John Smith probably heard the trumpet notes of the swans and saw the pattern of flight of the wild geese many times while on his "journie." He may have at some time seen one of the flightless Great Auks, swimming along down the Bay on its way South for the winter. Or he may have espied a heath hen on the shores of the Chesapeake. It is doubtful if he saw very many of the "Parrots" he mentioned. They were nocturnal creatures--small, swift, bright and beautiful. The passenger pigeons came in such flocks that their "weights brake down the limbs of large trees thereon they rested at night." There were many red birds to brighten the somber forest aisles. A little bird with white breast and black wings and back was called "snow-bird" by the English because it arrived at the first fall of snow. Captain Smith probably saw these in the vicinity of the Indian villages as they stayed near habitations. Turkeys were common in the reedy marshes. Flocks of four and five hundred were not unusual. These wild turkeys, early writers say, averaged forty pounds in weight. Quail and other common varieties of birds were abundant. _THE NOMINIES_ The Indians reckoned their years by winters, or cohonks, as they called them, "which was a name taken from the note of the wild geese, intimating so many times of the wild geese coming to them, which was every winter." There is no way of knowing whether it was the first or second moon of cohonks when John Smith and his captors arrived at the village of the Nominies, near the Potomac. It was so cold that Smith marveled at how some of the scantily clad warriors could endure it. He felt thankful that his own "gowne," which he had lost when he was captured, had been returned to him. The village must have appeared bleak and primitive, with its fifteen or twenty arbor-like dwellings scattered among the sparse trees, its barren garden plots, its cornfields, marked by last season's dead stalks and some burned-out tree stumps. As the procession approached there is little doubt that the scene came to life. The dogs were probably the first to join their howls with the death and victory yells of the warriors. These Indian dogs resembled a cross between a male wolf and an ordinary female dog. There were no other domestic animals, no beasts of burden, and no way to travel except by foot or canoe. The women and children who emerged from the mat-covered doors of their houses were dressed in garments made of the skins of wild beasts with the hair left on for winter. Some wore long cloaks, made of skins embroidered with beads, others wore beautiful mantles of turkey feathers. Some wore feathered headgear, and jewelry fashioned of shells, beads and copper. Smith wrote that the Indians gazed upon him "as he had beene a monster."