OUR WINTER BIRDS. 115 
sparrows and snow-birds, which have successfully withstood 
the rigors of the lowest midwinter temperature, as often 
succumb as the less inured songsters from the South. 
The favorite among our winter birds, perhaps because 
the most domestic, taking the place of England’s robin-red- 
breast, is the slate-colored snow-bird, which is one of the 
sparrows. It comes to us with the first frosts, and stays 
until the wake-robin and spring-beauty bloom. Even 
then some of them do not go far away to spend the sum- 
mer, for they breed in the heights behind the Delaware 
Water-Gap, and also in the Catskills. The main body, 
nevertheless, go to Canada and Labrador. In the Rocky 
Mountains I have seen them many times in midsummer 
as far sonth as the latitude of Cincinnati; but there the 
Canada jay also breeds, although in the East its nest is nev- 
er found—great altitude in the Sierras affording the same 
climate which eastward is only to be at tained at high lat- 
itudes. 
The nest of the snow-bird is placed on the ground among 
the moss, or under the protection of the root of a tree, and 
is built of grass, weed-stalks, and various fibres. The eggs 
are whitish, sprinkled with pale chocolate and dark red- 
dish-brown. Several species besides our Sunco hyemalis 
are found in mountainous parts of the far West and North- 
