DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS. 53 



peculiarly cozy hollow where, six or eight 

 years before, a little company of song spar- 

 rows and white-throats had passed a rather 

 severe winter. The song sparrows were 

 there again, as I had expected, but no white- 

 throats. The song sparrows, by the way, 

 treated me shabbily this season. A year 

 ago several of them took up their quarters 

 in a roadside garden patch, where I could 

 look in upon them almost daily. This year 

 there were none to be discovered anywhere 

 in this neighborhood. They figure in my 

 December list on four days only, and were 

 found in four different towns, Brookline 

 (Longwood), Marblehead, Nahant, and Co- 

 hasset. Like some others of our land birds 

 (notably the golden-winged woodpecker and 

 the meadow lark), they seem to have learned 

 that winter loses a little of its rigor along 

 the sea-board. 



Three kinds of land birds were met with 

 at Nahant Beach, and nowhere else: the 

 Ipswich sparrow, on the 3d and 26th, 

 the snow bunting, and the horned lark. Of 

 the last two species, both of them rather 

 common in November, I saw but one in- 

 dividual each. They were feeding side by 



