A BIRD-LOVER’S APRIL. 215 
sure, — exploring the crannies right and left, 
like any creeper. Half a dozen or more pheebes 
“were in the edge of a wood; and they too 
seemed to have found out that, if worst came 
to worst, the tree-boles would yield a pittance 
for their relief. They often hovered against 
them, pecking hastily at the bark, and one at 
least was struggling for a foothold on the per- 
pendicular surface. Most of the time, however, 
they went skimming over the snow and the 
brook, in the regular flycatcher style. The 
chickadees were put to little or no inconven- 
ience, since what was a desperate makeshift to 
the others was to them only an every-day affair. 
It would take a long storm to bury their gran- 
ary! After the titmice, the fox-colored spar- 
rows had perhaps the best of it. Looking out 
places where the snow had collected least, at 
the foot of a tree or on the edge of water, these 
adepts at scratching speedily turned up earth 
enough to checker the white with very consid- 
erable patches of brown. While walking I 
continually disturbed song sparrows, fox spar- 
rows, tree sparrows, and snow-birds feeding in 
the road ; and when I sat in my room I was 
advised of the approach of carriages by seeing 
1 In the titmouse’s cosmological system trees occupy a highly 
important place, we may be sure; while the purpose of their tall, 
upright method of growth no doubt receives a very simple and 
logical (and correspondingly lucid) explanation. 
