Going back to Kansas in winter, we note that the song sparrows, instead of remaining at one place, shifted about a good deal more than I had ever known them to do in the East. In December a pair found a dwelling in the weed clumps and brush heaps of a hollow a short distance from the Missouri River; but they soon deserted this spot, well sheltered as it was, none being seen there until the twenty-third of February. It surprised me to find another pair, and sometimes two pairs, in a thicket right on the bank of the wide river, where they were exposed to many of the winter blasts, especially those that swept down from the frozen north. Up in the deep, winding ravine they might have had excellent shelter and, so far as I could see, just as good feeding. However, I have long ago learned that there is no accounting for tastes in the bird realm any more than in the human realm. The hardiest of the _Mniotiltidae_ tribe are the myrtle warblers, which dapple the whitened edges of winter, both autumn and spring, with their golden rumps and amber brooches. Evidently these birds are shyer of the rigorous Ohio winters than of the more mild-mannered Kansas weather. In the former state I never saw a myrtle warbler after the first or second week in November, while in Kansas I came upon a flock of them in a wooded hollow by the river on the eighth of December, 1897, and then after a severe snowstorm had swept over the region from the western prairies. It seemed odd to find these dainty featherland blossoms when the whole country was covered with an ermine of snow. Then they disappeared, and I did not expect to see them again until the next spring; but on the fourteenth of February, which was a warm, vernal day thrust into the midst of winter, a flock of perhaps a dozen were flitting and chirping among the trees in the suburbs of the city, their hoarse little _chep_, always giving one the impression that the birds have taken a cold which has affected their vocal cords, sounding as familiar as of old. However, that very evening at dusk a black cloud, charged with electricity and bellowing with anger, came up out of the west like a young Lochinvar, and hurled a fierce storm across the hills and valleys, and the next day not a myrtle warbler was to be seen in all the countryside, though I tramped weary miles in search of them. The tempest had doubtless frightened them away to the suaver southland, from which they did not return until the following spring.