V INTER KjESIDENTS 
Woods and Fields 
Howard H. C leave $ 
BIRDS AND ANIMALS THAT BRAVE THE WINTER’S COLD—MIGRANTS FROM 
THE NORTH THAT COME TO US ONLY WITH THE CLOSING OF THE YEAR 
Photographs by the Author and Others 
H AVE you ever been abroad in the country on a cold night 
in December and looked across the snow-clad hills and 
wondered at the stillness of things? A shadow passing in the 
moonlight through the orchard tells of the night hunt of the 
screech owl and from yonder thicket bobs the form of a cotton¬ 
tail: but everything goes forward in silence, for all wild creatures 
that are active at this season learn the meaning of acute hunger 
and, with most, life becomes too serious to allow of singing or 
calling for its own sake. As 
you return from your hour’s 
tramp across the snow carpets 
of pasture and woodland, with 
ears a-tingle and nose-tip cold, 
can you help but marvel at the 
hardiness of the birds and beasts 
that withstand so successfully 
the rigors of our New England 
winters ? After a brief expo¬ 
sure to the unmerciful elements 
we are glad to rub our be¬ 
numbed hands above the kitchen 
stove or stand before the open 
fire till the steam rises from our 
garments—but what of the 
birds? They seek no artificial 
heat and, indeed, need none: 
they shame us with their vitality. 
An ounce of flesh and bone, a 
layer of fat, and a covering of 
feathers—and you have de¬ 
scribed the chickadee, a midget 
who “stands by" through the 
most rigid winters and dispenses 
a ton of optimism into the bar¬ 
gain. And the chickadee is only 
one of a great fraternity of 
robust feathered sprites that in¬ 
vite our friendship through sleet, 
snow and cold. 
It must be granted that a 
great majority of the birds that 
enliven our s u m m e r woods 
scurry southward at the ap¬ 
proach of autumn, but would 
you believe that there are 
myriads of birds that spend the winter hundreds of miles to the 
north of us no matter how bitter may be the cold; and that the 
severest climate that the Middle Atlantic States can boast would 
seem to them as mild as the warm breezes of Florida would to 
the chickadee? The Lapland longspur, the crossbills, redpolls, 
Bohemian waxwing and evening grosbeak are all representatives 
of this group of sturdy northerners that occasionally wander 
here to be seen by us in the months of snow, and all of them are 
comparatively small land birds. Then there is the snow owl and 
the purple sandpiper — the former frequenting the ocean beaches 
and the latter always being found there at this season. Mr. W. 
Elmer Ekblaw, of the Crocker Land Expedition, now encamped 
for the long northern winter at Etah, Northwestern Greenland, 
communicated with the writer 
under date of August 26 last, 
concerning the bird life of that 
locality, and following is his let¬ 
ter in part: 
“I’ve seen the white and the 
gray gyrfalcon, the ivory gull, 
the purple sandpiper, raven, 
snow bunting and ptarmigan al¬ 
ready. Temperature is twenty- 
six degrees to-day, the moun¬ 
tains are covered with snow and 
there is snow on our decks.” 
Etah is nearly at the top of 
the earth and yet one finds birds 
at home there not only in the 
month of August, when snow is 
already falling, but in the sea¬ 
son of extreme cold. Here and 
in the waters to the south live 
the murre, dovekie, fulmar, 
glaucous gull, eider duck, puffin 
and guillemot, and it is but 
rarely that we have a glimpse of 
them hereabouts. What mar¬ 
velous examples of hardihood 
these creatures are; indeed one 
might well place them among 
the foremost of Nature’s tri¬ 
umphs. This northern winter 
bird population has been men¬ 
tioned for the purpose of im¬ 
pressing the reader with the fact 
that our December, January 
and February landscapes and 
ocean fronts are by no means 
destitute of feathered life — 
however much they may seem so upon superficial examination. 
For, beginning at the north, we would discover that birds become 
more and more numerous as we work toward the equator; and 
he who turns his back on the country at summer’s close and 
hibernates, as it were, in the city, till spring, can perhaps never 
The silence of the winter woods deepens as the sun sinks behind the westward 
ridges. An owl hoots far off in the hemlock swamp, and you pause a mo¬ 
ment to listen 
( 370 ) 
