CHAPTER IV. 



SOME BIRDS OF THE WINTER. 



THERE are one or two birds of special interest to 

 the naturalist which may very fairly be classed as 

 birds of the winter. Some of them may make 

 their appearance on our shores during the autumn, 

 but it is with winter that they are most closely 

 associated. All of them are birds of the Arctic 

 regions, and all belong to that class of feathered 

 travellers to which the name of gipsy migrant has 

 been very appropriately applied. They are birds 

 which have no regular winter home. Like the 

 nomad tribes of the wilderness, they wander to 

 and fro, south and north, just as the exigency of 

 the weather drives them. So long as they can 

 pick up a precarious sustenance among the snow, 

 on the beaten post-roads and round the northern 

 villages, the majority of these birds are content to 

 pass the winter in the higher latitudes. Com- 

 paratively few of them extend their wanderings 

 far beyond the limits of the severe weather ; and 

 of those that do, a certain number of most of these 

 species reach our islands every winter. Some- 



