of February the juncos began to rehearse their
spring songs, which were a welcome sound in the almost unbroken silence
of the winter. The nearer the spring approached, the higher they
mounted in the trees, and the more prolonged was their flight, as if
they were practicing their wing exercises to inure their muscles to the
strain that would be put upon them when they undertook their long
journey to their northern summer homes; for, of course, the juncos do
not breed in our central latitudes, but hie to the northern part of the
United States and the Dominion of Canada.

In Ohio the brown creepers and the golden-crowned kinglets were
constant winter companions in the woods; but, although Kansas is
considerably farther south, they do not seem to be winter residents
there--at least, not in the northeastern part of the state--the only
exception being that in January, 1903, several creepers were observed
in my yard. One may well wonder why these birds are winter residents
in Ohio and only migrants in a latitude that is two degrees farther
south.

There was some scant compensation in the presence of the winter wren
one winter in the Sunflower state. The fourteenth of December brought
one of these brown Lilliputians to a deep hollow in town, where he
chattered petulantly and scampered along an old paling fence. No more
winter wrens were seen until January seventh, when one darted out of
some bushes on the bank of a stream about two miles south of town. My
next jaunt to this hollow took place on the twenty-seventh, when, to my
surprise, a hermit thrush was seen in a clump of bushes and saplings--a
bird that I supposed had been sunning himself for at least a month in
the genial South. While tramping about trying to get another view of
the unconventional thrush, I frightened a winter wren from a cluster of
weeds and bushes. My! how alarmed he was! Uttering a loud chirp, he
darted down to the center of the stream and slipped into a little cave
formed by ice and snow frozen over a clump of low bushes. There he hid
himself like an Eskimo in his snow hut. My trudging near by frightened
the bird out of the farther doorway, and he dashed away pellmell,
hurling a saucy gird of protestation at me, and was seen by me no more.
I examined the little snow house. It was very cunning indeed, and
might well have made a cozy shelter for the little wren in stormy
weather. My next meeting with a winter wren occurred on the fifteenth
o