A common necessity and hardship hold the birds together in closer bonds so that they are impelled to consort in little roving bands--chickadees, creepers, kinglets and nuthatches, with often a single downy woodpecker accompanying them. If one chance to drop a morsel he will descend to the ground in search of it. He will not waste a spider's egg, so severe has been the lesson in economy. In zero weather the jay forgets to be saucy, and if there is a glaze on the snow, his native impertinence seems to ooze from him, and he becomes meek enough. Taking a weazened acorn from the tree, he holds the nut with one claw, and with vigorous taps of his bill tears it open. After extracting the frozen kernel, he drops the shell with a trace of his customary impertinence, as though feeling in somewhat better spirits for even this poor repast. A bone nailed to a tree is inducement for him to stay near the house, but not when he can get acorns readily. The board may fairly creak with its weight of partridgeberries, beechnuts and acorns, many of the latter crushed and available, and then in a night this plentiful feast is put out of sight under a six-inch layer of snow, to which the next day adds a glaze as if to seal irrevocably the doom of all bob-whites. A fast has been declared in effect, as peremptorily as by any medieval pope, to be broken only with an occasional leaf bud or the poor seeds of the ragweed. But the good sun is a trusty friend, and snow is only so much water. Presently berries and acorns again come into view. There is no more touching note in nature than the bob-white's at this season, as wandering together in the snow in search of their scanty fare they utter from time to time those low but distinct calls in which they seemingly express their solicitude. June itself has no sweeter song than this note of the winter woods, albeit it is such a plaintive one: mother-notes these, and child-voices of the hunted, full of a wild pathos,--tender voices which to us have been but the inarticulate cries of the dumb. The birds feed frequently on the crushed acorns lying in the path, and the jay at times participates to the extent of taking an acorn from the feast and eating it in the branches above, where he is a good sentinel, though prone to imitate the quailing of the red-shouldered hawk when the feast is at its height, to the general discomfiture and alarm of the diners below.