128 STORIES OF BIRD LIFE 



bitter that for two days the thermometer constantly hov- 

 ered near the zero point. The voices of the birds were still, 

 the wind did not blow, and an unearthly silence brooded 

 over field and forest. The crows which flew eagerly about 

 the country, seeking food, did not caw. The nuthatches 

 and woodpeckers made no sound, life was too serious now 

 for comment. The usually noisy Carolina wren neither 

 sang nor scolded. The great famine of the birds was on, 

 and thousands upon thousands perished during those awful 

 days. 



One evening I noticed a snowbird fly to the building in 

 which I lived and disappear in a slit between the bricks 

 near the ground. The next evening I sprinkled some bread 

 crumbs on the snow in front of the entrance and watched 

 from the window above. About sunset the snowbird ap- 

 peared. I am not sure that it ate any of the bread, although 

 it stopped before going in to roost and apparently exam- 

 ined the crumbs. 



The next morning I saw a snowbird, which possibly was 

 the same one, alight in the snow about sixty yards from 

 the house. Several fierce, hungry-acting blue jays came 

 moving through the grove, silent as ghosts. One of them 

 saw the snowbird and immediately darted after it. Ex- 

 treme hunger had changed the jaunty, saucy jay into a 

 gaunt cannibal. The nearly starved snowbird fled, but 



