ification an easy matter.

In January and the succeeding month we have with us birds which are called
permanent residents, which do not leave us throughout the entire year;
and, in addition, the winter visitors which have come to us from the far
north.

In the uplands we may flush ruffed grouse from their snug retreats in the
snow; while in the weedy fields, many a fairy trail shows where bob-white
has passed, and often he will announce his own name from the top of a rail
fence. The grouse at this season have a curious outgrowth of horny scales
along each side of the toes, which, acting as a tiny snowshoe, enables
them to walk on soft snow with little danger of sinking through.

Few of our winter birds can boast of bright colours; their garbs are
chiefly grays and browns, but all have some mark or habit or note by which
they can be at once named. For example, if you see a mouse hitching
spirally up a tree-trunk, a closer look will show that it is a brown
creeper, seeking tiny insects and their eggs in the crevices of the trunk.
He looks like a small piece of the roughened bark which has suddenly
become animated. His long tail props him up and his tiny feet never fail
to find a foothold. Our winter birds go in flocks, and where we see a
brown creeper we are almost sure to find other birds.

Nuthatches are those blue-backed, white or rufous breasted little climbers
who spend their lives defying the law of gravity. They need no supporting
tail, and have only the usual number of eight toes, but they traverse the
bark, up or down, head often pointing toward the ground, as if their feet
were small vacuum cups. Their note is an odd nasal _nyeh!_ _nyeh!_

In winter some one species of bird usually predominates, most often,
perhaps, it is the black-capped chickadee. They seem to fill every grove,
and, if you take your stand in the woods, flock after flock will pass
in succession. What good luck must have come to the chickadee race
during the preceding summer? Was some one of their enemies stricken with a
plague, or did they show more than usual care in the selecting of their
nesting holes? Whatever it was, during such a year, it seems certain that
scores more of chickadee babies manage to live to grow up than is
usually the case. These little fluffs are, in their way, as remarkable
acrobats as are the nuthatches, and it is a marvel how the very thin legs,
with their tiny sliver of bone and thread of tendon, can hold the body