Some of those that
escaped soon returned to their dead and wounded companions, and in their
solicitude would let me come very near, nor, unless driven away, would they
leave the injured ones until life was extinct. On another occasion I
brought some wounded ones home, and they ate as if starved, and soon became
very tame, alighting upon the table at mealtimes with a freedom from
ceremony which made it necessary to shut them up. They spent most of their
time among the house plants by the window, but toward spring the migratory
instinct asserted itself, and they became very restless, pecking at the
panes in their eagerness to get away. Soon afterward our little guests may
have been sporting on an arctic beach. An effort was once made in
Massachusetts to keep a wounded snow-bunting through the summer, but at
last it died from the heat. They are usually on the wing northward early in
March.
"The ordinary snow-bird is a very unpretentious and familiar little
friend. You can find him almost any day from the 1st of October to the
1st of May, and may know him by his grayish or ashy black head, back, and
wings, white body underneath from the middle of his breast backward, and
white external tail-feathers. He is said to be abundant all over America
east of the Black Hills, and breeds as far south as the mountains of
Virginia. There are plenty of them in summer along the Shawangunk range,
just west of us, in the Catskills, and so northward above the Arctic
Circle.
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