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. In the spring, before it leaves us, you will often hear its pretty little song. They are very much afraid of hawks, which make havoc among them at all times, but are fearless of their human--and especially of their humane--neighbors. Severe weather will often bring them to our very doors, and drive them into the outskirts of large cities. They are not only harmless, but very useful, for they devour innumerable seeds, and small insects with their larvae. Dear me! I could talk about birds all night." "And we could listen to you," chorused several voices. "I never before realized that we had such interesting winter neighbors and visitors," said Mrs. Clifford, and the lustre of her eyes and the faint bloom on her cheeks proved how deeply these little children of nature had enlisted her sympathies.