4 TH-E A.UDUB ONY B UE Eis 
earnestly and mourning doves gave their exquisite lays. Not even in 
Oklahoma had I heard the doves sing in February. Elms came out and 
scarlet maples were in brilliant bloom. Most of the male summer resident 
song sparrows hastened back to Interpont, and even some of the females too. 
If spring came in winter, then winter was pretty sure to come in 
spring. How were the little birds treated that had been lured north so 
early? The coldest weather of the whole winter descended in March with 
The Olentangy was jammed and littered with ice cakes 
bitter wind and snow. On the 6th, instead of the splendid chorus we had 
grown to expect, the only song at dawn came from a brave dove. Territory 
was forgotten; birds flocked to feeding places from far and near; everything 
reverted to a winter basis. Trapping brought rewards: ten song sparrows 
were taken on the 6th, and the same number on the 7th, not to mention 
tree sparrows, juncos and cardinals. Before long, however, spring was 
back again and the birds seemed none the worse for their strenuous 
experience. 
Two years later on March 18 a sudden fall in temperature and a 
heavy snow storm caught the song sparrows in migration. All day long 
I was busy with the traps on our feeding shelf and in the garden, getting 
twenty-three song sparrows, as well as. nine starlings, two robins, two 
juncos, and a tree sparrow with only one leg. It was the best trapping 
day I had ever had. 
“Weather birds,” the ornithologists call these early migrants. Eagerly 
