OUR WINTER BIRDS. Ill 



" How 'do the birds manage at night and in tempestuous 

 weather ?" is a question often asked me. 



The time is not long passed when it was universally be- 

 lieved that many of them hibernated especially the swal- 

 lows burying themselves in the mud like frogs, or curl- 

 ing up in holes in rocks like the bats ; and the common 

 phenomenon of the appearance of a few summer birds dur- 

 ing " warm spells "in winter was assumed to prove that 

 they had been torpid, but had waked up under the genial 

 warmth, as bats often do. It was not three months ago 

 that I saw in an English newspaper a letter from a man 

 who claimed to have found a hedge-sparrow (I think) tor- 

 pid somewhere in the mud. But the search for proofs of 

 this theory discovered that the birds supposed to hibernate 

 migrated, while of the birds which remained in this lati- 

 tude through the cold months we saw more in warm, fine 

 weather, for the natural reason that then they forsook the 

 sheltered hollows and cosy recesses of the woods where 

 they had retreated during stormy days, and came out into 

 the sunlight. Dense cedars and the close branches of small 

 spruces and other evergreens afford them good shelter, and 

 thickets of brambles are made use of when these are not 

 to be found ; hollow trees are natural houses in which large 

 numbers huddle, and the cave -like holes under the roots 



