BIEDS TO BE SEEN IN JANUARY. 67 



Birds, it must be remembered, can move about better than any other 

 sort of animal ; and, on the other hand, no class in the whole animal world 

 is so sensitive, as a whole, to changes in temperature. Moreover, the food 

 of most birds being fruit, seeds of weeds, and insects, is such as winter 

 cuts short in northern latitudes. They must starve, therefore, or else go 

 far enough southward to find something to eat. 



The number and variety of the birds to be seen in winter in your dis- 

 trict, wherever it may be, will depend on how much food you have for 

 them ; other things influence the matter somewhat, of course, but this 

 question of provender comes first. 



In the far polar regions no birds can stay through midwinter on 

 account of the darkness. In the nearer arctic lands, like Labrador, Janu- 

 ary sees only the wildest of sea-birds — ice-gulls, guillemots, auks, etc. — 

 which exist by fishing in the open sea. Maine and Canada count more 

 gulls and fishing-ducks; and, as inland visitors, the snowy owl, north- 

 ern strangers like the wax-wing, the Canada jay, the pine-finch, and the 

 cross -bills; two or three sparrows, and a few grouse. Coming farther 

 south, into the northern part of the United States, the snow is rarely so 

 deep or so lasting as to bury all the seed-bearing weeds and bushes, or 

 so severe as to prevent insect-life, at least in a dormant shape, from being 

 accessible to hungry birds. 



Although the majority of birds seen in the summer are absent, a pretty 

 large number therefore are to be found in the northern as well as the 

 southern States through all the cold weather — some strange, especially 

 in midwinter, but most of them familiar the year round. I need not name 

 them to you; go out and look them up. for yourself; find how pleasant 

 and exhilarating a thing a winter's walk in the fields may be ! 



Then if you go so far south that it rarely snows at all, and cold winds 

 are rare, as, for instance, into middle Georgia, perhaps you will say, "I 

 suppose you will see all the birds northerners know in summer, and no 

 arctic strangers ?" 



No, my friend ; that doesn't follow. Many of our small summer 

 friends, having begun their southward flight in the fall, do not stop in 

 middle Georgia, or even in Florida, but never rest till they have gone 

 clear to Central America and the West Indies. One sees not only more 

 birds but more kinds, to be sure, in the southern than in the northern 

 or middle States in winter, but he doesn't see all that he expects to 

 come back northward next spring. This is a curious feature in the his- 

 tory of winter ornithology, for it is just as true of Europe as it is of 

 America. 



