THE SNOWFLAKE. 



51 



these simple-hearted creatures, who refuse to budge from their native heaths 

 and tree-boles, lack not only the culture of travel in foreign parts, but the dash 

 and wild romance of those who hazard their fortune to the north wind. What 

 treasures of choice spirits are poured out upon us when the winds blow raw 

 and the streams hide their faces ! Hardy Norsemen they,— the Redpolls, the 

 Longspurs, the Horned Larks, and the Snowflakes. They burst upon us in the 

 wake of the first storm, and set up in our back pastures a wintry Valhalla, 

 where good cheer of a very sturdy sort reigns supreme. 



In spite of striking differences of form and color a strange similarity exists 

 among these northern visitors, so that one may easily construct a mental genre 

 picture — or, at most, two such — which will fairly represent them all. Thus the 

 Snowflakes, the Longspurs, the Horned Larks, — and through them even the 

 daft Pipits — have a common fashion of giving themselves to the air to be blown 

 about at hazard ; or, when the season advances, of setting their faces also with 

 equal steadfastness against the gainsaying of the blast. Their notes, too, (ex- 

 cepting this time the inane yipping of the Pipit) have a wierd wind-born quality 

 which is inseparable in thought from the shrill piping of the storm. To carry 

 the matter further, the Siskins, the Crossbills, the Purple Flinches and the 

 Redpolls have each a mellow rattle, which lends itself with equal facility to that 

 generic conception, of the ice-berg children. The dialect may differ, but in all 

 of them the accent is 

 Hyperborean. 



I well remember 

 my first meeting 

 with that prince of 

 storm waifs, the 

 Snowflake. It was 

 in eastern Washing- 

 ton, where the cli- 

 mate is not less hos- 

 pitable than that of 

 much lower latitudes 

 farther east. A dis- 

 tant-faring, f e a t h- 

 ered stranger had 



tempted me far in snowflake park. 



afield, when, all at once, a fluttering snowdrift, contrary to nature's wont, rose 

 from earth toward heaven. I held my breath while I listened to the mild Babel 

 of tut-ut-ut-tews with which the Snow Buntings greeted me. The birds 

 were loath to leave the place, and hovered indecisively while the bird-man 

 drank them in. As they moved slowly off each bird seemed alternately to fall 

 and struggle upward through an arc of five or six feet, independently of his 



Photo 

 by the 

 Author. 



