United States or Liberia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


In our latitude, after the first flight of snow has covered the ground, the winter-birds, pressed by hunger, are compelled to make extensive forages in quest of food.

To those who look upon Nature with the feelings of a poet or a painter, we need not speak of the value of the winter-birds as enliveners of the landscape.

As they subsist on the smaller kinds of fishes, they would perish with hunger, after the waters are frozen, if they did not migrate. But the Kingfisher often remains on the coast during open winters, and may therefore be considered one of our winter-birds. This bird is the celebrated Alcedo, or Halcyon, of the ancients, who attributed to him many apparently supernatural powers.

It was during that season I experienced the full power of the winter-birds to give life and beauty to the scenes of Nature; for, though not one was heard to sing, they seemed as active and as full of merriment as in the early summer. The birds that most particularly attracted my attention at this time were the Woodpeckers, of which several species were very numerous.

The winter-birds, though they do not sing, are, on the same account, particularly interesting. The Chicadees and the little speckled Woodpeckers, that tarry with us in midwinter, and make the still cold days lively and cheerful by their merry voices, are, in animated nature, what flowers would be in inanimate nature, if they were found blooming under the snow.