By playing the spy on the birds we may learn much about their dietary habits. It is the first of January, and we are in a wooded hollow. There is a tufted titmouse; now he flits to the ground, picks up a tidbit, darts up to a twig, places his morsel under his claws, and proceeds to peck it to pieces. Our binocular shows that it is something yellow, but we cannot make out what it is. As we draw near, the bird seizes the fragment with his bill--perhaps he fears we will filch it from him--and flits about among the bushes on the steep bank, looking for a place to stow his "goody." Presently he pushes it into a crevice of the bark, hammers it tightly into place, and darts away with a merry chirp. We go to the spot and find that his hidden treasure is a grain of corn which he has purloined from the farmer's field on the slope. A few minutes later another tit--or the same one--slyly thrusts a morsel in among some leaves and twigs on the bank, even pulling the leaves down over it for a screen. It turns out to be a small acorn. That is one of Master Tit's ways--storing away provisions for a time of need. With his stout, conical beak he is able to break the shell of an acorn, peck a corn grain into swallowable bits, and tear open the toughest casing of a cocoon. He will even break the hard pits of the dogwood berry to secure the kernel within, the ground below often being strewn with the shell fragments. No danger of _Parus bicolor_ coming to want or going to the poorhouse. Another day the juncos are feeding on the seeds of the foxtail or pigeon grass, in an old orchard hard by the border of the woods. Sometimes they will make a dinner of berries--the kinds too that are regarded as poisonous to man--eating the juicy pulp in their dainty way, and dropping the seeds and rind to the ground. In the ravine furrowed out by a stream--this is down in one of the hollows--there is a perfect network of bird tracks in the snow beneath a clump of weed stalks. How dainty they are, like tiny chains, twisted and coiled about on the white surface! They were made by the juncos and tree sparrows, and on examining the seed pods and clusters above the bank we note that they are torn and ragged. The feathered banqueters have been here, and while they were industriously culling the pods, some of the seeds fell to the white carpet below, and these have been carefully picked up by the birds, as we see, so that nothing should be wasted.