It is not often you catch a bird in the singing mood in the winter; yet on December 19, a purple finch was piping quite a vivacious tune in the woods. Of course, he was not in his best voice, but his performance was good enough to entitle it to the name of bird music. The finches, by the way, are strong flyers. At your approach, instead of flitting off a little way, perhaps to the next tree or bush, after the manner of the tits and nuthatches and many other birds, the finches tarry in the tree-tops as long as they deem it safe, then take to wing and fly to a distant part of the woods, and you may not see them again that day. However, they may come back to you after a while, as if they relished your company. The goldfinches are also long-distance flyers, not flitters. Usually they give some signal of their presence, either by their vivacious "pe-chick-o-pe" or their childlike and semi-musical calls; but there are times when a good-sized flock of them will suddenly appear in the tree-tops above you, and you cannot tell when they arrived, for you did not see them there at all a few minutes before. WAYSIDE OBSERVATIONS The previous chapter closed with some notes on the behavior of birds in the winter time. My home rambling grounds in northeastern Kansas were extremely undulating, cut up into ridges and ravines, most of which were covered with a thick growth of weeds, bushes, and timber. In some places the thickets were so dense as to be almost impenetrable. This diversity in the topography of the country afforded considerable variety in the faunal life of the region. For example, in bitter winter weather most of the birds would hug the sheltered hollows, where they found coverts in the copses, and would avoid the hilltops, which were exposed to the nipping winds blowing from the western prairies. As the spring approached, bringing blander weather, they gradually moved up the hillsides, many of them finding billsome seeds and berries on the summits. However, note a difference in the temperament of individuals of the same species. On the bitterest days of winter I would sometimes leave the sheltered hollows and lowlands and clamber to the summits of the wind-swept hills, and, oddly enough, on the exposed heights I occasionally flushed a solitary bird, which would spring up from the weeds or copses and dart away with a frightened cry. More than likely it would be an individual of the same species as some of the more socially disposed tenants of the lower grounds, but for some reason, what, I know not, it preferred the life of an anchorite; it did not care for society, even of its own kith. Invariably, too, these feathered recluses were extremely shy, scuttling away like frightened deer as I approached their cloistered haunts.