OUR WINTER BIRDS. 117 
with white and chocolate-brown. Sometimes a flock of 
these buntings will whirl into our door-yard for a brief mo- 
ment; but in general you must go to the upland fields and 
frozen marshes to find them, and the best time is just after 
a “cold snap” or a heavy snow. The Hackensack mead- 
ows at such times are full of them, and I have seen flocks 
of hundreds pirouetting over the ice-covered, wind-swept 
A YELLOW-BIRD IN WINTER DRESS. 
shores of Lake Erie, or whirling down the bleak sands of 
Cape Cod. What attracted them to such exposed and 
dreary spots I could never divine. When they first come 
they seem unsuspicious of any special danger from man, 
yet are continually skurrying away from some imaginary 
cause of alarm. Never going far south of New York, w 
see few of them even here in mild seasons, and, as the close 
