OUR WINTER BIRDS. 135 



uncommon, and at night of secreting themselves in small 

 holes where the owls cannot get at them. This is also true 

 of the small spotted woodpeckers, which, nevertheless, are 

 very inconspicuous objects upon the dead and white trunks 

 they frequent. 



The brown and white streaks of the creeper (Certhia 

 americcwa), however, seem to me to furnish a decided case 

 of protective colors in plumage, since they harmonize so 

 exactly with the rough, cracked bark along which the 

 creeper glides, that the wee bird is hardly to be followed 

 by the eye at a moderate distance. Again, no coat would 

 better help the wren to scout unobserved about the tangled 

 thickets and through the piles of wind -drifted leaves in 

 and out of this and that shadowy crevice than the plain 

 brown one he wears; while the lighter tints of the gold- 

 finch's livery are precisely those which agree with the rus- 

 set weeds and grass whose harvest he diligently gathers. 

 The group of exclusively boreal birds seems especially pro- 

 tected from harm by the correspondence of their coat and 

 their surroundings. Their home is among the evergreens, 

 where an occasional dead branch or withered stem relieves 

 the verdancy with yellowish patches, and the thick-hanging 

 cones dot the tree with spots of ^reddish-brown ; their plu- 

 mage is mottled with green, tints of yellow and brown, an 



