A BIRD-LOVER'S APRIL. 215 



sure, exploring the crannies right and left, 

 like any creeper. Half a dozen or more phoebes 

 were in the edge of a wood ; and they too 

 seemed to have found out that, if worst came 

 to worst, the tree-boles would yield a pittance 

 for their relief. They often hovered against 

 them, pecking hastily at the bark, and one at 

 least was struggling for a foothold on the per- 

 pendicular surface. Most of the time, however, 

 they went skimming over the snow and the 

 brook, in the regular flycatcher style. The 

 chickadees were put to little or no inconven- 

 ience, since what was a desperate makeshift to 

 the others was to them only an every-day affair. 

 It would take a long storm to bury their gran- 

 ary. 1 After the titmice, the fox-colored spar- 

 rows had perhaps the best of it. Looking out 

 places where the snow had collected least, at 

 the foot of a tree or on the edge of water, these 

 adepts at scratching speedily turned up earth 

 enough to checker the white with very consid- 

 erable patches of brown. While walking I 

 continually disturbed song sparrows, fox spar- 

 rows, tree sparrows, and snow-birds feeding in 

 the road ; and when I sat in my room I was 

 advised of the approach of carriages by seeing 



1 In the titmouse's cosmological system trees occupy a highly 

 important place, we may be sure ; while the purpose of their tall, 

 upright method of growth no doubt receives a very simple and 

 logical (and correspondingly lucid) explanation. 



