No. 4.] BIRDS AND WOODLANDS. 301 



It is generally believed that there are few birds in deep 

 woods. Travellers have often remarked the scarcity of birds 

 in the forest, and it is true that usually there are fewer birds, 

 both in numbers of species and individuals, in most northern 

 forests than in more open or cultivated lands. Those that 

 live and breed in the deep woods, however, are especially 

 fitted to destroy the trees' enemies, and twice each year, in 

 spring and fall, a great wave of migratory, insect-eating birds 

 that summer in the north and winter near the tropics, passes 

 through the woods of the temperate zone, gleaning insects 

 from the trees as well as from the plants springing from 

 forest floor, from the leaf-mold or from out the very ground. 



Here in Massachusetts, in the chill days of jNIarch and early 

 April, when sunshine and shadow fleck the lingering snow, 

 in silent woods and along swollen streams the lusty fox spar- 

 row searches for hibernating insects, which only await the 

 warmer sun of April or May to emerge from their hiding- 

 places and lay their eggs upon or attack the trees. He and 

 his companions, the tree sparrow and the junco, soon pass 

 on to the north, making way for the white-throats and 

 thrushes, which continue the good work, to be followed in 

 their turn by other thrushes and towhees. In early April 

 birds are not plentiful in the woods, but the chickadees, 

 woodpeckers, jays, nuthatches and kinglets are doing their 

 part. Later, in the warm days of May, when nature has 

 awakened from her long winter's sleep, when the little light 

 green oak leaves are just opening, when the bright young 

 birch leaves decorate but do not hide the twigs, when every 

 leaflet vies with the flowers in beauty and every branch up- 

 holds its grateful offering, when insects which were dormant 

 or sluggish during the earlier days of the year become active 

 in ascending the trees, and when their swarming ofl^spring 

 appear on bud and leaf, then the south wind brings the mi- 

 gratory host of birds which winter near the equator. They 

 sweep through the woods. They encompass the trees. Flight 

 after flight passes along on its way to the north, all gleaning 

 insects as they go. No one who has not watched these birds 

 hour after hour and day after day, who has not listened to 

 their multitudinous notes as night after night they have passed 

 overhead, can realize the numbers that sweep through the 



