Odds and Ends 131 



in the almost unbroken silence of the winter. The nearer 

 the spring approached, the higher they mounted in the 

 trees, and the more prolonged was their flight, as if they 

 were practicing their wing exercises to inure their muscles 

 to the strain that would be put upon them when they 

 undertook their long journey to their northern summer 

 homes ; for, of course, the juncos do not breed in our cen- 

 tral latitudes, but hie to the northern part of the United 

 States and the Dominion of Canada. 



In Ohio the brown creepers and the golden-crowned 

 kinglets were constant winter companions in the woods; 

 but, although Kansas is considerably farther south, they 

 do not seem to be winter residents there at least, not 

 in the northeastern part of the state the only excep- 

 tion being that in January, 1903, several creepers were 

 observed in my yard. One may well wonder why these 

 birds are winter residents in Ohio and only migrants in a 

 latitude that is two degrees farther south. 



There was some scant compensation in the presence 

 of the winter wren one winter in the Sunflower state. 

 The fourteenth of December brought one of these brown 

 Lilliputians to a deep hollow in town, where he chattered 

 petulantly and scampered along an old paling fence. No 

 more winter wrens were seen until January seventh, when 

 one darted out of some bushes on the bank of a stream 

 about two miles south of town. My next jaunt to this 

 hollow took place on the twenty-seventh, when, to my 

 surprise, a hermit thrush was seen in a clump of bushes 

 and saplings a bird that I supposed had been sunning 



