ZERO BIRDS 23 
soft little trills, with now and then sharp alarm- 
notes like the clicking of pebbles together, inter- 
spersed with tiny half-whispered notes best expressed 
by the same letters as those used in writing the gros- 
beak music— “‘Teu, teu, teu, teu.”’ Suddenly, from 
a farther corner of the sun-warmed slope, I heard a 
few tinkling notes followed by a tantalizing snatch 
of rich, sweet song shot through with canary-like 
trills and runs. I hurried over the snow and caught 
a glimpse of a little flock of birds with crowns of 
reddish-brown, and each wearing small black spots 
in the exact centre of their drab-colored waistcoats. 
They were tree-sparrows down from the far North, 
and I was fortunate to have heard the peculiarly 
gentle cadence of one of their rare winter songs. 
Farther on, the caw of a passing crow drifted down 
from the cold sky, and before I left the woods I heard 
the pip of a downy woodpecker and the grunt of the 
white-breasted nuthatch, that tree-climber with the 
white cheeks which, unlike woodpeckers, can go both 
up and down trees head-foremost. In the early spring 
and sometimes on warm winter days, one may 
hear his spring song, which is “‘Quee-quee-quee.” 
It is not much of a song, but Mr. Nuthatch is very 
proud of it and usually pauses admiringly between 
each two strains. In my early bird-days I used to 
mistake this spring song for the note of an early 
flicker, and would scandalize better-educated orni- 
thologists by reporting flickers several weeks be- 
fore their time. The last bird I heard before I left 
the woods remarked solemnly, “'loo-wheedle, too-_ 
