Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/405

Rh creak, difficult to trace home, which appeared to be answered by a baser and louder quah quah from the other. A downy woodpecker with the red spot on his hind head and his cassock open behind, showing his white robe, kept up an incessant loud tapping on another pitch pine. All at once, an active little brown creeper makes its appearance, a small, rather slender bird with a long tail and sparrow-colored back, and white beneath. It commences at the bottom of a tree and glides up very rapidly, then suddenly darts to the bottom of a new tree, and repeats the same movement, not resting long in one place, or on one tree. These birds are all feeding and flitting along together, but the chickadees are the most numerous and the most confiding. I notice that three of the four kinds thus associated, viz., the chickadee, nuthatch, and woodpecker, have black crowns, at least the first two, very conspicuous black caps. I cannot but think that this sprightly association and readiness to burst into song have to do with the prospect of spring, more light, and warmth, and thawing weather. The titmice keep up an incessant, faint, tinkling tchip; now and then one utters a brief day-day-day, and once or twice one commenced a gurgling strain quite novel, startling, and spring-like. Beside this I heard the distant crowing of cocks, and the divine