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OUR WIMER RIRBS. 



By J. McGregor Baxter, M. D. 



There is considerable difference, in different localities, even 

 although these may be in close proximity, in the birds that are 

 to be found there, and for that reason I thought it might not be 

 amiss to give a short account of some of the niost common one^ 

 to be found in this immediate locality during the winter. 



When one comes to consider the length anc| extreme sever- 

 ity of our winters it surprises one to find that any birds can be 

 found sufficiently hardy to survive the paucity of food, the ter- 

 rible storms, the depths of snow, and the seVeie frosts which 

 they are every winter so sure of encountering. Still, if our wint- 

 ers were ju.^t a little shorter and a little less severe perhaps we 

 might have a few more of them give up their migratory habits 

 and stay over with us. I rememier that, in the Avinter of 1890, 

 one solitary rolnn remained in the trees about the garden of the 

 Bowser House, and I watched him carefully evei-y day to see 

 hov»' he would weather it. On the 20th of January we had a ter- 

 rible snowstorm and I concluded that I would see him no more. 

 But I had mistaken his staying powers, for he came out the next 

 day, looking rather thoughtful, melancholy, and a little bedrag- 

 gled, but still he seemed determined that, if he had made a mis- 

 calculation in staying over, it was too late to rectify it, and that 

 he would see it out "on that line if it took hirn all winter." Well, 

 he did his best, the brave little fellow, but we had another ter- 

 rible snowstorm on Feb. 20th, and I saw him no more. 



Our aquatic birds, as a rule, move further south, or out 

 towards the open ocean, so that we rarely see any during the 

 winter in this locality, as the river is frozen from two to four 

 feet deep for forty miles down. But some winters, when smelts 

 are plentiful, you may see numbers of herring gulls flying about 

 or collected around the holes cut in the ice, feeding upon refuse 

 fish left there, and I once found a dovekie (Mergulus alle) frozen 

 into a thin sheet of ice that had formed over a little pool of wat- 

 er that had collecied in a hollow in the main river ice. 



The Cursores almost all betake themselves also to milder 

 regions, but we have the Canada grouse or spruce partridge 



