A WINTER GOOD NIGHT 

 "... Stood within a rod of a downy woodpecker on an apple tree. How curious and exciting the- 

 blood-red spot on its hind head! I ask why it is there, but no answer is rendered by these snow-clad 

 fields. ... It looks ... as if it had a black cassock open behind and showing a white undergarment. 

 ... It is briskly and incessantly tapping all round the dead limbs, but hardly twice in a place, as if to- 

 sound the tree, and so see if it has any worm in it. . . . How briskly he glides up or drops himself 

 down a limb, creeping round and round, and hopping from limb to limb, and now flitting with a rippling 

 sound of his wings to another tree. {Jan. S) ... The snow buntings and the tree sparrows are the- 

 true spirits of the snowstorm. They are the animated beings that ride upon it and have their life in it. 

 {Jan. 1) ... You hear the lisping music of chickadees from time to time, and the unrelenting, steel- 

 cold scream of a jay, unmelted, that never flows into a song, a sort of wintry trumpet, screaming cold.. 

 hard, tense, frozen music. . . ." {Feb. J2)— Thoreau 



