hen I was walking through the
snowless woods, I saw chickadees, nuthatches, and woodpeckers
upon the ground, and upon roots and fallen branches. They were
looking for the game that had fallen, as a boy looks for apples
under the tree.

The winter wren is so called because he sometimes braves our
northern winters, but it is rarely that one sees him at this
season. I think I have seen him only two or three times in winter
in my life. The event of one long walk, recently, in February,
was seeing one of these birds. As I followed a byroad, beside a
little creek in the edge of a wood, my eye caught a glimpse of a
small brown bird darting under a stone bridge. I thought to
myself no bird but a wren would take refuge under so small a
bridge as that. I stepped down upon it and expected to see the
bird dart out at the upper end. As it did not appear, I
scrutinized the bank of the little run, covered with logs and
brush, a few rods farther up.

Presently I saw the wren curtsying and gesticulating beneath an
old log. As I approached he disappeared beneath some loose stones
in the bank, then came out again and took another peep at me,
then fidgeted about for a moment and disappeared again, running
in and out of the holes and recesses and beneath the rubbish like
a mouse or a chipmunk. The winter wren may always be known by
these squatting, bobbing-out-and-in habits.

As I sought a still closer view of him, he flitted stealthily a
few yards up the run and disappeared beneath a small plank bridge
near a house.

I wondered what he could feed upon at such a time. There was a
light skim of snow upon the ground, and the weather was cold. The
wren, so far as I know, is entirely an insect-feeder, and where
can he find insects in midwinter in our climate? Probably by
searching under bridges, under brush heaps, in holes and cavities
in banks where the sun falls warm. In such places he may find
dormant spiders and flies and other hibernating insects or their
larvae. We have a tiny, mosquito-like creature that comes forth in
March or in midwinter, as soon as the temperature is a little
above freezing. One may see them performing their fantastic
air-dances when the air is so chilly that one buttons his
overcoat about him in his walk. They are darker than the
mosquito,--a sort of dark water-color,--and are very frail to the
touch. Maybe the wren knows the hiding-place of these insects.

With food in abundance, no doubt many more of our