The familiar adage, "Birds of a feather flock together," is not always true, for in winter birds of many a feather often flock together. It may be asked, Why? No doubt largely for social ends. Nothing is more evident to the observer than that most birds love company, and a good deal of it. Their genial conversation among themselves as they pursue their work and play fully proves that. Another object is undoubtedly protection. Birds have enemies, many of them, and when the woods are bare there is little chance for hiding, and so they must be especially on the alert. Let a hawk come gliding silently and slyly down the vale, and before he gets too near some keen little eye espies him, the alarm is sounded, and the whole company scurries into the thickets or trees for safety. The chickadees and titmice seem to be a sort of sentry for the company. A large part of the time in birdland is spent in solving the "bread-and-butter" problem. And how do our feathered citizens solve this important problem in the cold weather? Nature has spread many a banquet for her avian children, although they must usually rustle for their food just as we must in the human world. The nuthatches, titmice, woodpeckers, and brown creepers find larvae, grubs, borers, and insects' eggs in the crannies of the bark and other nooks and niches; the goldfinches find something to their taste in the buds of the trees and also make many a meal of thistle and sunflower seeds; the juncos and tree sparrows, forming a joint stock company in winter, rifle all kinds of weeds of their seedy treasures; the blue jays lunch on acorns and berries when they cannot find enough juicy grubs to satisfy their appetites, and so on through the whole list.