56 IN BIRD LAND. 
Farther on in the woods, another cunning little 
junco proved himself no lay figure. It seemed, in 
fact, to be a junco day. When I first espied him, he 
was standing in the snow beneath a slender weed- 
stem eating seeds from his white table-cloth. But the 
curious feature about his behavior was that, whenever 
his supply of seeds on the snow had been picked 
up, he would dart up to the weed-stem (which was 
too slender to afford hima comfortable perch), give 
it a vigorous shake, which would bring down a 
quantity of seeds, and then he would flit below and 
resume his’ meal. This he <did (several “times 1 
should not have believed a junco gifted with so much 
sense had not my own eyes witnessed this cunning 
performance. Had some other observer told the 
story, I should have laughed at it a little slyly and 
‘more than half unbelievingly; but, of course, one 
cannot gainsay the evidence of one’s own eyesight. 
Nothing in all my winter rambles has surprised 
me more than the evident delight some species of 
birds take in the snow. It is a sort of luxury to 
them, wading-ground and feasting-ground all in one. 
How they keep their little bare feet from becoming 
chilblained is a mystery. The evening of the twen- 
tieth of January was bitterly cold, the wind blowing 
in fierce, howling gusts from the northwest. Yet 
when, at about five o’clock, I stalked out to the 
pond in the rear of my house, the tree-sparrows and 
song-sparrows were fairly revelling, not to say wal- 
lowing, in the snow among the weeds. The wind 
was so biting that I soon hurried back to the house, 
and left them to their midwinter carousal. 
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