PINE-WOOD STUDIES 17 



VI 



THE COMING OF THE CROSSBILLS 



IT is winter in the pine-wood, and the giant limbs 

 of the trees stand starkly outlined against the sky. 

 Nought but silence possesses the aisle of plumed 

 pines. They are hoary with their white weight of 

 snow. The woods are painful in their very stillness, 

 and except for the faint trickle of the stream it would 

 seem almost as though the pulse of Nature had 

 ceased to beat. Suddenly the silence is broken by 

 the crackling sound of the snow as it is shivered 

 from above by a courageous squirrel that has 

 ventured out to have a look at Nature in her wintry 

 garb. In its warm fur the squirrel shows sharply 

 against the white. Naturalists say that this little 

 creature hibernates during the winter, but this is 

 hardly so. A bright day, even though cold and 

 frosty, brings him out to visit some summer store. 

 His prints upon the snow are sharply cut, the tail at 

 times just brushing the surface. The cole- tit searches 

 the pine needles for cocoons of insects, and flocks of 

 gold-crests and siskins together range the woods. 

 Once, on such a day as this, I caught a glimpse of the 

 scarlet appendages of a rare Bohemian waxwing 

 among the trees. 



For hours, from my lookout, I have been sweeping 



