Where the path wound round the brow of the hill and the birches stand, their granaries still full of manna for the wandering bird, it seemed again as if my plunge into the white thicket had baptized me with invisibility. Of a sudden the air was full of the sound of wings and a flock of tree sparrows that must have numbered hundreds swung about my head and charged the snow-covered birches. Their dash shook some snow off and a few lighted, the others swinging off and having at them again. This time all found a footing and began to feed eagerly on the seeds from the tiny cones, scattering the birdlike scales in flocks far greater than their own. I had stopped stock-still at the sound of their wings, and they took no more notice of me than if I had been a snowed-up fence post or a pasture cedar. I tried to count them, but it was not easy. They seemed to twinkle from twig to twig like wavelets in the sun, and though their garb is sober their movements dazzle. Just as I would get a group on a single tree nicely tallied they flashed as one bird over to another tree, and mingling with their fellows there spoiled the count. I finally estimated, rather roughly, that there were three hundred of them, a half of a light brigade of as merry fellows as I wish to meet. They twittered jovially and musically among themselves, and now and then one essayed a little _sotto voce_ song which he never could finish because immediately his mouth was full. Once or twice some inaudible order seemed to thrill through the flock and they whirled upward as if a single muscle moved every wing, swung a short ellipse and lighted again, often in the same trees. As they worked into the birches almost over my very head I could see every marking on them; the black mandibles, the lower yellowish at the base, the reddish brown crown and the back streaked with the same color, with black, and a yellowish buff, the wing coverts tipped with white and the grayish white breast with what looks like an indistinct dark spot in the center. In a kaleidoscopic flock of three hundred or more it is not easy to give every bird even a passing glance, but I am quite sure there were other than tree sparrows present. I seemed to see birds without the faint dark spot in the breast. A few, I know, had a distinctly rufous tint there, and I fancy swamp sparrows, a few of which winter hereabouts, and perhaps other birds for sociability’s sake, were with my winter chippies.