AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY. 113 



WHY THE BIRDS MIGRATE. 



There has been of late much discussion about the migration of birds. It 

 is considered one of the greatest wonders and mysteries of nature. It may be 

 readily believed that it is done rather to find a sufficient supply of food, 

 than to seek warmer climates; for only those birds that are not able to live 

 upon the scanty food that winter yields, do migrate ; while those that can live 

 almost wholly on nuts, seeds, worms and all kinds of insects, can spend the 

 winter safely with us. 



It is further evidence that in spring, when the ground is bare, they come 

 north, where they are able to hunt their accustomed food. Even till late in 

 the fall, hungry southbound migrants can be seen flitting about in the woods 

 in quest of food, or picking at the remaining apples in our orchards. In the 

 spring, they again stop for a hasty lunch, as they hurry on to their former 

 homes in the northern states and Canada, there to spend the short summer 

 in rearing their young, so that they, too, may be able to accompany them 

 south next autumn. 



SOME OF OUR WINTER BIRDS. 



Before the birds have all left us in the fall, we begin to notice other 

 strange birds which we have not seen since last spring. These are the winter 

 birds, which teach us how to cheerily pass the dreary winter days. 



Almost the first of the winter birds is the Chickadee or Black-capped Tit- 

 mouse. He also wears a black necktie to match his black cap, and, attired in 

 a gray suit, he looks real handsome as he jumps from limb to limb, of times 

 hanging with his back downward, as he explores the under side of a limb for 

 insect's eggs and larvae. It is also said to be a great destroyer of the canker- 

 worm. It can be seen at almost any time throughout the winter, singing its 

 jingling warble, and usually ending with its well-known notes, "Chick-a-dee- 

 dee-dee." 



Another is the White-breasted Nuthatch, similar in size and color to the 

 Chickadee, but lacking the black throat, which renders the latter so con- 

 spicuous as it jumps from bough to bough. The Nuthatch is easily identi- 

 fied by its peculiar motions around the trunk of a tree. It moves up and down 

 a tree with perfect ease, as well as along the under side of a limb, sometimes 

 giving a quick movement of the wings to save itself from a fall when it 

 loses its grasp. 



It makes a loud rapping noise with its bill as it tries to get at some insect 

 that has secured itself beneath the bark of a tree. ^ Nor is this the only way in 

 which it procures its food. It is fond of small nuts, seeds, and other hard 

 grains and sometimes flying to a corn-crib, will seize a kernel, and flying to 

 a tree, will secure it like the former, in a- slit of the bark, and thus being 

 fixed, as it were, in a vise, will pick away at it to its heart's content, to get at 

 the inside. The Nuthatch usually stays with us all summer, making a nest 

 of grass, straw, etc., in a hole in a tree. 



Another interesting, but less acrobatic bird is the Downy Woodpecker,. 



