At sunrise, the blue-jays and other birds gathered about the door and garden, to pick the dry seeds that the weeds were shedding on the earth. What are snow birds? Where do they live? See them chirping in yonder ray of sunlight--darting hither and thither, like motes in a beam of light. See them go whirling through the tempest, like angel spirits, beautiful in the very midst of the storm. What are they? Do they sleep on the wings of the wind, or hide themselves in a scroll of snow? How is it that these little singing harps live on amid such dreary scenes? The blue-jays, however, were very petulant. Their gorgeous summer plumage was exceedingly mussed, and they went about from bush to bush, and tree to tree, screaming and fretting at each other and themselves. They acted like so many Siberian prisoners, who were forced to brave the blasts as the penalty of some crime they had committed.
Sometimes, a keen, frosty night would be succeeded by a still, sunny day, when the eaves pattered their sleepy music, and the cows strayed away into the forest, as though they smelt approaching spring--when the cats flew out of the house, and chased each other up into the trees, and the dog went away by himself, wandering along the river-banks for reasons known only to himself.
These were visiting days, holidays, jubilee days, for those animals that were housed in trees, and burrowed in the earth. Go forth into the woods. You may, on such a day, see the squirrel push out his head from the door of his castle, where he has been confined for a month, and cautiously look over the landscape--then dart in again. Soon he pushes himself out farther, and farther, and timidly glides down to the foot of the tree. Then he tries the snow, and then again, and finally goes cantering to the nearest stump, and chirruping, up he goes with a flirt, throws his tail over his back, sits down, and breaks forth into a burst of song.
Do you believe that squirrel remembers his last summer rambles in those woods--yon rivulet where he drank, now sleeping beneath its silver frost-work, and chanting its low, muffled dirge--yon icy knoll, that stood, last June, a pyramid of flowers--yon hickory where he harvested his nuts? Is his song for the present or the past?