A WILDERNESS IN NEW YORK 5 



local sportsman is content to wait until Bob White 

 and woodcock families are old enough to venture 

 out of their retreat and be murdered in the most 

 approved style of the war of extermination. It is 

 in such neighborhoods that the 



WHITE-FOOTED MOUSE ABOUNDS. 



If you visit the swamp early in the autumn when 

 the white-throated sparrow is whistling his plain- 

 tive, tremulous call, you will find the scene 

 changed. Mr. Woodcock and all his family have 

 left or been killed; Bob White and family have 

 shared the same fate. The winds have stripped 

 the trees of their leaves, and the frost has changed 

 the grass from green to brown. The thickets and 

 trees are gray and bare in the swamps, and the 



EMPTY NESTS 



of the blackbird, robin, thrush, and greenlet are 

 now plainly discernible as dark objects against a 

 leaden sky. 



Did I say the nests were empty? So they ap- 

 pear at first glance, but an examination will show 

 that some new tenant has been altering these sum- 

 mer houses and refitting them for winter quarters, 

 that is all of them that are not more than five or 

 six feet above the earth. 



In some sections of the country it will be found 

 that every birds' nest near the ground is filled 

 with the down stolen from the cat-tail in the 

 neighboring swamp, or with dry lichens or moss, 



