148 WINTER NEIGHBORS. 



recollection will cause me to stay my hand. The spar- 

 rows have the Old World hardiness and prolificness ; 

 they are wise and tenacious of life, and we shall find 

 it by and by no small matter to keep them in check. 

 Our native birds are much different, less prolific, less 

 shrewd, less aggressive and persistent, less quick- 

 witted and able to read the note of danger or hos- 

 tility, in short less sophisticated. Most of our 

 birds are yet essentially wild, that is, little changed 

 by civilization. In winter, especially, they sweep by 

 me and around me in flocks, the Canada sparrow, 

 the snow-bunting, the shore-lark, the pine grosbeak, 

 the red-poll, the cedar-bird, feeding upon frozen 

 apples in . the orchard, upon cedar-berries, upon ma- 

 ple-buds, and the berries of the mountain-ash, and 

 the celtis, and upon the seeds of the weeds that rise 

 above the snow in the field, or upon the hay-seed 

 dropped where the cattle have been foddered in the 

 barn-yard or about the distant stack ; but yet tak- 

 ing no heed of man, in no way changing their hab- 

 its so as to take advantage of his presence in nature. 

 The pine grosbeak will come in numbers upon your 

 porch to get the black drupes of the honeysuckle or 

 the woodbine, or within reach of your windows to 

 get the berries of the mountain-ash, but they know 

 you not ; they look at you as innocently and uncon- 

 cernedly as at a bear or moose in their native north, 

 and your house is no more to them than a ledge of 

 rocks. 



The only ones of my winter neighbors that actu- 



