14 



Bird- Lore 



could not find a single bird that had been directly killed by cold or hunger in 

 the two and one-half days they were snowbound. Just as so often happens 

 in the North, all might have been well had not their weakened condition made 

 them easy prey to enemies who fear not the cold. 



The sleepy 'possum becomes an alert demon at night when hunger and cold 

 gnaw, while the mere hoot of a Great Horned Owl will spoil th^ rest of many of 

 the birds within hearing. In the South Carolina cold snap, foxes did more of 

 the killing than other animals and I am trying to be fair to them when I state 

 that the average destruction by each one in that neighborhood must have 

 embraced at least twenty insectivorous and song-birds during the first night, — 

 a startling number indeed! Nor were these buried for future use; they were 

 generally crunched, dropped to one side and simply left in the snow, — sad 

 blots in the almost unbroken whiteness. 



In the North, it is much the same. The mice, rats and other legitimate 

 food remain under the snow-crust, so that the birds and rabbits are often the 

 only remaining food for foxes, weasels, etc., at a time when the former are least 

 fit to protect themselves. The tracks in the snow show many a thrilling stalk 

 and escape — and many a tragedy. How much would we know of the happen- 

 ings of night, that mysterious time, without this wonderful record written in 

 the winter woods and fields? 



A SINGING SWAMP SPARROW 

 Photographed by Arthur A. Allen at Ithaca, N. Y. 



