44 



TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 



These familiar birds of the orchard and garden brave 

 the coldest weather, and their distribution in winter de- 

 pends largely npon the food supply. In the winter of 

 1880, I found a few wintering on Brier Island, l^ova 

 Scotia. They sought shelter at night and during severe 

 storms in the thick growths of spruce and other shrubby 

 trees, and subsist upon the snails and minute forms of 

 life that abounds in the kelp and other debris washed upon 

 the shore. Their winter fare inland consists largely of 

 cedar berries, hackberries, wild grapes, etc., and in the 

 fall help themselves to our cultivated berries; but they 

 more than repay the loss in the destruction of cut worms, 

 canker worms and various forms of injurious insect life, 

 which they diligently search for in the gardens, plowed 

 fields and bare spots, in the early spring, ready to catch 

 them as fast as they are warmed into life in their winter 

 beds by the hot rays of the sun and venture to the surface. 

 Then they are the first of the family to greet us with their 

 song; not as varied and musical as the silvery songs of 

 their cousins of the deep woods, but full of tender pathos, 

 and awaken us to the fact that winter is over and summer 

 at hand. 



Their nests are built in the crotches of trees, saddled 

 on to horizontal branches or placed in hedges, outbuild- 

 ings — in fact, most anywhere off the ground. They are 

 coarsely constructed of leaves, stems, twigs and grasses, 

 fastened together and plastered inside with mud, and lined 

 with fine stems and rootlets. Eggs three to five (usually 

 four), 1.16x.80; greenish blue; in form, oval. 



