THE PERCHING BIRDs. 101 
wandered over a pretty high hill in North Carolina, and 
found many snow-birds about the bushes lining the 
rough mountain road.- They appeared to be all sing- 
ing,.and made a ringing clatter that drowned other 
bird-voices deeper in the woods. Singling out sepa- 
rate birds, I heard two long-drawn and clearly-uttered . 
notes that preceded the twitter, and if it had been 
in November and at my Jersey home, I should have 
translated it as “ Szow’s coming, ’tis,’tis, tis.’ But 
here there was no sign of winter. The ground was 
pink with blooming arbutus, the air heavy with odor 
and the hum of bees. I was told these snow-birds 
remained all summer, and their singing meant 
“‘Spring’s coming,” and not the approach of a snow- 
storm. Occasionally, since then, I have heard in 
midwinter a song of this bird that was even of fuller 
volume. 
In the Song-sparrow we have a resident species 
in the Middle States, but one that is migratory in 
the northern parts of the country; as, for instance, 
when “it arrives at St. John, New Brunswick, during 
the second week in April in immense flocks, and is 
usually accompanied by similar flocks of Robins and 
Juncos (snow-birds).” I would that we could speak 
of ‘“‘immense flocks” of these birds here in the Mid- 
dle States. Abundant, widely spread, and a feature 
of the whole year, and yet there was never enough 
of them. Unfortunately, too, the English sparrow 
has in a great measure driven them away from our 
town and the immediate surroundings of our country 
houses. I always associate the song-sparrow with a 
gooseberry-hedge, a dilapidated, lichen-coated paling, 
g* 
