106 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 



bluish-gray bird nearly as large as an eagle 

 sailed swiftly over the meadow. Its course was 

 low, only a foot or two above the grass, and as 

 waving from side to side as the letter S. It was 

 a marsh hawk sweeping the low lands for mice 

 and frogs. As we walked across the grass he 

 had been inspecting, we found it dotted with 

 small piles of fresh earth apparently thrown up 

 by some burrowing animal working from beneath 

 the sod. There were also scores of runways or 

 grooved passages under the matted grass. In 

 places our feet sank into subterranean chambers, 

 and in fact the whole field seemed to have been 

 honeycombed by moles, or meadow mice (ar- 

 vicola pennsylvanicus). The harrier was not 

 the only bird interested in this field of mice. 

 Under almost every one of nearly a dozen old 

 apple trees growing near by we found " owl pel- 

 lets," the egg-shaped masses of undigested fur, 

 feathers, teeth and bones which owls habitually 

 eject from their mouths when well fed. 



A quarter of a mile farther on we came to a 

 stubble field near the banks of Great Meadows. 

 A stubble field, with a stone wall and a fringe 

 of bushes round it, is a fine place for migrating 

 sparrows. Fully a hundred birds were feeding 

 in this field or singing in the trees which bor- 

 dered it. They were fox sparrows and juncos, 

 and it would be impossible to say which were in 



