FIELD AND STUDY 



The robins cover a very wide area, as do the 

 song sparrows, the kingbirds, the vireos, the flickers, 

 the orioles, the catbirds, and others. The area cov- 

 ered by the boboUnks is fast becoming less and less, 

 or at least it is moving farther and farther north. 

 Bobolinks in New York State meadows are becom- 

 ing rare birds, but in Canadian meadows they ap- 

 pear to be on the increase. The mowing-machine 

 and the earlier gathering of the hay-crop by ten or 

 fourteen days than fifty years ago probably ac- 

 count for it. 



As the birds begin to arrive from the South in 

 the spring, the birds that have come down from the 

 North to spend the winter with us — the crossbills, 

 the pine grosbeaks, the pine linnets, the red-breasted 

 nuthatches, the juncos, and the snow buntings — 

 begin to withdraw. The ebb of one species follows 

 the flow of another. One winter, in December, a 

 solitary red-breasted nuthatch took up his abode 

 with me, attracted by the suet and nuts I had 

 placed on a maple-tree-trunk in front of my study 

 window for the downy woodpecker, the chickadees, 

 and the native nuthatches. Red-breast evidently 

 said to himself, "Needless to look farther.'* He 

 took lodgings in a wren-box on a post near by, and 

 at night and during windy, stormy days was securely 

 housed there. He tarried tilL\.pril, and his constancy, 

 his pretty form, and his engaging ways greatly en- 

 deared him to us. The pair of white-breasted nut- 



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