A Paradise of Birds 



little midgets sleeping in knot-holes when the 

 temperature was far below zero, sometimes 

 thirty-five degrees below, and in the morning, 

 after a minute breakfast of a few frozen in- 

 sects and hoarfrost crystals, playing and chat- 

 ting in cheery tones as if food, weather, and 

 everything was according to their own warm 

 hearts. Our Yankee told us that the name of 

 this darling was Devil-downhead. 



Their big neighbors the owls also made good 

 winter music, singing out loud in wild, gallant 

 strains bespeaking brave comfort, let the frost 

 bite as it might. The solemn hooting of the 

 species with the widest throat seemed to us the 

 very wildest of all the winter sounds. 



Prairie chickens came strolling in family 

 flocks about the shanty, picking seeds and 

 grasshoppers like domestic fowls, and they 

 became still more abundant as wheat- and corn- 

 fields were multiplied, but also wilder, of course, 

 when every shotgun in the country was aimed 

 at them. The booming of the males during the 

 mating-season was one of the loudest and 

 I 145 1 



