TSe Bay of the Land 
seasons go, life even for the winter birds is comfort- 
able and abundant. 
The fence-rows and old pastures are full of berries 
that will keep the fires burning in the quail and par- 
tridge during the bitterest weather. Last February, 
however, I came upon two partridges in the snow, 
dead of hunger and cold. It was after an extremely 
long severe spell. But this was not all. These two 
birds since fall had been feeding regularly in the 
dried fodder corn that stood shocked over the field. 
One day all the corn was carted away. The birds 
found their supply of food suddenly cut off, and, un- 
used to foraging the fence-rows and tangles for wild 
seeds, they seem to have given up the struggle at 
once, although within easy reach of plenty. 
Hardly a minute's flight away was a great thicket 
of dwarf sumac covered with berries; there were 
bayberries, rose hips, greenbrier, bittersweet, black 
alder, and checkerberries — hillsides of the latter — 
that they might have found. These were hard fare, 
doubtless, after an unstinted supply of sweet corn; 
but still they were plentiful, and would have been 
sufficient had the birds made use of them. 
The smaller birds of the winter, like the tree 
16 
