BIRDS OF AUTUMN AND WINTER.
If you hear a snapping noise in the pines do not think that it is merely the cones springing open, for you will find a small flock of Red Crossbills, whose warped beaks seem particularly adapted to tearing the scales from the cones and liberating the pungent seeds. Middle December is the time for the showy Pine Grosbeaks, whose stout bodies and brilliant colouring at once reveal their identity; they are sometimes abundant here but usually straggle about in pairs; and great flocks of the hardy American Goldfinches may be seen if seed-bearing plants are not buried up by the snow. The Crows are very hungry and prowl around the stacks of dry corn stalks, going to the shore for clams and drift scraps, and returning at night to their inland cedar roosts. This is the season that you may successfully give them poisoned corn, thus justly killing some of these cannibals who create such havoc every spring among the nests of our Song-birds.
An occasional Purple Finch flies out of the evergreens, though it is a difficult bird to recognize at this season, and the Pine Siskin constantly flits in and out, swinging itself under the cones and terminal sprays like an acrobat, and this is the time for Snow Buntings and the little Redpoll Linnets. If there are severe storms in the month, accompanied by northeast gales, many of these birds appear on the very crest of the storm, and when it ceases troop from the evergreens in a half-famished condition, searching for bare places where a few seeds may be found. The Redpoll feeds in the same localities and in the same manner as the American Gold-finch, and, having a similar call note, it is quite easy, at a little distance, to mistake one for the other. Now you may catch a glimpse of the great Snow Owls.
You will be more likely to find them back of the shore, along the line of salt marshes and woody stubble, than further inland. The marshes do not freeze so easily or deeply as the iron-bound uplands, and field-mice are more plentiful in them. This alert and powerful Owl is so fleet of wing that he can follow and capture a Snow. Bunting or a Junco in its most rapid flight if his appetite is whetted. Woodpeckers have mostly drifted southward, and this is the
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