 a Quail which is almost a feather-covered skeleton. At first glance it would 

 seem that the cold alone is to be blamed; but has not a Hawk perhaps kept 

 guard over the only field where the weed-seeds still cling abundantly on stalks 

 over the snow, or is not the track of an insidious fox discernible along the 

 thicket edges where the covey cozily bedded until perhaps, in the gray, freez- 

 ing hours, it was scattered in all directions? 



Again and again have I found it so. Certain birds seem to have a terrible 

 fear of large Hawks, though the latter may have no evil intentions toward 

 them. While the Junco feeds happily in the open, shy birds like the Quail 

 circle about the field, too timid to venture into the white expanse until nearly 

 night-time, when they cannot find sufficient provender to maintain strength 

 day after day— the strength that gives bodily heat. The supply within reach 

 goes and they get weaker and weaker until a thaw comes to the rescue or until 

 they give up the long, hard fight. 



In January, 191 2, I was in South Carolina on the old road from Charles- 

 ton to Columbia, when the great freeze came with its bUnding snowfall, and 

 the mercury dropped to 10°. It caught the birds wintering there completely 

 by surprise. There were quantities of them about the corn- and cotton-fields, 

 cowering silently in the snow-beaten bushes to escape a bitter north wind. For 

 the second time in many years the plantations were gradually buried under a 

 white mantle. 



The gloomy day closed with falling mercury and almost no visible signs 

 of bird-life. In walking about, however, I came upon many in a strange 

 variety of hiding-places. Several kinds of Sparrows popped out of bunches of 



