202 BOULDER REVERIES. 



ing to make the final leap. Soon taking cour- 

 age, it started to hunting spiders and other wren- 

 nish tid-bits among the rootlets and the drift. 

 Old friends, this snow trillium and wren, whom 

 I first met some twenty years ago ; old, yet ever 

 new, ever welcome, especially when I can meet 

 and greet them on an April day like this. 



More like a mouse than a bird are the move- 

 ments of the winter wren, as it flits in short 

 leaps never in long flight in and out of every 

 cranny and crevice, uttering at times a short, 

 sharp "twit-twit" and peering with the sharpest 

 of bird eyes at everything which bears any 

 semblance to its sought-for food. Small aquatic 

 neuroptera of the family Perlidae were abund- 

 ant on roots and dead leaves about the water's 

 edge, and on them the bird was feeding. Once 

 it gaped as if surfeited with its chosen diet. 



Along a small stream or branch like the one 

 which I am descending, the naturalist can usu- 

 ally find more to his liking than along a wider 

 creek or river. Moreover, he can pass readily 

 from side to side, jumping or stepping from 

 boulder to boulder, or with measured leap clear- 



