There had
been a very severe frost indeed, and the ice on that very morning was
quite thick, and the mud frozen hard enough to bear in places. But the
day was warm, bright, and genial, and, as he says, it came into his head
to see 'if cock was all gone,' and he went to what he knew to be the
latest ground, and found the very heaviest and finest birds he ever
saw!"
"Oh! that of course," said A---, "if he found any! Did you ever hear of
any other bird so late?"
"Yes! later--Mike Sandford, I think, but some Jerseyman or other--killed
a couple the day after Christmas day, on a long southern slope covered
with close dwarf cedars, and watered by some tepid springs, not far from
Pine Brook; and I have been told that the rabbit shooters, who always go
out in a party between Christmas and New Year's day, almost invariably
flush a bird or two there in mid-winter. The same thing is told of a
similar situation on the south-western slope of Staten Island; and I
believe truly in both instances. These, however, must, I think, be
looked upon not as cases of late emigration, but as rare instances of
the bird wintering here to the northward; which I doubt not a few do
annually.
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