Post 00377
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Woodpeckers and chickadees fare well despite any combination of extreme cold or deep snow. For the most part their food is the larvæ or the eggs that are deposited here and there in the tree by hundreds of kinds of insects and parasites which afflict trees. Nothing except a heavy sleet appears to make these food-deposits inaccessible.
Most birds spend the winter months in the South. But bad conditions may cause resident birds and animals to migrate, even in midwinter. Extremely unfavorable winters in British Columbia will cause many birds that regularly winter in that country to travel one or two thousand miles southward into the mountains of Colorado. Among the species which thus modify their habits are the red crossbill, the redpoll, the Lapland longspur, and the snowy owl.
After all, there are points in common between the animal life of the wild and the human life of civilization. Man and the wild animals alike find their chief occupation in getting food or in keeping out of danger. Change plays a large part in the life of each, and abnormal conditions affect them both. Let a great snow come in early winter, and both will have trouble, and both for a time may find the struggle for existence severe.