56 IN BIRD LAND. 



Farther on in the woods, another cunning Httle 

 junco proved himself no lay figure. It seemed, in 

 fact, to be a junco day. When I first espied him, he 

 was standing in the snow beneath a slender weed- 

 stem eating seeds from his white table-cloth. But the 

 curious feature about his behavior was that, whenever 

 his supply of seeds on the snow had been picked 

 up, he would dart up to the weed-stem (which was 

 too slender to afford him a comfortable perch), give 

 it a vigorous shake, which would bring down a 

 quantity of seeds, and then he would flit below and 

 resume his meal. This he did several times. I 

 should not have believed a junco gifted with so much 

 sense had not my own eyes witnessed this cunning 

 performance. Had some other observer told the 

 story, I should have laughed at it a little slyly and 

 more than half unbelievingly ; but, of course, one 

 cannot gainsay the evidence of one's own eyesight. 



Nothing in all my winter rambles has surprised 

 me more than the evident delight some species of 

 birds take in the snow. It is a sort of luxury to 

 them, wading-ground and feasting-ground all in one. 

 How they keep their little bare feet from becoming 

 chilblained is a mystery. The evening of the twen- 

 tieth of January was bitterly cold, the wind blowing 

 in fierce, howling gusts from the northwest. Yet 

 when, at about five o'clock, I stalked out to the 

 pond in the rear of my house, the tree-sparrows and 

 song-sparrows were fairly revelling, not to say wal- 

 lowing, in the snow among the weeds. The wind 

 was so biting that I soon hurried back to the house, 

 and left them to their midwinter carousal. 



