OUR WINTER BIRDS. 111 
“ How do the birds manage at night and in tempestuous 
weather ?” is a question often asked me. 
The time is not long passed when it was universally be- 
lieved that many of them hibernated—especially the swal- 
lows—burying themselves in the mud like frogs, or curl- 
ing up in holes in rocks like the bats; and the common 
phenomenon of the appearance of a few summer birds dur- 
ing “warm spells” in winter was assumed to prove that 
they had been torpid, but had waked up under the genial 
warmth, as bats often do. It was not three months ago 
that I saw in an English newspaper a letter from a man 
who claimed to have found a hedge-sparrow (I think) tor- 
pid somewhere in the mud. But the search for proofs of 
this theory discovered that the birds supposed to hibernate 
migrated, while of the birds which remained in this lati- 
tude through the cold months we saw more in warm, fine 
weather, for the natural reason that then they forsook the 
sheltered hollows and cosy recesses of the woods where 
they had retreated during stormy days, and came out into 
the sunlight. Dense cedars and the close branches of small 
spruces and other evergreens afford them good shelter, and 
thickets of brambles are made use of when these are not 
to be found; hollow trees are natural houses in which large 
numbers huddle, and the cave-like holes under the roots 
