OUR WINTER BIRDS. 113 



feet ball of feathers which are the best of clothing, and 

 that they can shelter themselves from the driving storm, 

 it appears that birds often perish from cold in large num- 

 bers. Ordinarily, birds seem able to foretell a change of 

 weather, and prepare. The reports of the United States 

 weather bureau certainly show, that, during the fall and 

 winter, the ducks, geese, cranes, crows, and other notable 

 species and apparently generally abandon their former 

 haunts upon the approach of a cold wave or hard win- 

 ter storm for more southern localities, often passing beyond 

 the reach of the severity of such storms, though taking 

 their departure only a few hours before these unfavorable 

 changes. Resident species, not caring, or not able, to run 

 away to warmer latitudes, ought to know enough to hide 

 away from the fury of the gale; and they do. But some- 

 times there come sudden, unpresaged changes cold, icy 

 gales, which charge down upon us after thawing-days, con- 

 verting the air, which was almost persuading the grass to 

 revive, into an atmosphere that cuts the skin like the im- 

 pinging of innumerable particles of frost, and shrivels ev- 

 ery object with cold, or buries it under dry and drifting 

 snow. Then it is that the small birds, caught unprepared, 

 suffer. At first, such as are overcome seem unusually ac- 

 tive, running about apparently in search of food, but tak- 



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