TREE SPARROW.
The crown is a bright chestnut, and there are chestnut markings on the side of the head and on the bend of the wing. The back is boldly streaked with black, bay, and light gray. There is much white edging to the feathers of the tail and wings in winter. A few of these birds stopped about the cabin all winter; but a flock numbering hundreds wintered on Bond's Hill. On warm days they roamed over the hill, far and near, always flying low and keeping well down in the shrubby growth. But when the weather was cold I would find them in a sheltered spot, where meadowsweet, bayberry, hardhack, blueberry, huckleberry, and sweet-fern shrubs crowded each other until their interwoven branches held a mantle of snow. Beneath this shelter the birds seemed to find food, for they were busy at all hours of the day. I passed many hours watching them while they were thus secluded. Invariably I found them chirping to each other, and by listening closely I could catch snatches of song low and sweet. The last of March their low song could be heard in the shrub-lands. Later, when the song-sparrows and bluebirds swelled the chorus, the tree-sparrows silently disappeared.
FOX SPARROW.
April 3d, in the morning, I found a large flock of fox-sparrows in the dooryard. It is somewhat singular that for three years they appeared on the same day of the month. One year, April 3, 1887, I awoke in the morning to find three feet of snow in the dooryard, and I was obliged to shovel the snow away in order to feed the sparrows on bare ground. The fox-sparrow is two-thirds as large as a robin, and may be classed with the beautiful birds both in form and coloration. The sexes are alike. The color above is a rich rusty red, deepest and brightest on the wings, tail, and rump. The head, neck, and shoulders are a dark ash-color, more or less streaked with rusty red. Below the groundwork is snow-white, also thickly spotted with rust red. It could be called a wood-thrush by a careless observer. These birds are migrants with us, and pass through the State to their breeding-grounds in April, to return in October. It is usually six weeks from the time the first flock appears before the loiterers are all gone. The flock that called on me was a very large one, numbering over one hundred birds. Mornings they made the woods ring with their delightful music.
BAY-WINGED BUNTING.
When the birds returned in April and May, I found that I was a trespasser on the nesting-ground of many a woodland bird. Catbirds, towhee-buntings, robins, thrushes, and numerous warblers nested around my cabin.
By this time I had settled down to hermit-life in earnest. I had tried the experiment of "Nature versus Medicine," and Nature had triumphed. With good health, with strange birds and flowers to study and identify, I was content to spend a portion of my rescued life in Dame Nature's company.