io IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



is of slight avail to protect the robin from the pot 

 hunter of the South during the winter season, only 

 to let him freeze and starve during a late spring 

 snow-storm in the North, for lack of evergreens to 

 take shelter in, or any food-bearing shrubs above the 

 snow. What is the bluebird to do, or the chicka- 

 dee, or the downy woodpecker, if he flies to his 

 grove where the hole for his nest was so tempting 

 the year before and finds no grove there? What 

 are the quail to do in winter when the few who have 

 escaped the hunters find all their food-supply buried 

 deep in snow, at the very time that their bodies 

 need a big supply to keep them warm? Such ques- 

 tions as these are not to be answered by laws. They 

 are only to be answered by individual and com- 

 munity effort. 



But, as a matter of fact, they can be answered, 

 and rather easily. How easily, I have illustrated 

 for myself. I lived for some years on a five-acre 

 place, on the main street of a village in western 

 Massachusetts. The heavy snow of March, 1916, 

 lay deep in my yard even on the ist of April, when 

 a flock of juncos made their appearance. They 

 joined the chickadees and tree-sparrows and other 

 birds which had been with us all winter, in the 

 steady procession down to the feeding-shelf outside 

 the kitchen window. But I decided there were too 

 many of them for that small supply station, so I 

 packed down with my snow-shoes a considerable 

 area on the other side of the house, and scattered 

 seeds and fine mixed chicken feed (which I had been, 

 using for pheasants) on the hard snow. The juncos 

 immediately discovered it, as did a flock of horned 



