SCHOOL DEPARTMENT 



Edited by MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT 



Address all communications to tlie Editor of the School Department, National 

 Association of Audubon Societies, i + i Broadway, New York City 



FEBRUARY 



When autumn is over, with all the excitement and confusion of the great 

 bird flight southward, we pause, draw a long breath and turn toward the 

 score of patient winter residents with positive relief. Now, at last, we 

 have time to meet them face to face and enjoy their individuality. 



In December, if it be mild, we are often surprised by the lingering of 

 some belated migrant. This year an Orchard Oriole, a bird that should 

 leave us in September, hovered about the old apple trees near the house 

 feeding upon some frosted fruit that still clung to their branches, the flesh 

 of discarded pumpkins, or else upon the berries of the porch honeysuckle 

 vines, in the shelter of which he roosted nightly until the i6th of the month, 

 a particularly sunny day, during which he left the neighborhood. 



During January, any one who is much abroad will have grown accus- 

 tomed to the residents of his neighborhood, — the Woodpeckers, Downy and 

 Hairy, and the substantial Flicker, who has hewn him a home for all seasons 

 under the ventilator of the hay-barn or, maybe, in the cupola of your house 

 itself; the Nuthatches, Finches, Gold and Purple, the Meadowlark of the 

 fields, the Crow and his cousin the Blue Jay, the Chickadee and the Myrtle 

 Warbler. 



The various Owls and Hawks will have passed in review, claiming 

 attention either by power of voice or wing. The Brown Creeper and Winter 

 Wren will have become so familiar that we forget that they are merely 

 visitors together with the Tree Sparrow, Junco, Shrike and Golden-crowned 

 Kinglet. 



Comes February, the suspension bridge between winter and spring. We 

 may be unconscious that we have left the mainland of winter and are facing 

 the opposite shore of promise, yet so it is. 



The landscape round about is more dreary than at any previous time 

 since leaf-fall. The snow has pulled away from the soft drapery it first 

 formed and lies crusted and hard under foot ; its glare hurts the eyes. This 

 is the ' Coon Moon ' of the Indian calendar, when, emerging from his 

 hole, this wary beast feels that he can find sure footing for his peregrina- 

 tions, but, to my thinking, in this latitude, at least, February should wear 

 the title the Redman gave to March — 'The Moon of Snow Blindness.' 



The days have already lengthened an hour, at least, and what do they 



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