14 THE CHICAGO ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



of Old Orchard, Missouri, in a letter to me, dated July 4, 1895. 

 He says: "The greatest enemy of bird life in winter is neither 

 cold nor snow, but rain. That is, rain which falls at a momentary 

 rise of temperature preceded and followed by low temperature. 

 Such a misty, drizzling rain coming in contact with a cold surface 

 congeals immediately and incases every object from the smallest 

 blades of grass to the top of the highest trees. 



"Fortunately these rains do not occur every winter, and when 

 they do, they are usually soon followed by warm or moderately 

 cold weather. I suppose that every bird can fast a few days, 

 if in good condition, and if the temperature is not unusually low. 

 Such a rain occured on Friday, January 25, 1895. The tempera- 

 ture on the twenty-fourth was as low as six degrees with a raw 

 northeast wind. During the night the temperature rose to twen- 

 ty-six degrees when it began to rain. In the afternoon the rain 

 turned into snow and at five o'clock a high wind of forty-eight 

 miles an hour set in with rapidly falling temperature. This storm 

 inaugurated an era of three weeks of unrelenting severity. For 

 eight days everything remained buried under ice and snow, and 

 the air was so cold that the sun's strongest rays could not melt 

 the ice from the most exposed surfaces. It might be supposed 

 that birds like bluebirds and robins would start and go south at 

 the very outset of such a glaciation. This is not the case. They 

 brave the adversity; they know they have successfully gone 

 through severe trials of a similar nature. They wait. Not hav- 

 ing visited their haunts during the cold spell, I have not seen 

 any bluebirds after. the twenty- third of January, but robins visit- 

 ing the orchards in my neighborhood were seen nearly every 

 day, even on the very coldest, the eighth of February, when the 

 temperature at our place was as low as twenty degrees below 

 zero. But even if they had gone further south a similar state 

 of affairs would have confronted them everywhere. The whole 

 of the southern states were one vast sheet of ice and snow for 

 many days, and even when provided with food birds may suc- 

 cumb to the effect of low temperature at times of rain or deep 

 snow. I am feeding the birds around my house every winter 

 with broken hickory and walnut meats, grain and pork, still 

 nearly every winter some of my boarders lose their lives through 

 freezing. Even the imported sparrows freeze in their warm 

 nests. A Carolina Chickadee was picked up early one morning as 

 it fell from a tree, dead. A Tufted Titmouse and a nuthatch were 



