236 Twelve Months With 



manner in which he walked up and down the 

 feeding tray and pushed the sparrows aside, with- 

 out so much as deigning to glance at them, showed 

 pretty clearly that there was no very grave danger 

 of the sparrows driving him away, as they are 

 often accused of doing. The sparrows showed no 

 signs of fright, and appeared to acknowledge the 

 robin's superior rights, which he calmly accepted 

 with becoming dignity, and even friendliness. 

 One day during a cold winter rainstorm the robin 

 and a number of sparrows perched side by side 

 in friendly fashion on a telephone wire, under 

 the protecting gable of the roof. 



Long periods of severe weather and the result- 

 ing scarcity of food sometimes prove too much 

 for those robins that winter in the northern por- 

 tions of their range. Large numbers were killed 

 off by the severe winter of 1895-6 in Tennessee 

 and Kentucky, and for several years thereafter the 

 robins were not so abundant in summer in the 

 Central and Northern States. 



Upon almost any country walk in January 

 one may see a few crows, one or all of the three 

 resident woodpeckers — hairy, downy and the red- 

 head, — chickadees, nuthatches, juncos, tree spar- 

 rows and blue jays, and usually a goldfinch or two 

 in sombre winter garb of gray, feeding upon the 

 seeds of mullen or other weeds protruding through 

 the snow. Song sparrows, snowflakes, Lapland 

 longspurs and redpolls are less frequently seen. 



Emerson describes a weed as a plant whose 



