Tue Percuine Birps. 101 
wandered over a pretty high hill in North Carolina, and 
found many snow-birds about the bushes lining the 
rough mountain road. They appeared to be all sing- 
ing, and made a ringing clatter that drowned other 
bird-voices deeper in the woods. Singling out sepa- 
rate birds, I heard two long-drawn and clearly-uttered 
notes that preceded the twitter, and if it had been 
in November and at my Jersey home, I should have 
translated it as “ Sxow’s coming, tis, 'tis,’tis.’ But 
here there was no sign of winter. The ground was 
pink with blooming arbutus, the air heavy with odor 
and the hum of bees. I was told these snow-birds 
remained all summer, and their singing meant 
“ Spring’s coming,” and not the approach of a snow- 
storm. Occasionally, since then, I have heard in 
midwinter a song of this bird that was even of fuller 
volume. 
In the Song-sparrow we have a resident species 
in the Middle States, but one that is migratory in 
the northern parts of the country; as, for instance, 
when “ it arrives at St. John, New Brunswick, during 
the second week in April in immense flocks, and is 
usually accompanied by similar flocks of Robins and 
Juncos (snow-birds).” I would that we could speak 
of ‘immense flocks” of these birds here in the Mid- 
dle States. Abundant, widely spread, and a feature 
of the whole year, and yet there was never enough 
of them. Unfortunately, too, the English sparrow 
has in a great measure driven them away from our 
town and the immediate surroundings of our country 
houses. I always associate the song-sparrow with a 
gooseberry-hedge, a dilapidated, lichen-coated paling, 
g* 
