During the ice-harvesting on the river, I see them
flitting about among the gangs of men, or floating on the cakes of
ice, picking and scratching amid the droppings of the horses. They
love the stack and hay-barn in the distant field, where the farmer
fodders his cattle upon the snow, and every red-root, ragweed, or
pigweed left standing in the fall adds to their winter stores.
Though this bird, and one or two others, like the chickadee and
nuthatch, are more or less complacent and cheerful during the
winter, yet no bird can look our winters in the face and sing, as
do so many of the English birds. Several species in Great Britain,
their biographers tell us, sing the winter through, except during
the severest frosts; but with us, as far south as Virginia, and,
for aught I know, much farther, the birds are tuneless at this
season. The owls, even, do not hoot, nor the hawks scream.
Among the birds that tarry briefly with us in the spring on their
way to Canada and beyond, there is none I behold with so much
pleasure as the white-crowned sparrow. I have an eye out for him
all through April and the first week in May. He is the rarest and
most beautiful of the sparrow kind. He is crowned, as some hero or
victor in the games. He is usually in company with his congener,
the white-throated sparrow, but seldom more than in the proportion
of one to twenty of the latter. Contrasted with this bird, he looks
like its more fortunate brother, upon whom some special distinction
has been conferred, and who is, from the egg, of finer make and
quality.
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