Cl)e Audubon ^octette^ 



SCHOOL DEPARTMENT 



Edited by MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT 



Address all communications to the Editor of the School Department. National 

 Association of Audubon Societies. 141 Broadway. New York City 



Ho\v Our Birds Spend the Winter 



IX the l)ir(l world there is su])i)()se{l to he no class distinction, no rich, no 

 poor; all are e(iuij)i)ed alike for the battle of life by instinct. Yet those of 

 us who have followed the lives of even a score of the most familiar birds 

 throughout the \'ear must confess that they are made either hard or pleasant 

 by circumstances of birth very much like our own. 



From our viewpoint in the middle and New England states, birds classify 

 themselves roughly in two groups, — the summer, and the ])ermanent residents. 

 Pick half a dozen birds from each of these groups, consider their comings and 

 goings. You will presently see that neither among birds nor among men are all 

 born free and equal, and that the traveler on the wing is as much linked to law 

 and the potency of heredity as the wearer of shoes. 



The birds that we know as summer residents, such as the Baltimore Oriole, 

 Scarlet Tanager, Bobolink, Barn Swallow, Wood Thrush and Rose-breasted 

 Grosbeak, really enjoy two summers, the same as they wear two changes of 

 clothing during the year. 



When the spring impulse, let loose by melting snow, steals over the northern 

 hemisphere, it finds the birds that come to us for their home -making within 

 our borders, because it is the homestead of their tribe, already on the wing. 

 There are perils by land and sea in this journey, long flights and fastings 

 and buffetings; but w'hen at last they arrive it is usually to find good mar- 

 keting and a roof-tree waiting. 



Of course, there are sometimes ill-timed journeys, when winter has given 

 a false alarm of retreat and, coming back, locks up the larder, and the tired 

 wayfarers perish by the way, — but this is the exception, not the rule. Arriving 

 in their summer haunts, these birds have a period of ecstatic song and courtship 

 before settling down to the real labors of raising one, two, or sometimes, as 

 with the House Wrens, three broods. 



After the breeding season comes a period of enforced rest, called the molting 

 time. While the nest-worn feathers are being changed, the birds at this season 

 are enervated and lacking the strength for long flight they moi)e and gossip (yes, 

 I've heard them, of this I'm positive) in well-leafed shade, all the while eating 

 well of the plenty of late summer; for August, the lazy month, is the time that 

 Nature has set a|)art for the feather-changing process. 



{38) 



