WILD LIFE OF ORCHARD AND FIELD 



by thick snow. Twenty birds could hide there, 

 safe and warm ; and at its farther end I find a half- 

 made nest, soaked and sodden, yet well worth 

 finishing, no doubt, after it has dried. This sub- 

 mersion must be a frequent mishap to this and 

 other early birds, which catch something besides 

 worms in our mutable climate; but had the owner 

 gone so far as to have been sitting on eggs, doubt- 

 less she would have kept at her brooding and let 

 the snow form a crystal canopy over her and her 

 hopes. 



I followed those plucky meadow-birds that day 

 perhaps two hundred yards, wading through the 

 snow and matted herbage, and I thought it fun. 

 It gave a new view of everything; and the rascals 

 paid so little attention to the bad weather that 

 I would have been ashamed to shirk it. Then 

 up the hill I went, through briers and brush and 

 laden trees, fairly floundering in the snow, hearing 

 but not seeing a crow whose querulous tone be- 

 trayed an almost despairing loneliness and dis- 

 gust, and finally struggled across a bleak upland, 

 where winter came and went at thirty miles an 

 hour, to a road twisting down through a shady 

 cutting to my copse. 



Here was shelter, and the birds knew it. I saw 

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