SOME OF OUR MIGRATORY BIRDS. 



BY G. W. ALLAN, 



There are few subjects connected with bird life, more interesting 

 than the migration of these denizens of the woods and fields, as they 

 come to us in Spring after many months of absence — or leave us 

 again at i;he approach of autumn or the keen air of early winter to 

 wend their way back to milder and more genial climates. To an 

 observant lover of nature there is an especial charm in the recogni- 

 tion of the first notes of each winged visitant, heard almost before 

 they are seen, and bringing back life and melody to our woods and 

 fields after the long silence of winter ; and so again in autumn, there 

 seems to be a peculiar plaintiveness in the call-notes of the gathering 

 flocks, as if bidding us farewell before setting out on their long 

 journey. 



Even winter, however, with its frosts and snows has its visitors, 

 coming from still colder latitudes, spending a few brief weeks with 

 us, and at the first approach of the sunny days and soft airs of 

 spring, wending their way back to the far North. 



In the limits of a paper such as this I shall not attempt to ofier 

 anything like an exhaustive list of our birds of passage, I shall 

 confine myself to giving, as it were, a rough sketch of the ornitho- 

 logical characteristics of each month as marked by the arrival or 

 departure of some of the various species of our land birds. 



To begin with the year, for winter, as I have said, has its visitors 

 as well as summer, and from the icy shores of Greenland, and the 

 frozen north, comes to us that beautiful little bird, the Snow Bunt- 

 ing (Plectrophanes Nivalis), the harbinger of cold and stormy weather. 

 Flying generally in large flocks, as their bodies are seen against the 

 blue sky, they look almost like large snow flakes drifting before the 

 wind. 



So associated are they with storm and cold that in northern 



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