134 The Ottawa Naturalist. 



cold and starvation, with the pleasant alternative of furnishing 

 a meal for an owl or hawk. 



The thrushes, as a rule, appear very unfortunate in 

 getting left behind thus, perhaps owing to the fact that they for 

 the most part, are not as careful for their personal safety as the 

 greater number of birds, although the robin, with all his wariness 

 and settled distrust of his fellow creatures, is to be found as often 

 as any on the list of the disabled ; the woodpeckers, whose 

 variegated plumage affords such a tempting target for the small 

 boy with the gun, are not seldom to be met with among the 

 wounded, and even the quickwitted little house-wrens, with all 

 their nimbleness, are not always able to avoid mishap. Some 

 of our native sparrows are always to be found among the un- 

 seasonable sojourners in the dreary month of November, but 

 with them it appears to be more often late moulting and its con- 

 sequent ill health than any other reason, that keep them here. 



As I go out on a late autumn morning to see what the 

 birds are doing, one of the first I find, down in a little thicket on 

 the edge of the fields, is a white-crowned sparrow, sleek and well 

 kept as usual, with not a feather out of place; but he is a belated 

 traveller, who was due at southern resorts, where his friends 

 have gone, some time since, yet owing to some cause or other of 

 detention he is only on his way there now. 



A little distance away, on a fence rail, is a shivering ball of 

 feathers which turns out on a nearer view to be a song sparrow 

 minus the tail. He is an old bird, who is late with his moulting, 

 and is evidently feeling far from well. The cold affects him as 

 it does not his fellows who are in possession of their winter coats; 

 if a shrike or sparrow-hawk should happen along now he would 

 fall an easy prey, for he looks dull and stupid, and rustles slowly 

 off through the dead leaves on my approach, as if he does not 

 much care whether danger is near or not. 



I found a robin in the woods one autumn day, who appealed 

 strongly to my sympathies. He had been brought down from 



