Bobbie didn’t want to go to school that morning, and he looked very cheerfully out upon the cloudy sky and falling flakes of snow, pretending to shiver a little when the angry gusts of wind blew the snow sharply into people’s faces.

“I guess it’s better for little boys like me to stay at home in such weather as this, mamma,” said he, all the while hoping the snow would soon be deep enough for him to ride down the hill on his sled.

Before his mamma could reply Bobbie gave a cry of delight which drew her at once to the window.

As from the snow clouds, on bold and rapid wing, came whirling down an immense flock of birds, white, streaked with gray and brown, chirping, calling to one another, the whole flock settling upon the open places in a field in front of Bobbie’s house.

“Oh, the dear little things,” said Bobbie, “they looked like little white angels dropping out of the clouds.”

“Those are our winter neighbors,” said his mamma, “the Snow Buntings or Snowflakes—they visit us only in winter, their summer homes being away up North near the Arctic Circle in the region of perpetual snow.”

“Do they build their nests in trees?” asked Bobbie, who never tired hearing about the birds.

“There are no trees in that bleak region, only scrubby bushes,” was the answer. “They build a thick, deep grassy nest, well lined with rabbit fur, or Snow Owl feathers, which they tuck under a ledge of rock or bunch of grass.”

“They chirrup just like sparrows,” reflected Bobbie, “can they sing?”

“They only sing when up in their Northern home. There a male Snowflake will sing as merrily as his cousin the Goldfinch.”

“They look like Sparrows, too,” said Bobbie, “only whiter and softer, I think.”

“In the summer they are nearly all white, the brown edges having worn away, leaving them pure black and white. They are very shy and suspicious, and at the least sound you will see them all whirl aloft braving the blasts of winter like little heroes.”

“Well,” said Bobbie, after a while, “if those little soft white birds can go about in such weather, I guess I can too,” and in a few minutes with high rubber boots, and a fur cap drawn over his ears, off trudged Bobbie like another little hero to school.