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His great broad shoulders were too large, but he could now strike downward, which gave him fourfold force; the snow-crust crumbled quickly, and in a little while he sprang from his icy prison once more free. But the young ones? Redruff flew to the nearest bank, hastily gathered a few red hips to Stay his gnawing hunger, then returned to the prison-drift and clucked and stamped.
All nature seemed to respond to this, the opening of the birds' New Year, and yet it was something within that chiefly seemed to move them. The chickadees went simply wild; they sang their 'Spring now, spring now now Spring now now, so persistently that one wondered how they found time to get a living. And Redruff felt it thrill him through and through.
The little family was scattered. Redruff himself flew on several long erratic night journeys. The impulse took him southward, but there lay the boundless stretch of Lake Ontario, so he turned again, and the waning of the Mad Moon found him once more in the Mud Creek Glen, but absolutely alone. Food grew scarce as winter wore on.
Then into the holes the wind blew the loose snow their pure white bed-*clothes, and thus tucked in they slept in comfort, for the snow is a warm wrap, and the air passes through it easily enough for breathing. This was the first night for them in a snowdrift, though it was an old story to Redruff, and next night they merrily dived again into bed, and the north wind tucked them in as before.
Redruff, yards behind, preening his feathers on a high log, had escaped the of the squirrel, whose strange perverted thirst for birdling blood was roused at what seemed so fair a chance. With murderous intent to cut off the hindmost straggler, he made a dash. Brownie could not have seen him until too late, but Redruff did.
When the snow melted in the spring their bodies came to view, skin, bones, and feathers nothing more. It was long before Redruff and Graytail fully recovered, but food and rest in plenty are sure cure-alls, and a bright, clear day in midwinter had the usual effect of setting the vigorous Redruff to drumming on the log.
When the snow melted in the spring their bodies came to view, skin, bones, and feathers nothing more. It was long before Redruff and Graytail fully recovered, but food and rest in plenty are sure cure-alls, and a bright clear day in midwinter had the usual effect of setting the vigorous Redruff to drumming on the log.
All nature seemed to respond to this, the opening of the birds' New Year, and yet it was something within that chiefly seemed to move them. The chickadees went simply wild; they sang their 'Spring now, spring now now Spring now now, so persistently that one wondered how they found time to get a living. And Redruff felt it thrill him through and through.
But on the fourth day, when he came and loudly called her, as of old, at their earliest tryst, he heard a sound in the bushes, as at first, and there was his missing Brownie bride with ten little peeping partridges following after. Redruff skimmed to her side, terribly frightening the bright-eyed downlings, and was just a little dashed to find the brood with claims far stronger than his own.
Redruff called again and again, till he was sure that all who could respond had come, and led them from that dreadful place, far, far away up-stream, where barb-wire fences and bramble thickets were found to offer a less grateful, but more reliable, shelter.
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