rthward, and returning thither every
year. The North, then, is their proper domicile, their legal "place of
residence," which they have never renounced, but only temporarily
desert, for special reasons. Their sojourn with us, or farther south,
is merely an exile by stress of climate, like the flitting of the
Southern planters from the rice-fields to the mountains in summer, or
the pleasure tour or watering-place visit customary with the citizens
of Boston and New York.

The lower orders, such as the humming-bird with his insect-like
stomach and sucking-tube, and so on up through the warblers and
flycatchers, more strictly bound by the necessities of their life,
closely follow the sun,--while the upper-ten-thousand, the robins,
cedar-birds, sparrows, etc., like man, omnivorous in their diet and
their attendant _chevaliers d'industrie_, the rapacious birds,
allow themselves greater latitude, and go and come occasionally at all
seasons, though in general tending to the south in winter and north in
summer. But precedence before all is due to permanent residents, with
whom our intercourse is not of this transitory and fair-weather
sort. Such are the crow, the blue jay, the chickadee, the partridge,
and the quail, who may be called regular inhabitants, though perhaps
all of them wander occasionally from one district to another. Besides
these, perhaps some of the hawks and owls remain here throughout the
year. But the species I have named are the only ones that occur to me
as equally numerous at all seasons in the immediate vicinity of
Boston, and never out of town, whether you take the census in May or
in January.

In spite of our uninterrupted acquaintance with them, however, there
are still many of the nearest questions concerning these birds for
which I find no sufficient answers. Even to the first question--How do
they get their living?--there are only vague replies in the books.

There is the crow, for example. I have seen crows in the neighborhood
of Boston every week of the year, and in not very different
numbers. My friend the ornithologist said to me last winter, "You will
see that they will be off as soon as the ground is well covered with
snow." But on the contrary, when the snow came, and after it had lain
deep on the fields for many days, I saw more than before,--probably
because they found it easier to get food in the neighborhood of the
houses and cultivated grounds.

A crow must require certainly half a p