OUR WINTER BIRDS. 115 



sparrows and snow-birds, which have successfully withstood 

 the rigors of the lowest midwinter temperature, as often 

 succumb as the less inured songsters from the South. 



The favorite among our winter birds, perhaps because 

 the most domestic, taking the place of England's robin-red- 

 breast, is the slate-colored snow-bird, which is one of the 

 sparro\vs. It comes to us with the first frosts, and stays 

 until the wake -robin and spring -beauty bloom. Even 

 then some of them do not go far away to spend the sum- 

 mer, for they breed in the heights behind the Delaware 

 Water -Gap, and also in the Catskills. The main body, 

 nevertheless, go to Canada and Labrador. In the Rocky 

 Mountains I have seen them many times in midsummer 

 as far south as the latitude of Cincinnati; but there the 

 Canada jay also breeds, although in the East its nest is nev- 

 er found great altitude in the Sierras affording the same 

 climate which eastward is only to be at tained at high lat- 

 itudes. 



The nest of the snow-bird is placed on the ground among 

 the moss, or under the protection of the root of a tree, and 

 is built of grass, weed stalks, and various fibres. The eggs 

 are whitish, sprinkled with pale chocolate and dark red- 

 dish-brown. Several species besides our Junco hyemalis 

 are found in mountainous parts of the far West and North- 



