PHASES OF BIRD LIFE. 209 



Thomson declares that even the merry linnets " lit 

 on the dead tree, a dull, despondent flock." 



It would be difficult to arrange a " table of mor- 

 tality " for the birds. However, as they know noth- 

 ing about life insurance, there is no call for such a 

 compilation ; but even if the statistician could state 

 the number of deaths, there is no arithmetic that 

 could compute the heartaches and heartbreaks expe- 

 rienced by "our httle brothers of the air." "In 

 the midst of life we are in death," might well be put 

 into the litany of the birds. If they had burial- 

 grounds, there would be plenty of employment for 

 the sexton and some grave " Old Mortality." 



The elements themselves sometimes play sad havoc 

 with the birds. Mr. Eldridge E. Fish, of Buffalo, 

 N. Y., tells of an October storm in which many 

 golden-crowned kinglets were dashed to the ground, 

 while others flew against windows of houses in which 

 lights were left burning. The storm was so severe 

 that the little voyagers, travelling southward by night, 

 were compelled to alight, and thus many of them 

 were destroyed. The same writer speaks of a cold 

 rain which froze as it fell, coating everything with 

 ice, and thus cutting off the birds' supply of food, so 

 that many bluebirds perished. To my certain know- 

 ledge, robins, which breed very early in the spring, 

 sometimes are frozen to death while hugging their 

 nests, when a cold wave swoops from the north. 

 The same calamity sometimes, overtakes the cross- 

 bill during the winter in the forests of Canada. 

 Apparently even Nature herself is not always a tender 

 14 



