220 WAKE-ROBIN 
I first verified this observation some years ago. 
I had long been familiar with the song, but had 
only strongly suspected the author of it, when, as I 
was walking in the woods one evening, just as the 
leaves were putting out, I saw one of these birds 
but a few rods from me. I was saying to myself, 
half audibly, ‘Come, now, show off, if it is you; 
I have come to the woods expressly to settle this 
point,” when it began to ascend, by short hops and 
flights, through the branches, uttering a sharp, pre- 
liminary chirp. I followed it with my eye; saw 
it mount into the air and circle over the woods; and 
saw it sweep down again and dive through the 
trees, almost to the very perch from which it had 
started. 
As the paramount question in the life of a bird 
is the question of food, perhaps the most serious 
troubles our feathered neighbors encounter are early | 
in the spring, after the supply of fat with which: 
Nature stores every corner and by-place of the sys- 
tem, thereby anticipating the scarcity of food, has’ 
been exhausted, and the sudden and severe changes 
in the weather which occur at this season make 
unusual demands upon their vitality. No doubt 
many of the earlier birds die from starvation and 
exposure at this season. Among a troop of Canada 
sparrows which I came upon one March day, all of 
them evidently much reduced, one was so feeble 
that I caught it in my hand. 
During the present season, a very severe cold 
spell the first week in March drove the bluebirds 
