OUR WINTER BIRDS. 107 
sense of summer alive in our hearts through this midnight 
of the year. 
Most persons are surprised when told of the large num- 
ber of these feathered friends which begin the new year 
with us; for in January, in the near neighborhood of New 
York city, over fifty species appear with more or less reg- 
ularity. They comprise two classes: those which reside in 
our fields the year round, like the bluejay; and such, like 
the snow-flake, as are driven to our milder climate by the 
severity of a Northern winter that even their arctic-bred, 
hardy constitutions are unable to endure. The members 
of the latter class visit us in varying numbers, but are es- 
pecially numerous in snowy seasons. 
It is probably less a fear of the dreadful temperature, 
even in the frigid zones, which compels the birds to seek 
our milder latitudes, than the inability to obtain food when 
snow buries the seed-bearing weeds and sends the smaller 
animals to their hibernacula, and the increasing darkness 
of the long arctic night shuts out from view what the snow 
has not covered. All birds—or almost all—on their south- 
ward migration, fly at night, resting during the day. We 
have the most abundant evidence of this; and it has oceur- 
red to me that possibly it is the deepening darkness of high 
latitudes which first warns them off; that the natural re- 
