Advancing winter is shifting the 

 scenes in the active panorama of out- 

 s yXh^ door life. Along the shore, among the 



naked branches, in the suburban ravines, over the 

 frozen ground, and through the withered remains of 

 the summer's vegetation is the busy energy of 

 feathered visitors from the north. The hurried 

 fluttering of their wings seems a faint protest against 

 the impressive silence of the snow. In their cheerful 

 disregard for the severity of the season, their bright 

 communal fellowship, and spontaneous energy, there 

 is compensation for the vanished romance of the 

 spring and the domestic life of full, round summer. 

 All birds break into melody in spring, when the very 

 atmosphere is a song and all nature is pervaded with 

 the spirit of new life. But the little visitors who can 

 be bright, cheerful, and entirely alive through the 

 bleak winter, as they gather the seeds of the withered 

 Golden-rod and Sweet Clover, have a message for 

 humanity distinctively their own. 



207 



