TWELVE WINTER BIRDS. 283 



picked up in the vicinity of its home. The eggs are 

 five or six in number, pure crystal white, spotted 

 with bright reddish-brown, and measure .67x.48 of 

 an inch. 



During the winter, while the woodpeckers, nut- 

 hatches, titmice and chickadees are fast lessening the 

 hordes of insects which inhabit the trunks and limbs 

 of trees, the wrens are doing the same good work 

 among the logs and stumps close to the ground. 

 There they have less competition, and so find the 

 struggle for existence less deadly than they Avould 

 higher up among their larger arboreal kin. Thus, in 

 the course of time, each form of bird has found for 

 itself that place in the realm of nature best suited to 

 its existence ; and there, most often, do we find it, ever 

 on the search for its favorite food and ever on the 

 alert to prevent itself being eaten by some animal 

 higher in the scale of life. 



VII. 



The avian or bird fauna of Indiana has been modi- 

 fied in many respects by the presence of the white man 

 and his progressive civilization. The Carolina paro- 

 quet and ivory-billed woodpecker, once frequent in 

 our forests, have receded before his advance, and, like 

 the Indian, buffalo, bear, elk and deer, are gone for- 

 ever. Only in the densely wooded districts of the 

 southern and south-western States do these two noble 

 birds still exist. Even there their numbers are con- 

 stantly lessening, and, in the opinion of the best judges, 

 a quarter of a century hence they will be known only 



