284 Clear Skies and Cloudy. 



abundant, the crane, pelican, and even some 

 inland song-birds, as the mocker and summer 

 tanager. Why ? Better determine this than kill 

 the innocents to measure the curve of their toe- 

 nails. Given a real problem, we shrink from the 

 undertaking and fall back upon egg-measure- 

 ments. In one direction migration has changed, 

 it is losing its regularity, and we are blessed with 

 longer visits from some migrants, and others are 

 plucky as ourselves and face the winter with 

 even better grace. I would like to grow en- 

 thusiastic over winter catbirds and chewinks at 

 Christmas, but they have as yet developed no 

 peculiarities over these same birds of summer. 

 They find more berries than insects, but the 

 latter are not wholly wanting. There is never 

 a day when loose leaves and unfrozen ground are 

 not to be found, and here there are creeping 

 things in numbers, if not innumerable. I did 

 think that the winter catbird lived exclu- 

 sively on the berries of our greenbrier ; now 

 I know better. He hobnobs gracefully with 

 chewinks, and they toss over the dead leaves in 

 company, dividing the spoils and never thinking 

 of quarrelling. No birds are less associated in 



