286 WASTE-LAND AVANDERIXGS. 



the forest-trees, uttering, witli scarcely a trace of varia- 

 tion in their tones, qioauTc-quanh — tat-a-tat. In every 

 phase of winter it is all the same with them ; the mer- 

 cury may creep to zero, they will only creep a little 

 faster ; and going the rounds of the door-yard trees they 

 never stop to ask if it is tiresome, but greet you, as 

 they did the first man who wintered in America, with a 

 strongly nasal qxianlc-qxian'k — tat-a-tat^ all of which no 

 ornithologist has as yet been able to interpret. 



We have also the very pretty brown tree-creeper — 

 curious grub -hunter of two continents. He chatters 

 alike to European and American ; and although famil- 

 iar with so much of the world, is positively happy away 

 off here in the benighted region of central I^ew Jersey. 

 Like the kinglets, the creeper will pause in his wild 

 career and sing exquisitely ; not at the close of winter, 

 or in deceptive, spring-like days, merelj^, but in Janu- 

 ary, with its ice and snow, north winds and arctic cold. 

 These but stir him to action, and I have often heard his 

 cheering song during such bitter days that even the tit- 

 mice clung to the sunny sides of the oaks. 



Of the Carolina wren I must speak with caution. He 

 is such a favorite I fear I may exaggerate his merits. 

 This splendid bird is not so ready, as a creeper, to face 

 a cutting north wind, yet is never a coward. Only give 

 him a ghost of a chance and he will sing such songs in 

 January as those wath which his summer cousin, the 

 house- wren, charms the world in June. Like others I. 

 have mentioned, his spirits often rise with the grow- 

 ing violence of an approaching storm, and far above 

 the wind whistling through the leafless branches of the 



