16 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 



of each other by frequent attenuated squeaks. 

 Chickadees were everywhere, and very noisy. 

 They worked quite as much on snow-covered 

 twigs as on the sheltered side of branches. In 

 the cedar swamp they popped in and out of snow 

 caverns among the branches, often tipping over 

 great piles of snow and dodging them with a 

 jolly " chick-a-dee-dee-dee." In this swamp a 

 single tree-sparrow appeared among the branches 

 of a big cedar and looked with evident amaze- 

 ment upon my snow-covered form. Here, too, I 

 saw and heard the first robins of the day flying 

 and signalling among the tops of some of the 

 larger cedars, and near by in a bunch of pines, 

 just above the swamp, three golden-crested king- 

 lets made merry in the sunlight which succeeded 

 the storm. A solitary goldfinch undulated over 

 me in an open pasture, singing the first note or 

 two of his summer song, and a nuthatch passed 

 close by me on my homeward walk. 



But the great display of birds came in the 

 middle of the afternoon, at the time that the 

 clouds were breaking and the wind was working 

 out of the east. I was crossing a high sloping 

 pasture with a cedar swamp at its base and a 

 fringe of large cedars round its edge, when, strik- 

 ing a patch of concealed ice, my feet flew from 

 under me, and I found myself on my back in 

 the snow. Looking into the sky, I saw a flock 



