TuE ZooLtocist—Aueust, 1876. 5019 
the spot some few days later, we wished to see if the young birds 
had yet appeared, but nowhere could the nest be found, although 
we imagined an accurate mental note of the site had been made. 
At last, when we were wellnigh abandoning the search, the nest 
was seen close at hand, but so cunningly domed over by the birds 
with fern-fronds and grass that it might easily have escaped 
detection. Here was an instance where the birds, understanding 
that they were exposed to danger, had done the best they could to 
provide against it by altering the form of their nest in a manner 
which plainly revealed something of a reasoning power. 
The following is a list of the birds which are best able to 
contend with the severity of a North-American winter :— 
‘“The cold in winter becomes intense at Fort Randall, the thermometer 
sometimes marking thirty or forty degrees below zero. The surrounding 
country is ‘flat, windy, and uncomfortable,’ furnishing as bleak and dreary a 
prospect as can well be imagined. yen the shelter afforded by the thick 
undergrowth and low position of the river-bottom, defended as it is ina 
measure by bluffs and hills, is insufficient to allure any but a few of the 
hardiest birds to pass the inclement season. The river freezes solid, and 
the water-birds betake themselves elsewhere ; some hawks and owls remain, 
indeed, but the other land-birds of the immediate vicinity, as far as I have 
made them out, may also be counted on the fingers. There are sharp-tailed 
grouse in plenty, and quails too, though these smaller birds sometimes 
freeze to death. There isa stray pinnated grouse now and then. Sorry- 
looking crows wing about and croak dismally, and gangs of magpies screech 
noisily through the trees. Snow-birds fleck the open, with shore larks, 
during a part of the season, and probably longspurs (Plectrophanes Lap- 
ponicus and ornatus); troops of tree sparrows* cower under the bushes. 
Cheery companies of titmice stand the cold, and hairy woodpeckers hammer 
at the old cotton woods as industriously as ever. A shrike is seen now 
and then on his perch; but hereabouts the short list ends.” 
The two familiar species of American cuckoo (the yellow-billed 
and the black-billed) differ from our common English cuckoo in 
not being parasitic, and in building their own nests, untidy, loosely- 
arranged structures, in which there is rather an owlish style of 
bringing up the family. It is not unusual to find in the same nest 
an egg freshly laid, an egg or two more or less incubated, a young 
cuckoo just hatched, and a couple of others almost fledged. 
* Not our European Passer montanus, but Spizella monticola, the Canadian or 
tree sparrow of American ornithologists. 
