286 WASTE-LAND WANDERINGS. 



the forest-trees, uttering, with scarcely a trace of varia- 

 tion in their tones, quanh-quanh — tat-a-tat. In every 

 phase of winter it is all the same with them ; the mer- 

 cury may creep to zero, they will only creep a little 

 faster ; and going the rounds of the door-yard trees they 

 never stop to ask if it is tiresome, but greet you, as 

 they did the first man who wintered in America, with a 

 strongly nasal quanh-quanh — tat-a-tat, all of which no 

 ornithologist has as yet been able to interpret. * 



We have also the very pretty brown tree-creeper — 

 curious grub -hunter of two continents. He chatters 

 alike to European and American ; and although famil- 

 iar with so much of the world, is positively happy away 

 off here in the benighted region of central New Jersey. 

 Like the kinglets, the creeper will pause in his wild 

 career and sing exquisitely ; not at the close of winter, 

 or in deceptive, spring-like days, merely, but in Janu- 

 ary, with its ice and snow, north winds and arctic cold. 

 These but stir him to action, and I have often heard his 

 cheering song during such bitter days that even the tit- 

 mice clung to the sunny sides of the oaks. 



Of the Carolina wren I must speak witli caution. He 

 is such a favorite I fear I may exaggerate his merits. 

 This splendid bird is not so ready, as a creeper, to face 

 a cutting north wind, yet is never a coward. Only give 

 him a ghost of a chance and he will sing such songs in 

 January as those with which his summer cousin, the 

 house-wren, charms the world in June. Like others I 

 have mentioned, his spirits often rise with the grow- 

 ing violence of an approaching storm, and far above 

 the wind whistling through the leafless branches of the 



