MIDWINTER BIRDS 295 
when no birds would appear, and it would seem as if they 
had all gone, but let the sun shine, and the least breath 
of wind blow from the southeast, and they would come out 
of the near-by shelter where they had been hiding. 
The orchard lunch-counter was the one place where, at 
least, a single bird was always to be found, and, at times, 
as many as half a dozen different kinds would be seen 
feeding peaceably together. 
Gray Lady kept a list of all the birds that the children 
reported, and sometimes it was quite a puzzle for her to 
name a bird, unknown to the discoverer, from the descrip- 
tion that was brought of it. For to see the chief points of 
a bird at a glance is difficult enough in itself, but to put 
them into exact words seemed sometimes impossible. 
When Dave, on his return from a sleigh-ride to the 
shore, said that he’d seen a “‘big round-headed Owl 
sitting on a stump in the salt meadows, and it looked as 
if it had sat out all night in a snow-squall,’ Gray Lady 
knew at once that he had seen one of the Arctic or Snowy 
Owls that occasionally drift down from the North on a 
short visit, and that it was on the lookout for a meal of 
meadow-mice or other little gnawers. 
But when Bobbie, who went to the same location, re- 
ported that he had seen ‘“‘a flock of birds that were sort of 
Sparrows with a yellow breast, and a black mark on it, 
and long ears,” it took a little time and many questions 
before she found that the birds were visiting Horned 
Larks, with pinkish brown backs, a black crescent on the 
breast, and a black bar across the forehead, that, extending 
around the sides of the head, forms two little tufts, or 
feather horns. For the rest, the throat and neck were dull 
