Part 3

A long period of cold freezes the marshes to the bottom, and compels the muskrats to seek the bushy banks, or to take shelter under the corn-shacks or hay-stacks in the fields. Poor things, they of all animals endure hardship; for one can often track them to where they have scratched away the snow while searching for grass-blades, roots, acorns or apples that have fallen and decayed.

Notes

January Thirteenth

When the wind sweeps over the fields and the cold nips your ears, you are apt to come suddenly upon a flock of snowflakes, or snow buntings. Hastening back and forth among the weeds along the bank, they reach up and pick the seeds and crack them in their strong bills. They, too, like the horned larks, have come from the North, and in March will return again.

January Fourteenth

You cannot show your friendship for our native birds in any better way than by being an enemy of the English sparrow. He is a quarrelsome little pest and seems to be getting more pugnacious every year. He not only fights the other birds, but he has been seen to throw their eggs to the ground and to tear their nests to pieces. Be careful that he does not steal the lunches that you have provided for other birds.

January Fifteenth

How do the insects pass the winter? Much in the same way that our plants and flowers do. As the cold weather kills or withers the plants, leaving their seeds and roots to send forth shoots next summer, so most of the insects die, leaving their eggs, their larvæ, and their pupa to be nourished into life by the warm days of spring.

Notes

January Sixteenth

Insects are more dependent on climatic conditions than are birds or mammals. Nevertheless, even on the coldest days of winter, one may tear away the bark of a forest tree and find spiders which show signs of life, and if kept in a warm room for a few hours, they become quite active.

January Seventeenth

The life of an insect which undergoes what is termed a "complete transformation," is divided into four stages: First, the egg; second, the larva; third, the pupa or chrysalis, and fourth, the adult insect or imago. Each of these changes is so complete and different from any of the others, that the insect never appears twice in an easily recognized form.

January Eighteenth

Let us take the common house-fly for an example, and follow it through the changes that it must undergo before becoming adult. The mother fly deposits more than a hundred eggs at a time, in a dump at the back of the stable. The eggs hatch in half a day.

Notes

January Nineteenth

Now we have the larvæ (maggots), as the second stage is called. These little creatures are white and grow very fast, shedding their skin several times before they take on a different form, which they do at the end of three or four days.

January Twentieth

The third, or pupa, stage is reached when a tiny brown capsule-like formation has taken the place of the maggot. In this stage no movement is apparent, nor is any food taken; there is only a quiet waiting for the final change, which comes in about five days, when, out from one end of a chrysalis, a fully developed fly appears.

January Twenty-first

The wonderful changes just described take place throughout most of the insect world. The larvæ of butterflies and moths are caterpillars; the larvæ of June bugs or May beetles are grubs. Some moth and butterfly caterpillars weave silken cocoons about themselves; some make cocoons from leaves or tiny chips of wood; some utilize the hair from their own bodies, while others attach themselves to the under side of boards, stones, and stumps, where, after shedding their skin, they hang like mummies until spring calls them back to life.

Notes

January Twenty-second

Bird lovers often make the mistake of putting out nesting-boxes too late in the season. They forget that most of the birds begin to look for nesting-sites as soon as they arrive in the spring, therefore the boxes should be in place before the prospective tenants appear. March first is none too early for many localities.

January Twenty-third

A natural cavity in a root, cut from a rustic stump, or a short length of hollow limb, with a two-inch augur hole bored near the top, and a piece of board nailed over each end, makes an artistic nesting-place for birds. Some persons prefer a miniature cottage with compartments and doors; though birds will often nest in them, the simpler and more natural the home, the more suited it is to their wants.

January Twenty-fourth