108 
Forest and Stream 
BIRD VISITORS FROM THE NORTH 
BIRDS MAY BE NOTED EASIER IN WINTER THAN IN SUMMER 
AS THE OBSERVER KNOWS WHERE TO LOOK FOR THEM 
By EDWIN CHARLES HOBSON 
T HE bird hordes departed for 
austral lands at the beginning' of 
winter. The last flight swept 
southward on a night of a full 
moon and down through the October 
dusks dropped isolated notes of the far 
sky-flung travelers. Bird notes heard 
aflight and unseen were evanescent 
things. The flamboyant sundowns of 
November saw the coming of wild geese, 
and long lines and wedges of great birds 
marked the cold skies, their deep- 
throated honking drifting down as an ex¬ 
altation, a clarion call which stirred the 
blood of earth watchers. In their after- 
math hung gray skies, ominous of depth, 
heavy with signs of snow. 
There is a peculiar quality in the at¬ 
mosphere, a sort of hollowness, the calm 
before the storm. Wild life knows of it, 
and man scents a change abroad over the 
landscape. Farmers notice a restlessness 
among their stock, then look at the gray 
skies in one long survey and finally slant 
an eye to the weather-vane atop the barn. 
In the night the storm comes out of the 
northwest, a snow fall riding the wild in¬ 
spiring winds, and the noon of next day 
sees a long-drawn termination of driving 
flakes. Storms follow at intermittent 
times; the endless miles of landscape 
gradually merge into another world. 
In the stark cold of morning I looked 
out of a New Hampshire door upon a 
world in white. Familiar scenes had dis¬ 
appeared, boundary lines were covered 
and hid, and trails of yesterday were a 
memory. I can see nothing bleak and 
desolate in a winter landscape as some 
writers would have us believe. In for¬ 
getting that long period which is broken 
into spring, summer, and autumn, I see 
deeper into the ministry of winter. 
Beauty is abroad—beauty of boreal mys¬ 
tery, pictorial charm in soft line and few 
colors that is as an unfolded flower, an 
open book—a beauty that no tramper of 
landscape can fail to perceive; a beauty 
that is intricate in design and yet ex¬ 
quisite in its simplicity, that exalts the 
spirit and lingers in the heart. 
Wild life may be noted more easily in 
winter than in summer, as the habits of 
the birds are known and the observer 
knows where to look for them. In fact, 
taking' in the birds who are residents and 
the visitors who have come down, these 
New England woods and fields reveal a 
vast amount of wild life which is known 
to only a few of the braver ones who 
wish to tramp the snowy roads. 
The Sparrows 
S common as a sparrow” is a cur¬ 
rent expression, but wintry fields 
and roadsides would be quite lonely with¬ 
out the flocks of sombre-colored birds 
rising before every wind and seeming to 
coast on its invisible pinions. A visitor 
from the open country of Keewatin and 
Courtesy of Am. Museum Nut. History 
Red-breasted Nuthatch 
Ungava is the snowflake. Who can for¬ 
get a flock of many hundred birds rolling- 
like a dark cloud over the immaculate 
snows ? I have seen them in a heavy 
storm, driving with the winds, circling, 
wheeling, blown along with the flakes, 
all the while uttering their short whis¬ 
tlings. Heard in the height of the storm, 
with whine of winds and hiss of driven 
flakes, it was an eerie sound. 
The snowflake is a ground bird, and 
where there is ragweed and amaranth 
there may invariably be found these little 
birds. Wary of man, suspicious of pass¬ 
ing shadows, the flock rises as one bird, 
wheel, roll, circle, and alight again at a 
cluster of ungainly weeds which flaunt 
ragged banners above the snow. Then 
they settle into a low twittering, pleasant 
to the ear. Small flocks trade the country 
roads and railway tracks, picking up 
seeds and grain dropped in travel. 
Another visitor from Back of Beyond 
and always seen with the snowflake is the 
longspur, a bird somewhat colored as the 
snowflake without its wing and tail marks. 
I look for longspurs on sidehills where 
weeds still toss above the snow, in clear¬ 
ings where juniper clumps abound. In the 
clean cutting cold of early morning their 
low sweet trill drifts over the snowy 
wastes and strikes deep in the heart. One 
wonders at the Spartan courage and 
dauntlessness of such small birds. A 
longspur flies to a gawky weed, its weight 
bending it down; the bird picks and flut¬ 
ters with a half-rising of wings, and as 
it eats other birds are picking the fallen 
seeds off the snow. 
Other sparrows, mainly white-throat, 
fox, tree, and juncos, may be called visi¬ 
tors in a way—visitors without the 
glamour and adventure of the North. 
The Crossbills 
I F crossbills, American or white-winged. 
are to be noted, the observer must step 
off the beaten highway and break a trail 
to the grayness and silence of the co¬ 
niferous woods. They may be found and 
they may not. A flock of Americans are 
not common, while the white-winged 
gather in smaller flocks and are less 
abundant. An ornithological find is a 
pair or two of white-winged among a 
flock of the American. Curious, erratic, 
and eccentric are adjectives which have 
described these birds. They are not beau¬ 
tiful as birds go, sparrow-like, reddish 
and rosy of color respectively, the white¬ 
winged being barred with white on the 
wings. Crossbills are interesting feed¬ 
ers; the bird clings to a cone, and pro¬ 
ceeds to literally walk all over it in every 
conceivable attitude, sideways, straight 
up, hanging, and upside-down. Surely, 
an acrobat among birds. The song is a 
soft meaningless twitter, and in flight 
they have a reedy whistle. A charac¬ 
teristic, quite recognizable and identify¬ 
ing, is the suddenness with which a flock- 
takes flight, whether disturbed or not, 
only to wheel in a half-circle back to the 
same conifer where they were feeding. 
Crossbills are nomads, here to-day and 
gone to-morrow, and their return is as 
uncertain and inconstant as an April day. 
The Titmouse or Chickadee 
’T’HE philosophical Emerson was en- 
amoured of the chickadee when he 
heard the pallid notes of this little bird 
in the midst of a driving snowstorm. Any 
day of winter, any errant hour of leisure, 
go into the cold woods and you may hear 
the chickadee. 
. . a tiny voice hard by, 
Gay and polite, a cheerful cry, 
Chic-chicadeedee ! saucy note 
Out of sound heart and merry 
throat,” 
wrote the Concord admirer. But his bird 
was the black-capped chickadee. Our 
visitor is the Hudsonian chickadee, a bird 
similar in color and habits, but more of a 
gossipy nature and confidence in the 
friendships of man. I have tramped the 
drifts of the open places, sought the 
shadows and better going of the pine 
woods, without seeing a sign of birds or 
hearing a single note, when all of a sud¬ 
den, as I paused under a pine, I heard 
something fall down from among the 
boughs and drop into the snow, followed 
by pieces of bark. To look up was the 
matter of a moment, but T saw nothing. 
It was dusky under the trees. More bits 
