1 8 INTRODUCTION. 



spring all leave us in the autumn there would be no 

 birdless interim ; and this applies to the whole coun- 

 try. There is everywhere a complement of resident 

 birds, and in autumn, too, there comes from the north 

 a goodly supply of those birds that live the greater 

 part of the year in the far north, but find the winters 

 there too severe. This migratory flight is one of 

 considerable irregularity, and often a wide extent of 

 territory is visited for some years, every winter, by 

 large numbers of northern birds, and then a year or 

 two will pass and not a specimen be seen. It is a 

 popular fancy that the appearance in unusual numbers 

 of birds belonging to the Canadian fauna in the Mid- 

 dle United States portends a severe winter ; but this 

 is true only in a limited sense, if true at all. There 

 may be severity of weather in the region forsaken, 

 but not necessarily in the one visited. It is probably 

 wholly a matter of food, and we can readily see that 

 some freak in the summer weather may lessen the 

 supply of this. Certain it is that little birds, like 

 little boys, do not like to go hungry, and to carry 

 the simile still further, there is practically no limit to 

 their powers of consumption. Just as I have often 

 eaten in years gone by until I could scarcely 

 walk, so I have found birds so full that it was with 

 much difficulty that they could fly. This has been 

 seen in the case of robins, reed-birds, and cedar- 

 birds. I remember, too, a lovely little chipping spar- 

 row that lived in my yard, and which became quite 

 tame. We fed it on crumbs until it became round as 

 a ball, and when hopping on the path you could not 

 see its feet. 



