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OUR WINTER BIRDS. 37 
Birds of prey themselves scarcely need such protection 
from one another, yet some of them regularly exchange 
their summer plumage for a winter dress of lighter and 
(in the general white of the landscape) less conspicuous 
tints; but this may operate to their advantage in the re- 
verse way of allowing them to attain a closer, because un- 
observed, approach to their quarry. This leaves us, among 
the land-birds, only the bright red-poll and the waxwings 
as exceptions to the supposed rule that the plumages of 
winter birds are colored in a way directly favorable to their 
special preservation at that season of augmented danger. 
They are cases of which I have no account to give other 
than that 
these are the exceptions which “ favor the rule.” 
let me beg the reader charitably to believe— 
But against one persecutor no concealment of natural 
color or artful device avails, and the brains of the pretty 
songsters, so full of wit to avoid other enemies and provide 
for each day’s need, are -his choice repast. This dainty 
tyrant wears an overcoat of bluish ash trimmed with black 
and white, a vest of white marked with fine, wavy, trans- 
verse lines, white knee-breeches, and black stockings. His 
eyes are dark and piercing; his nose Napoleonic; his fore- 
head high and white; his mustache as heavy and black as 
that of any cavalier in Spain. This Mephistopheles among 
