170 ON THE EDGE OF THE WILDERNESS 
hundreds of low bushes which bore a nourishing 
seed that clung till the following season before 
dropping. He had often fed there. He rose 
now, spiraling high, till he got his bearings, and 
then called to the flock. The food call was 
enough; nobody could dispute a leadership which 
took them to food in a crisis. The flock rose, 
rather feebly, and followed, gathering in others 
as they went. For three long hours they flew, 
their numbers constantly augmented, till it was a 
black band of a thousand birds which dropped 
down behind Jim into the pasture, and blackened 
the thin coating of snow on the ground, as they 
fed their fill. 
That night they all roosted in the pines, and 
for another day they fed on this slope, while the 
snow melted a little. The second night they fol- 
lowed Jim over to the mountain where his nest 
_had been, and roosted in the forest there. The 
following day, having stripped the pasture, they 
fished the banks of Jim’s brook, explored the 
trees and stumps in the wood, investigated at the 
bottoms of ‘all the old apple trees in the valley 
orchards, and cleaned up the food supply. To- 
