JANUARY 



21 



The tracks of partridges are more remarkable in 

 this snow than usual, it is so light, being, at the 

 same time, a foot deep. ... I see where many have 

 dived into the snow, apparently last night, on the 

 side of a shrub oak hollow. In four places they 

 have passed quite underneath it for more than a 

 foot ; in one place, eighteen inches. They appear 

 to have dived or burrowed into it, then passed 

 along a foot or more underneath, and squatted 

 there, perhaps with their heads out. ... I scared 

 one from its hole only half a rod in front of me, 

 now at 11 A.M. 



THOEKAU: Winter. 



22 



Most of our birds are yet essentially wild, that 

 is, little changed by civilization. . . . The pine gros- 

 beaks will come in numbers upon your porch to 

 get the black drupes of the honeysuckle or the 

 woodbine, or within reach of your windows to get 

 the berries of the mountain-ash, but they know 

 you not ; they look at you as innocently and uncon- 

 cernedly as at a bear or moose in their native 

 north, and your house is no more to them than a 

 ledge of rocks. 



BURROUGHS: Signs and Seasons. 



