ZERO BIRDS 23 



soft little trills, with now and then sharp alarm- 

 notes like the clicking of pebbles together, inter- 

 spersed with tiny half -whispered notes best expressed 

 by the same letters as those used in writing the gros- 

 beak music "Teu, teu, teu, teu." Suddenly, from 

 a farther corner of the sun-warmed slope, I heard a 

 few tinkling notes followed by a tantalizing snatch 

 of rich, sweet song shot through with canary-like 

 trills and runs. I hurried over the snow and caught 

 a glimpse of a little flock of birds with crowns of 

 reddish-brown, and each wearing small black spots 

 in the exact centre of their drab-colored waistcoats. 

 They were tree-sparrows down from the far North, 

 and I was fortunate to have heard the peculiarly 

 gentle cadence of one of their rare winter songs. 



Farther on, the caw of a passing crow drifted down 

 from the cold sky, and before I left the woods I heard 

 the pip of a downy woodpecker and the grunt of the 

 white-breasted nuthatch, that tree-climber with the 

 white cheeks which, unlike woodpeckers, can go both 

 up and down trees head-foremost. In the early spring 

 and sometimes on warm winter days, one may 

 hear his spring song, which is "Quee-quee-quee." 

 It is not much of a song, but Mr. Nuthatch is very 

 proud of it and usually pauses admiringly between 

 each two strains. In my early bird-days I used to 

 mistake this spring song for the note of an early 

 flicker, and would scandalize better-educated orni- 

 thologists by reporting flickers several weeks be- 

 fore their time. The last bird I heard before I left 

 the woods remarked solemnly, "Too- wheedle, too- 



