io IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



is of slight avail to protect the robin from the pot 

 hunter of the South during the winter season, only 

 to let him freeze and starve during a late spring 

 snow-storm in the North, for lack of evergreens to 

 take shelter in, or any food-bearing shrubs above the 

 snow. What is the bluebird to do, or the chicka- 

 dee, or the downy woodpecker, if he flies to his 

 grove where the hole for his nest was so tempting 

 the year before — and finds no grove there? What 

 are the quail to do in winter when the few who have 

 escaped the hunters find all their food-supply buried 

 deep in snow, at the very time that their bodies 

 need a big supply to keep them warm? Such ques- 

 tions as these are not to be answered by laws. They 

 are only to be answered by individual and com- 

 munity effort. 



But, as a matter of fact, they can be answered, 

 and rather easily. How easily, I have illustrated 

 for myself. I lived for some years on a five-acre 

 place, on the main, street of a village in western 

 Massachusetts. The heavy snow of March, 191 6, 

 lay deep in my yard even on the 1st of April, when 

 a flock of juncos made their appearance. They 

 joined the chickadees and tree-sparrows and other 

 birds which had been with us all winter, in the 

 steady procession down to the feeding-shelf outside 

 the kitchen window. But I decided there were too 

 many of them for that small supply station, so I 

 packed down with my snow-shoes a considerable 

 area on the other side of the house, and scattered 

 seeds and fine mixed chicken feed (which I had been 

 using for pheasants) on the hard snow. The juncos 

 immediately discovered it, as did a flock of horned 



