But Winter hath his birds also; some of them such tiny bodies that
one wonders how they withstand the giant cold,--but they do. Birds
live on highly concentrated food,--the fine seeds of weeds and
grasses, and the eggs and larvae of insects. Such food must be very
stimulating and heating. A gizzard full of ants, for instance,
what spiced and seasoned extract is equal to that? Think what
virtue there must be in an ounce of gnats or mosquitoes, or in the
fine mysterious food the chickadee and the brown creeper gather in
the winter woods! It is doubtful if these birds ever freeze when
fuel enough can be had to keep their little furnaces going. And, as
they get their food entirely from the limbs and trunks of trees,
like the woodpeckers, their supply is seldom interfered with by the
snow. The worst annoyance must be the enameling of ice our winter
woods sometimes get.
Indeed, the food question seems to be the only serious one with the
birds. Give them plenty to eat, and no doubt the majority of them
would face our winters. I believe all the woodpeckers are winter
birds, except the high-hole or yellow-hammer, and he obtains the
greater part of his subsistence from the ground, and is not a
woodpecker at all in his habits of feeding. Were it not that it has
recourse to budding, the ruffed grouse would be obliged to migrate.
The quail--a bird, no doubt, equally hardy, but whose food is at
the mercy of the snow--is frequently cut off by our severe winters
when it ventures to brave them, which is not often.
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