WINTER WREN. Lor 
tering guip-guap as he goes. Then one flies 
against the side of a tree to peck at a promising 
bit of bark and clambers several feet up the 
trunk to show what a good gymnast he is; and 
finally one pops up with a worm in his mouth, 
shakes it well before eating, and afterwards wipes 
his bill with the energy characteristic of the ac- 
tive, healthy temper of the whole wren family. 
On the twelfth of October the ground was cov- 
ered with snow, and the woods were so white and 
still I hardly expected to find anything in the 
raspberry patch. But walking through I discoy- 
ered one of the little wrens, as active and busy as 
ever. As I stood watching him he climbed into 
the cosiest cover of leaves that a bush ever offered 
a bird for shelter, and I supposed he would settle 
himself to wait for the sun. But no! he exam- 
ined it carefully, turning his head on one side 
and then the other, probably thinking it would 
be a very nice place for some tender worm, and 
then flew out into the cold snowy bushes again. 
On the twenty-second of the month, when we 
had had a still heavier fall of snow, and the 
wrens found it too cold even to take dinner from 
a golden-rod stem, one of the confiding little birds 
came to hunt on the piazza right in front of my 
study window. You should have seen him work! 
He ignored the crumbs I threw out for him, but 
flitted about, running over the shrivelled vines 
trained over the piazza, and examining all the 
