Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/173

tree sparrows, goldfinches, snowbirds, brown creepers, flickers, and golden-crowned kinglets. Twice since December came in I have seen a shrike. Once I heard a single pine finch passing, invisible, far overhead. On the same day (December 2) I caught the fine staccato calls of a purple finch, without seeing the author of them. On the 2d and 3d three or four rusty blackbirds were unexpectedly in the neighborhood. Quail and grouse are never absent, of course, but I happen to have seen neither of them of late, though one day I heard the breezy quoiting of a quail, greatly to my pleasure. On the 14th I came upon a single robin in the woods, the first since November 21. He was perched in a leafless treetop, and was calling at the top of his voice, as if he had friends, or hoped that he had, somewhere within hearing. The sight was rather dispiriting than otherwise. He looked unhappy, in a cold wind, with the sky clouded. He had better have gone south before this time, I thought. Half an hour afterward I heard the quick, emphatic, answer-demanding challenge of a hairy woodpecker (as much louder and sharper than the