BIRDS OF THE SNOW 6 



of the trunk. He looks like a small pieee of the 

 roughened bark which has suddenly become ani- 

 mated. His long tail props him up and his tiny 

 feet never fail to find a foothold. Our winter 

 birds go in flocks, and where we see a brown 

 creeper we are almost sure to find other birds. 



Nuthatches are those blue-backed, white or 

 rufous breasted little climbers who spend their 

 lives defying the law of gravity. They need no 

 supporting tail, and have only the usual number 

 of eight toes, but they traverse the bark, up or 

 down, head often pointing toward the ground, 

 as if their feet were small vacuum cups. Their 

 note is an odd nasal nyehl nyeh! 



In winter some one- species of bird usually pre- 

 dominates, most often, perhaps, it is the black- 

 capped chickadee. They seem to fill every grove, 

 and, if you take your stand in the woods, flock 

 after flock will pass in succession. What good 

 luck must have come to the chickadee race during 

 the preceding summer? Was some one of their 

 enemies stricken with a plague, or did they show 

 more than usual care in the selecting of their 

 nesting holes? Whatever it was, during such a 

 year, it seems certain that scores more of chicka- 

 dee babies manage to live to grow up than is 

 usually the case. These little fluffs are, in their 

 way, as remarkable acrobats as are the nut- 

 hatches, and it is a marvel how the very thin legs, 

 with their tiny sliver of bone and thread of tendon, 



