BIRDS 105 



lengthwise on the branch so as to mimic more completely 

 the appearance of a bend or a knot on the branch. The 

 bittern is of a tawny color streaked lengthwise with black, so 

 as to look like the light and shade effect among the slender 

 marsh grasses in which it lives, and when surprised it 

 stands still, pointing its bill upward so as to make all the 

 lines of the body vertical like the grass. Even the contrast 

 between the darker backs and the lighter bellies of so many 

 birds is for rendering the bird more inconspicuous. The 

 artist, Mr. A. H. Thayer, has shown that the lighter under- 

 side makes the shadows under the bird less dense, and thus 

 makes the bird stand out less from the background. 



Some birds, as the ptarmigan, the snowy owl, and the 

 white snowbird, change their plumage colors summer and 

 winter. They become almost pure white in the latter season, 

 so that they are almost indistinguishable against the snow. 



But brightness of color is dangerous to a bird. James 

 Lane Allen shows well in his sympathetic study of the Red- 

 bird in his " Kentucky Cardinal " what the dangers are : " I am 

 most uneasy when the redbird is forced by hunger to leave 

 the covert of his cedars, since he on the naked or white land- 

 scapes of winter offers the most far-shining and beautiful 

 mark for Death. . . . For it is then that his beauty is most 

 conspicuous, and that Death, lover of the peerless, strikes at 

 him from afar. ... Let him show his noble head and 

 breast . . . and a ray flashes from him to the eye of a cat; 

 let him, as spring comes on, burst out in desperation and 

 mount to the tree-tops which he loves, and his gleaming red 

 coat betrays him to the poised hawk or to a distant sharp- 

 shooter; in the barn near by an owl is waiting to do his 

 night marketing at various tender meat-stalls; and, above 



