OUR WINTER BIRDS. 117 



with white and chocolate -brown. Sometimes a flock of 

 these buntings will whirl into our door-yard for a brief mo- 

 ment; but in general you must go to the upland fields and 

 frozen marshes to find them, and the best time is just after 

 a "cold snap" or a heavy snow. The Hackensack mead- 

 ows at such times are full of them, and I have seen flocks 

 of hundreds pirouetting over the ice -covered, wind-swept 



A YELLOW-BIED IN WINTER DKESS. 



shores of Lake Erie, or whirling down the bleak sands of 

 Cape Cod. What attracted them % to such exposed and 

 dreary spots I could never divine. When they first come 

 they seem" unsuspicious of any special danger from man, 

 yet are continually skurrying away from some imaginary 

 cause of alarm. Never going far south of New York, we 

 see few of them even here in mild seasons, and, as the close 



