hoose camping grounds so exposed and public as this in the rear
of the "Half-way House."

Our only cold-weather thrushes are the robins. They may be found any
time in favorable situations; and even in so bleak a place as Boston
Common I have seen them in every month of the year except February. This
exception, moreover, is more apparent than real,--at the most a matter
of but twenty-four hours, since I once saw four birds in a tree near the
Frog Pond on the last day of January. The house sparrows were as much
surprised as I was at the sight, and, with characteristic urbanity,
gathered from far and near to sit in the same tree with the visitors,
and stare at them.

We cannot help being grateful to the robins and the song sparrows, who
give us their society at so great a cost; but their presence can
scarcely be thought to enliven the season. At its best their bearing is
only that of patient submission to the inevitable. They remind us of the
summer gone and the summer coming, rather than brighten the winter that
is now upon us; like friends who commiserate us in some affliction, but
are not able to comfort us. How different the chickadee! In the worst
weather his greeting is never of condolence, but of good cheer. He has
no theory upon the subject, probably; he is no Shepherd of Salisbury
Plain; but he knows better than to waste the exhilarating air of this
wild and frosty day in reminiscences of summer time. It is a
pretty-sounding couplet,--

"Thou hast no morrow in thy song,
No winter in thy year,"--

but rather incongruous, he would think. _Chickadee, dee_, he
calls,--_chickadee, dee_; and though the words have no exact equivalent
in English, their meaning is felt by all such as are worthy to hear
them.

Are the smallest birds really the most courageous, or does an
unconscious sympathy on our part inevitably give them odds in the
comparison? Probably the latter supposition comes nearest the truth.
When a sparrow chases a butcher-bird we cheer the sparrow, and then when
a humming-bird puts to flight a sparrow, we cheer the humming-bird; we
side with the kingbird against the crow, and with the vireo, against the
kingbird. It is a noble trait of human nature--though we are somewhat
too ready to boast of it--that we like, as we say, to see the little
fellow at the top. These remarks are made, not with any reference to the
chickadee,--I admit no possibility of exaggeration in his case,--but as
leading to a m