OUR WINTER BIRDS. 107 



sense of summer alive in our hearts through this midnight 

 of the year. 



Most persons are surprised when told of the large num- 

 ber of these feathered friends which begin the new year 

 with us ; for in January, in the near neighborhood of New 

 York city, over fifty species appear with more or less reg- 

 ularity. They comprise two classes : those which reside in 

 our fields the year round, like the bluejay; and such, like 

 the snow-flake, as are driven to our milder climate by the 

 severity of a Northern winter that even their arctic-bred, 

 hardy constitutions are unable to endure. The members 

 of the latter class visit us in varying numbers, but are es- 

 pecially numerous in snowy seasons. 



It is probably less a fear of the dreadful temperature, 

 even in the frigid zones, which compels the birds to seek 

 our milder latitudes, than the inability to obtain food when 

 snow buries the seed-bearing weeds and sends the smaller 

 animals to their hibernacula, and the increasing darkness 

 of the long arctic night shuts out from view what the snow 

 has not covered. All birds or almost all on their south- 

 ward migration, fly at night, resting during the day. We 

 have the most abundant evidence of this; and it has occur- 

 red to me that possibly it is the deepening darkness of high 

 latitudes which first warns them off; that the natural re- 



