[Illustration: [Signature: John Burroughs]] The Riverside Literature Series THE WIT OF A DUCK AND OTHER PAPERS BY JOHN BURROUGHS The Riverside Press Cambridge HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO CONTENTS I. THE WIT OF A DUCK 5 II. AN ASTONISHED PORCUPINE 10 III. HUMAN TRAITS IN THE ANIMALS 14 IV. THE DOWNY WOODPECKER 22 V. A BARN-DOOR OUTLOOK 27 VI. WILD LIFE IN WINTER 47 VII. BIRD LIFE IN WINTER 54 VIII. A BIRDS' FREE LUNCH 63 IX. BIRD-NESTING TIME 70 X. A BREATH OF APRIL 77 XI. THE WOODCOCK'S EVENING HYMN 83 XII. THE COMING OF SUMMER 89 COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY E. H. HARRIMAN COPYRIGHT, 1904, 1905, 1908, AND 1913 BY JOHN BURROUGHS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A JOHN BURROUGHS John Burroughs was born April 3, 1837, in a little farmhouseamong the Catskill Mountains. He was, like most other countryboys, acquainted with all the hard work of farm life and enjoyedall the pleasures of the woods and streams. His family was poor, and he was forced at an early date to earn his own living, whichhe did by teaching school. At the age of twenty-five he chancedto read a volume of Audubon, and this proved the turning-point inhis life, inspiring a new zeal for the study of birds andenabling him to see with keener eyes not only the birdsthemselves, but their nests and surroundings, and to hear withmore discernment the peculiar calls and songs of each. About the time of the Civil War he accepted a clerkship in theTreasury Department at Washington, where he remained nine years. It was here that he wrote his first book, "Wake-Robin, " and apart of the second, "Winter Sunshine. " He says: "It enabled me tolive over again the days I had passed with the birds and in thescenes of my youth. I wrote the book sitting at a desk in frontof an iron wall. I was the keeper of a vault in which manymillions of banknotes were stored. During my long periods ofleisure I took refuge in my pen. How my mind reacted from theiron wall in front of me, and sought solace in memories of thebirds and of summer fields and woods!" In 1873 he exchanged theiron wall in front of his desk for a large window overlooking theHudson, and the vault for a vineyard. Since then he has lived onthe banks of the Hudson in the midst of the woods and fieldswhich he most enjoys, adding daily to his fund of informationregarding the ways of nature. His close habit of observation, coupled with his rare gift of imparting to the reader somethingof his own interest and enthusiasm, has enabled him to interpretnature in a most delightfully fascinating way. He gives the keyto his own success when he says, "If I name every bird I see inmy walk, describe its color and ways, etc. , give a lot of factsor details about the bird, it is doubtful if my reader isinterested. But if I relate the bird in some way to human life, to my own life, --show what it is to me and what it is in thelandscape and the season, --then do I give my reader a live birdand not a labeled specimen. " Mr. Burroughs thoroughly enjoys the country life, and in hisstrolls through the woods or in the fields he is always ready tostop and investigate anything new or interesting that he maychance to see among the birds, or squirrels, or bees, or insects. His long life of observation and study has developed remarkablyquick eyesight and a keen sense of hearing, which enable him todetect all the activities of nature and to place a correctinterpretation upon them to an extent that few other naturalistshave realized. When he writes he is simply living over again the experienceswhich have delighted him, and the best explanation of the rarepleasure that is imparted by his writings to every reader isgiven in his own words: "I cannot bring myself to think of mybooks as 'works, ' because so little 'work' has gone to the makingof them. It has all been play. I have gone a-fishing or campingor canoeing, and new literary material has been the result. . . . The writing of the book was only a second and finer enjoyment ofmy holiday in the fields or woods; not till the writing did itreally seem to strike in and become part of me"; and so thereader seems to participate in this "finer enjoyment" of aholiday in the fields or woods, walking arm-in-arm with thenaturalist, feeling the influence of his poetic temperament, learning something new at every turn, and sharing the master'senthusiasm. I THE WIT OF A DUCK The homing instinct in birds and animals is one of their mostremarkable traits: their strong local attachments and their skillin finding their way back when removed to a distance. It seemsat times as if they possessed some extra sense--the homesense--which operates unerringly. I saw this illustrated onespring in the case of a mallard drake. My son had two ducks, and to mate with them he procured a drakeof a neighbor who lived two miles south of us. He brought thedrake home in a bag. The bird had no opportunity to see the roadalong which it was carried, or to get the general direction, except at the time of starting, when the boy carried him a fewrods openly. He was placed with the ducks in a spring run, under a tree in asecluded place on the river slope, about a hundred yards from thehighway. The two ducks treated him very contemptuously. It waseasy to see that the drake was homesick from the first hour, andhe soon left the presence of the scornful ducks. Then we shut the three in the barn together, and kept them therea day and a night. Still the friendship did not ripen; the ducksand the drake separated the moment we let them out. Left tohimself, the drake at once turned his head homeward, and startedup the hill for the highway. Then we shut the trio up together again for a couple of days, butwith the same results as before. There seemed to be but onethought in the mind of the drake, and that was home. Several times we headed him off and brought him back, tillfinally on the third or fourth day I said to my son, "If thatdrake is really bound to go home, he shall have an opportunity tomake the trial, and I will go with him to see that he has fairplay. " We withdrew, and the homesick mallard started up throughthe currant patch, then through the vineyard toward the highwaywhich he had never seen. When he reached the fence, he followed it south till he came tothe open gate, where he took to the road as confidently as if heknew for a certainty that it would lead him straight to his mate. How eagerly he paddled along, glancing right and left, andincreasing his speed at every step! I kept about fifty yardsbehind him. Presently he met a dog; he paused and eyed the animalfor a moment, and then turned to the right along a road whichdiverged just at that point, and which led to the railroadstation. I followed, thinking the drake would soon lose hisbearings, and get hopelessly confused in the tangle of roads thatconverged at the station. But he seemed to have an exact map of the country in his mind; hesoon left the station road, went around a house, through avineyard, till he struck a stone fence that crossed his course atright angles; this he followed eastward till it was joined by abarbed wire fence, under which he passed and again entered thehighway he had first taken. Then down the road he paddled withrenewed confidence: under the trees, down a hill, through agrove, over a bridge, up the hill again toward home. Presently he found his clue cut in two by the railroad track;this was something he had never before seen; he paused, glancedup it, then down it, then at the highway across it, and quicklyconcluded this last was his course. On he went again, faster andfaster. He had now gone half the distance, and was getting tired. Alittle pool of water by the roadside caught his eye. Into it heplunged, bathed, drank, preened his plumage for a few moments, and then started homeward again. He knew his home was on theupper side of the road, for he kept his eye bent in thatdirection, scanning the fields. Twice he stopped, stretchedhimself up, and scanned the landscape intently; then on again. Itseemed as if an invisible cord was attached to him, and he wasbeing pulled down the road. Just opposite a farm lane which led up to a group of farmbuildings, and which did indeed look like his home lane, hepaused and seemed to be debating with himself. Two women justthen came along; they lifted and flirted their skirts, for it wasraining, and this disturbed him again and decided him to take tothe farm lane. Up the lane he went, rather doubtingly, I thought. In a few moments it brought him into a barnyard, where a groupof hens caught his eye. Evidently he was on good terms with hensat home, for he made up to these eagerly as if to tell them histroubles; but the hens knew not ducks; they withdrew suspiciously, then assumed a threatening attitude, till one old "dominic" put upher feathers and charged upon him viciously. Again he tried to make up to them, quacking softly, and again hewas repulsed. Then the cattle in the yard spied this strangecreature and came sniffing toward it, full of curiosity. The drake quickly concluded he had got into the wrong place, andturned his face southward again. Through the fence he went into aplowed field. Presently another stone fence crossed his path;along this he again turned toward the highway. In a few minuteshe found himself in a corner formed by the meeting of two stonefences. Then he turned appealingly to me, uttering the soft noteof the mallard. To use his wings never seemed to cross his mind. Well, I am bound to confess that I helped the drake over thewall, but I sat him down in the road as impartially as I could. How well his pink feet knew the course! How they flew up theroad! His green head and white throat fairly twinkled under thelong avenue of oaks and chestnuts. At last we came in sight of the home lane, which led up to thefarmhouse one hundred or more yards from the road. I was curiousto see if he would recognize the place. At the gate leading intothe lane he paused. He had just gone up a lane that looked likethat and had been disappointed. What should he do now? Truthcompels me to say that he overshot the mark: he kept onhesitatingly along the highway. It was now nearly night. I felt sure the duck would soon discoverhis mistake, but I had not time to watch the experiment further. I went around the drake and turned him back. As he neared thelane this time he seemed suddenly to see some familiar landmark, and he rushed up it at the top of his speed. His joy andeagerness were almost pathetic. I followed close. Into the house yard he rushed with upliftedwings, and fell down almost exhausted by the side of his mate. Ahalf hour later the two were nipping the grass together in thepasture, and he, I have no doubt, was eagerly telling her thestory of his adventures. II AN ASTONISHED PORCUPINE One summer, while three young people and I were spending anafternoon upon a mountaintop, our dogs treed a porcupine. At mysuggestion the young man climbed the tree--not a large one--toshake the animal down. I wished to see what the dogs would dowith him, and what the "quill-pig" would do with the dogs. As theclimber advanced the rodent went higher, till the limb he clungto was no larger than one's wrist. This the young man seized andshook vigorously. I expected to see the slow, stupid porcupinedrop, but he did not. He only tightened his hold. The climbertightened his hold, too, and shook the harder. Still the bundleof quills did not come down, and no amount of shaking could bringit down. Then I handed a long pole up to the climber, and hetried to punch the animal down. This attack in the rear wasevidently a surprise; it produced an impression different fromthat of the shaking. The porcupine struck the pole with his tail, put up the shield of quills upon his back, and assumed his bestattitude of defense. Still the pole persisted in its persecution, regardless of the quills; evidently the animal was astonished: hehad never had an experience like this before; he had now met afoe that despised his terrible quills. Then he began to backrapidly down the tree in the face of his enemy. The young man'ssweetheart stood below, a highly interested spectator. "Look out, Sam, he's coming down!" "Be quick, he's gaining on you!" "Hurry, Sam!" Sam came as fast as he could, but he had to look out forhis footing, and his antagonist did not. Still, he reached theground first, and his sweetheart breathed more easily. It lookedas if the porcupine reasoned thus: "My quills are useless againsta foe so far away; I must come to close quarters with him. " But, of course, the stupid creature had no such mental process, andformed no such purpose. He had found the tree unsafe, and hisinstinct now was to get to the ground as quickly as possible andtake refuge among the rocks. As he came down I hit him a slightblow over the nose with a rotten stick, hoping only to confusehim a little, but much to my surprise and mortification hedropped to the ground and rolled down the hill dead, havingsuccumbed to a blow that a woodchuck or a coon would hardly haveregarded at all. Thus does the easy, passive mode of defense ofthe porcupine not only dull his wits, but it makes frail andbrittle the thread of his life. He has had no struggles orbattles to harden and toughen him. That blunt nose of his is as tender as a baby's, and he issnuffed out by a blow that would hardly bewilder for a moment anyother forest animal, unless it be the skunk, another sluggishnon-combatant of our woodlands. Immunity from foes, from effort, from struggle is always purchased with a price. Certain of our natural history romancers have taken libertieswith the porcupine in one respect: they have shown him made upinto a ball and rolling down a hill. One writer makes him do thisin a sportive mood; he rolls down a long hill in the woods, andat the bottom he is a ragged mass of leaves which his quills haveimpaled--an apparition that nearly frightened a rabbit out of itswits. Let any one who knows the porcupine try to fancy itperforming a feat like this! Another romancer makes his porcupine roll himself into a ballwhen attacked by a panther, and then on a nudge from his enemyroll down a snowy incline into the water. I believe the littleEuropean hedgehog can roll itself up into something like a ball, but our porcupine does not. I have tried all sorts of tricks withhim, and made all sorts of assaults upon him, at different times, and I have never yet seen him assume the globular form. It wouldnot be the best form for him to assume, because it would partlyexpose his vulnerable under side. The one thing the porcupineseems bent upon doing at all times is to keep right side up withcare. His attitude of defense is crouching close to the ground, head drawn in and pressed down, the circular shield of largequills upon his back opened and extended as far as possible, andthe tail stretched back rigid and held close upon the ground. "Now come on, " he says, "if you want to. " The tail is his weaponof active defense; with it he strikes upward like lightning, anddrives the quills into whatever they touch. In his chapter called"In Panoply of Spears, " Mr. Roberts paints the porcupine withouttaking any liberties with the creature's known habits. Heportrays one characteristic of the porcupine very felicitously:"As the porcupine made his resolute way through the woods, themanner of his going differed from that of all the other kindredsof the wild. He went not furtively. He had no particularobjection to making a noise. He did not consider it necessary tostop every little while, stiffen himself to a monument ofimmobility, cast wary glances about the gloom, and sniff the airfor the taint of enemies. He did not care who knew of his coming, and he did not greatly care who came. Behind his panoply ofbiting spears he felt himself secure, and in that security hemoved as if he held in fee the whole green, shadowy, perilouswoodland world. " III HUMAN TRAITS IN THE ANIMALS That there is a deal of human nature in the lower animals is avery obvious fact; or we may turn the proposition around and say, with equal truth, that there is a deal of animal nature in ushumans. If man is of animal origin, as we are now all coming tobelieve, how could this be otherwise? We are all made of onestuff, the functions of our bodies are practically the same, andthe workings of our instincts and our emotional and involuntarynatures are in many ways identical. I am not now thinking of anypart or lot which the lower orders may have in our intellectualor moral life, a point upon which, as my reader may know, Idiverge from the popular conception of these matters, but of theextent in which they share with us the ground or basement storyof the house of life--certain fundamental traits, instincts, andblind gropings. Man is a bundle of instincts, impulses, predilections, race andfamily affinities, and antagonisms, supplemented by the gift ofreason--a gift of which he sometimes makes use. The animal is abundle of instincts, impulses, affinities, appetites, and racetraits, without the extra gift of reason. The animal has sensation, perception, and power of association, and these suffice it. Man has sensation, perception, memory, comparison, ideality, judgment, and the like, which suffice him. There can be no dispute, I suppose, as to certain emotions andimpulses being exclusively human, such as awe, veneration, humility, reverence, self-sacrifice, shame, modesty, and manyothers that are characteristic of what we call our moral nature. Then there are certain others that we share with our dumbneighbors--curiosity, jealousy, joy, anger, sex love, thematernal and paternal instinct, the instinct of fear, ofself-preservation, and so forth. There is at least one instinct or faculty that the animals havefar more fully developed than we have--the homing instinct, whichseems to imply a sense of direction that we have not. We havelost it because we have other faculties to take its place, justas we have lost that acute sense of smell that is so marvelouslydeveloped in many of the four-footed creatures. It has long beena contention of mine that the animals all possess the knowledgeand intelligence which is necessary to their self-preservationand the perpetuity of the species, and that is about all. Thishoming instinct seems to be one of the special powers that theanimals cannot get along without. If the solitary wasp, forinstance, could not find her way back to that minute spot in thefield where her nest is made, a feat quite impossible to you orme, so indistinguishable to our eye is that square inch of groundin which her hole is made; or if the fur seal could not in springretrace its course to the islands upon which it breeds, through athousand leagues of pathless sea water, how soon the tribe ofeach would perish! The animal is, like the skater, a marvel of skill in one fieldor element, or in certain fixed conditions, while man's variedbut less specialized powers make him at home in many fields. Someof the animals outsee man, outsmell him, outhear him, outrun him, outswim him, because their lives depend more upon these specialpowers than his does; but he can outwit them all because he hasthe resourcefulness of reason, and is at home in many differentfields. The condor "houses herself with the sky" that she mayhave a high point of observation for the exercise of thatmarvelous power of vision. An object in the landscape beneaththat would escape the human eye is revealed to the soaringbuzzard. It stands these birds in hand to see thus sharply; theirdinner depends upon it. If mine depended upon such powers ofvision, in the course of time I might come to possess it. I amnot certain but that we have lost another power that I suspectthe lower animals possess--something analogous to, or identicalwith, what we call telepathy--power to communicate without words, or signs, or signals. There are many things in animal life, suchas the precise concert of action among flocks of birds and fishesand insects, and, at times, the unity of impulse among landanimals, that give support to the notion that the wild creaturesin some way come to share one another's mental or emotionalstates to a degree and in a way that we know little or nothingof. It seems important to their well-being that they should havesuch a gift--something to make good to them the want of languageand mental concepts, and insure unity of action in the tribe. Their seasonal migrations from one part of the country to anotherare no doubt the promptings of an inborn instinct called intoaction in all by the recurrence of the same outward conditions;but the movements of the flock or the school seem to imply acommon impulse that is awakened on the instant in each member ofthe flock. The animals have no systems or methods in the sensethat we have, but like conditions with them always awaken likeimpulses, and unity of action is reached without outwardcommunication. The lower animals seem to have certain of our foibles, andantagonisms, and unreasoning petulancies. I was reminded of thisin reading the story President Roosevelt tells of a Colorado bearhe once watched at close quarters. The bear was fussing around acarcass of a deer, preparatory to burying it. "Once the bear losthis grip and rolled over during the course of some movement, andthis made him angry and he struck the carcass a savage whack, just as a pettish child will strike a table against which it hasknocked itself. " Who does not recognize that trait in himself:the disposition to vent one's anger upon inanimate things--uponhis hat, for instance, when the wind snatches it off his head anddrops it in the mud or leads him a chase for it across thestreet; or upon the stick that tripped him up, or the beamagainst which he bumped his head? We do not all carry our angerso far as did a little three-year-old maiden I heard of, who, ontripping over the rockers of her chair, promptly picked herselfup, and carrying the chair to a closet, pushed it in andspitefully shut the door on it, leaving it alone in the dark torepent its wrong-doing. Our blind, unreasoning animal anger is excited by whateveropposes or baffles us. Of course, when we yield to the anger, wedo not act as reasonable beings, but as the unreasoning animals. It is hard for one to control this feeling when the oppositioncomes from some living creature, as a balky horse or a kickingcow, or a pig that will not be driven through the open gate. WhenI was a boy, I once saw one of my uncles kick a hive of bees offthe stand and halfway across the yard, because the bees stung himwhen he was about to "take them up. " I confess to a fair share ofthis petulant, unreasoning animal or human trait, whichever itmay be, myself. It is difficult for me to refrain from jumpingupon my hat when, in my pursuit of it across the street, it hasescaped me two or three times just as I was about to put my handupon it, and as for a balky horse or a kicking cow, I never couldtrust myself to deal reasonably with them. Follow this feelingback a few thousand years, and we reach the time when ourforbears looked upon all the forces in nature as in leagueagainst them. The anger of the gods as shown in storms and windsand pestilence and defeat is a phase of the same feeling. A wildanimal caught in a steel trap vents its wrath upon the bushes andsticks and trees and rocks within its reach. Something is toblame, something baffles it and gives it pain, and its teethand claws seek every near object. Of course it is a blindmanifestation of the instinct of self-defense, just as was myuncle's act when he kicked over his beehive, or as is theangler's impatience when his line gets tangled and his hook getsfast. If the Colorado bear caught his fish with a hook and line, how many times would he lose his temper during the day! I do not think many animals show their kinship to us byexhibiting the trait I am here discussing. Probably birds do notshow it at all. I have seen a nest-building robin baffled anddelayed, day after day, by the wind that swept away the strawsand rubbish she carried to the top of a timber under my porch. But she did not seem to lose her temper. She did not spitefullyreclaim the straws and strings that would persist in falling tothe porch floors, but cheerfully went away in search of more. SoI have seen a wood thrush time after time carrying the same pieceof paper to a branch from which the breeze dislodged it, withoutany evidence of impatience. It is true that when a string or ahorsehair which a bird is carrying to its nest gets caught in abranch, the bird tugs at it again and again to free it fromentanglement, but I have never seen any evidence of impatience orspite against branch or string, as would be pretty sure to be thecase did my string show such a spirit of perversity. Why your dogbites the stone which you roll for him when he has found it, orgnaws the stick you throw, is not quite clear, unless it be fromthe instinct of his primitive ancestors to bite and kill the gamerun down in the chase. Or is the dog trying to punish the stickor stone because it will not roll or fly for him? The dog isoften quick to resent a kick, be it from man or beast, but I havenever known him to show anger at the door that slammed to and hithim. Probably, if the door held him by his tail or his limb, itwould quickly receive the imprint of his teeth. In reading Bostock on the "Training of Wild Animals, " myattention was arrested by the remark that his performing lionsand tigers are liable to suffer from "stage fright, " likeordinary mortals, but that "once thoroughly accustomed to thestage, they seem to find in it a sort of intoxication well knownto a species higher in the order of nature;" and furthermore, that "nearly all trainers assert that animals are affected by theattitude of an audience, that they are stimulated by the applauseof an enthusiastic house, and perform indifferently before a coldaudience. " If all this is not mere fancy, but is really a factcapable of verification, it shows another human trait in animalsthat one would not expect to find there. Bears seem to show morehuman nature than most other animals. Bostock says that theyevidently love to show off before an audience: "The conceit andgood opinion of themselves, which some performing bears have, isabsolutely ridiculous. " A trainer once trained a young bear toclimb a ladder and set free the American flag, and so proud didthe bear become of his accomplishment, that whenever any one waslooking on he would go through the whole performance by himself, "evidently simply for the pleasure of doing it. " Of course thereis room for much fancy here on the part of the spectator, butbears are in so many ways--in their play, in their boxing, intheir walking--such grotesque parodies of man, that one isinduced to accept the trainer's statements as containing ameasure of truth. IV THE DOWNY WOODPECKER I It always gives me a little pleasurable emotion when I see in theautumn woods where the downy woodpecker has just been excavatinghis winter quarters in a dead limb or tree-trunk. I am walkingalong a trail or wood-road when I see something like coarse newsawdust scattered on the ground. I know at once what carpenterhas been at work in the trees overhead, and I proceed toscrutinize the trunks and branches. Presently I am sure to detecta new round hole about an inch and a half in diameter on theunder side of a dead limb, or in a small tree-trunk. This isDowny's cabin, where he expects to spend the winter nights, and apart of the stormy days, too. When he excavates it in an upright tree-trunk, he usuallychooses a spot beneath a limb; the limb forms a sort of rudehood, and prevents the rainwater from running down into it. It isa snug and pretty retreat, and a very safe one, I think. I doubtwhether the driving snow ever reaches him, and no predatory owlcould hook him out with its claw. Near town or in town theEnglish sparrow would probably drive him out; but in the woods, Ithink, he is rarely molested, though in one instance I knew himto be dispossessed by a flying squirrel. On stormy days I have known Downy to return to his chamber inmid-afternoon, and to lie abed there till ten in the morning. I have no knowledge that any other species of our woodpeckersexcavate these winter quarters, but they probably do. Thechickadee has too slender a beak for such work, and usuallyspends the winter nights in natural cavities or in the abandonedholes of Downy. II As I am writing here in my study these November days, a downywoodpecker is excavating a chamber in the top of a chestnut postin the vineyard a few yards below me, or rather, he is enlarginga chamber which he or one of his fellows excavated last fall; heis making it ready for his winter quarters. A few days ago I sawhim enlarging the entrance and making it a more complete circle. Now he is in the chamber itself working away like a carpenter. Ihear his muffled hammering as I approach cautiously on the grass. I make no sound and the hammering continues till I have stood fora moment beside the post, then it suddenly stops and Downy's headappears at the door. He glances at me suspiciously and thenhurries away in much excitement. How did he know there was some one so near? As birds have nosense of smell it must have been by some other means. I return tomy study and in about fifteen minutes Downy is back at work. Again I cautiously and silently approach, but he is now morealert, and when I am the width of three grape rows from him herushes out of his den and lets off his sharp, metallic cry as hehurries away to some trees below the hill. He does not return to his work again that afternoon. But I feelcertain that he will pass the night there and every night allwinter unless he is disturbed. So when my son and I are passingalong the path by his post with a lantern about eight o'clock inthe evening, I pause and say, "Let's see if Downy is at home. " Aslight tap on the post and we hear Downy jump out of bed, as itwere, and his head quickly fills the doorway. We pass hurriedlyon and he does not take flight. A few days later, just at sundown, as I am walking on theterrace above, I see Downy come sweeping swiftly down through theair on that long galloping flight of his, and alight on the bigmaple on the brink of the hill above his retreat. He sitsperfectly still for a few moments, surveying the surroundings, and, seeing that the coast is clear, drops quickly and silentlydown and disappears in the interior of his chestnut lodge. Hewill do this all winter long, coming home, when the days arestormy, by four o'clock, and not stirring out in the morning tillnine or ten o'clock. Some very cold, blustering days he willprobably not leave his retreat at all. He has no mate or fellow lodger, though there is room in hiscabin for three birds at least. Where the female is I can onlyconjecture; maybe she is occupying a discarded last year's lodge, as I notice there are a good many new holes drilled in the treesevery fall, though many of the old ones still seem intact. During the inclement season Downy is anything but chivalrous oreven generous. He will not even share with the female the marrowbone or bit of suet that I fasten on the maple in front of mywindow, but drives her away rudely. Sometimes the hairywoodpecker, a much larger bird, routs Downy out and wrecks hishouse. Sometimes the English sparrows mob him and dispossess him. In the woods the flying squirrels often turn him out of doors andfurnish his chamber cavity to suit themselves. III I am always content if I can bring home from my walks the leastbit of live natural history, as when, the other day, I saw ared-headed woodpecker having a tilt with a red squirrel on thetrunk of a tree. Doubtless the woodpecker had a nest near by, and had had someexperience with this squirrel as a nest-robber. When I first sawthem, the bird was chasing the squirrel around the trunk of anoak-tree, his bright colors of black and white and red making hisevery movement conspicuous. The squirrel avoided him by dartingquickly to the other side of the tree. Then the woodpecker took up his stand on the trunk of a tree afew yards distant, and every time the squirrel ventured timidlyaround where he could be seen the woodpecker would swoop down athim, making another loop of bright color. The squirrel seemed toenjoy the fun and to tempt the bird to make this ineffectualswoop. Time and again he would poke his head round the tree anddraw the fire of his red-headed enemy. Occasionally the bird madeit pretty hot for him, and pressed him closely, but he couldescape because he had the inside ring, and was so artful adodger. As often as he showed himself on the woodpecker's side, the bird would make a vicious pass at him; and there would followa moment of lively skurrying around the trunk of the old oak;then all would be quiet again. Finally the squirrel seemed to get tired of the sport, and ranswiftly to the top and off through the branches into theneighboring trees. As this was probably all the woodpecker wasfighting for, he did not give chase. V A BARN-DOOR OUTLOOK I have a barn-door outlook because I have a hay-barn study, and Ichose a hay-barn study because I wanted a barn-door outlook--awide, near view into fields and woods and orchards where I couldbe on intimate terms with the wild life about me, and with free, open-air nature. Usually there is nothing small or stingy about a barn door, and afarmer's hay-barn puts only a very thin partition between you andthe outside world. Therefore, what could be a more fit place tothresh out dry philosophical subjects than a barn floor? I have afew such subjects to thresh out, and I thresh them here, turningthem over as many times as we used to turn over the oat and ryesheaves in the old days when I wielded the hickory flail with mybrothers on this same barn floor. What a pleasure it is to look back to those autumn days, generally in September or early October, when we used to threshout a few bushels of the new crop of rye to be taken to thegrist-mill for a fresh supply of flour! How often we paused inour work to munch apples that had been mellowing in the haymow byour side, and look out through the big doorway upon the sunlitmeadows and hill-slopes! The sound of the flail is heard in theold barn no more, but in its stead the scratching of a pen andthe uneasy stirring of a man seated there behind a big box, threshing out a harvest for a loaf of much less general value. As I sit here day after day, bending over my work, I get manyglimpses of the little rills of wild life that circulate aboutme. The feature of it that impresses me most is the life of fearthat most of the wild creatures lead. They are as alert andcautious as are the picket-lines of opposing armies. Just overthe line of stone wall in the orchard a woodchuck comeshesitatingly out of his hole and goes nibbling in the grass notfifty feet away. How alert and watchful he is! Every few momentshe sits upright and takes an observation, then resumes hisfeeding. When I make a slight noise he rushes to the cover of thestone wall. Then, as no danger appears, he climbs to the top ofit and looks in my direction. As I move as if to get up, he dropsback quietly to his hole. A chipmunk comes along on the stone wall, hurrying somewhere onan important errand, but changing his course every moment. Heruns on the top of the wall, then along its side, then into itand through it and out on the other side, pausing every fewseconds and looking and listening, careful not to expose himselflong in any one position, really skulking and hiding all alonghis journey. His enemies are keen and watchful and likely toappear at any moment, and he knows it, not so much by experienceas by instinct. His young are timid and watchful the first timethey emerge from the den into the light of day. Then a red squirrel comes spinning along. By jerks and nervous, spasmodic spurts he rushes along from cover to cover like asoldier dodging the enemy's bullets. When he discovers me, hepauses, and with one paw on his heart appears to press a button, that lets off a flood of snickering, explosive sounds that seemlike ridicule of me and my work. Failing to get any response fromme, he presently turns, and, springing from the wall to thebending branch of a near apple-tree, he rushes up and disappearsamid the foliage. Presently I see him on the end of a branch, where he seizes a green apple not yet a third grown, and, dartingdown to a large horizontal branch, sits up with the apple in hispaws and proceeds to chip it up for the pale, unripe seeds at itscore, all the time keenly alive to possible dangers that maysurround him. What a nervous, hustling, highstrung creature heis--a live wire at all times and places! That pert curl of theend of his tail, as he sits chipping the apple or cutting throughthe shell of a nut, is expressive of his character. What acontrast his nervous and explosive activity presents to the moresedate and dignified life of the gray squirrel! One of thesepassed us only a few yards away on our walk in the woods theother day--a long, undulating line of soft gray, silent as aspirit and graceful as a wave on the beach. A little later, in the fine, slow-falling rain, a rabbit suddenlyemerges into my field of vision fifty feet away. How timid andscared she looks! She pauses a moment amid the weeds, then hopsa yard or two and pauses again, then passes under the barsand hesitates on the edge of a more open and exposed placeimmediately in front of me. Here she works her nose, feeling ofevery current of air, analyzing every scent to see if danger isnear. Apparently detecting something suspicious in the currentsthat drift from my direction, she turns back, pauses again, worksher nose as before, then hurries out of my sight. Yesterday I saw a rat stealing green peas from my garden in theopen day. He darted out of the stone wall six or eight feet awayto the row of peas, rushed about nervously among the vines; then, before I could seize my rifle, darted back to the cover of thewall. Once I cautiously approached his hiding-place in the walland waited. Presently his head emerged from the line of weeds bythe fence, his nose began working anxiously, he sifted andresifted the air with it, and then quickly withdrew; his nose haddetected me, but his eye had not. The touchstone of most animalsis the nose, and not the eye. The eye quickly detects objects inmotion, but not those at rest; this is the function of the nose. A highhole alights on the ground in full view in the orchardtwenty yards away, and, spying my motionless figure, pauses andregards me long and intently. His eye serves him, and not hisnose. Finally concluding that I am not dangerous, he stoops tothe turf for his beloved ants and other insects, but lifts hishead every few seconds to see that no danger is imminent. Not onemoment is he off his guard. A hawk may suddenly swoop from theair above, or a four-footed foe approach from any side. I haveseen a sharp-shinned hawk pick up a highhole from the turf in atwinkling under just such conditions. What a contrast between theanxious behavior of these wild creatures and the ease andindifference of the grazing cattle! All the wild creatures evidently regard me with mingled feelingsof curiosity and distrust. A song sparrow hops and flirts andattitudinizes and peers at me from the door-sill, wondering ifthere is any harm in me. A ph[oe]be-bird comes in and flitsabout, disturbed by my presence. For the third or fourth timethis season, I think, she is planning a nest. In June she beganone over a window on the porch where I sleep in the open air. Shehad the foundation laid when I appeared, and was not a littledisturbed by my presence, especially in the early morning, when Iwanted to sleep and she wanted to work. She let fall some of hermortar upon me, but at least I had no fear of a falling brick. She gradually got used to me, and her work was progressing intothe moss stage when two women appeared and made their beds uponthe porch, and in the morning went to and fro with brooms, ofcourse. Then Ph[oe]be seemed to say to herself, "This is toomuch, " and she left her unfinished nest and resorted to the emptyhay-barn. Here she built a nest on one of the bark-covered endtimbers halfway up the big mow, not being quite as used to barnsand the exigencies of haying-times as swallows are, who buildtheir mud nests against the rafters in the peak. She haddeposited her eggs, when the haymakers began pitching hay intothe space beneath her; sweating, hurrying haymakers do not see orregard the rights or wants of little birds. Like a rising tidethe fragrant hay rose and covered the timber and the nest, andcrept on up toward the swallow's unfledged family in the peak, but did not quite reach it. Ph[oe]be and her mate hung about the barn disconsolate for days, and now, ten days later, she is hovering about my open door onthe floor below, evidently prospecting for another building-site. I hope she will find me so quiet and my air so friendly that shewill choose a niche on the hewn timber over my head. Just thismoment I saw her snap up a flying "miller" in the orchard a fewrods away. She was compelled to swoop four times before sheintercepted that little moth in its unsteady, zigzagging flight. She is an expert at this sort of thing; it is her business totake her game on the wing; but the moths are experts in zigzagflying, and Ph[oe]be missed her mark three times. I heard thesnap of her beak at each swoop. It is almost impossible for anyinsectivorous bird except a flycatcher to take a moth or abutterfly on the wing. Last year in August the junco, or common snowbird, came into thebig barn and built her nest in the side of the haymow, only a fewfeet from me. The clean, fragrant hay attracted her as it hadattracted me. One would have thought that in a haymow she hadnesting material near at hand. But no; her nest-buildinginstincts had to take the old rut; she must bring her ownmaterial from without; the haymow was only the mossy bank or thewood-side turf where her species had hidden their nests foruntold generations. She did not weave one spear of the farmer'shay into her nest, but brought in the usual bits of dry grass andweeds and horsehair and shaped the fabric after the old pattern, tucking it well in under the drooping locks of hay. As I satmorning after morning weaving my thoughts together and lookingout of the great barn doorway into sunlit fields, the junco woveher straws and horsehairs, and deposited there on threesuccessive days her three exquisite eggs. Why the bird departed so widely from the usual habits ofnest-building of her species, who can tell? I had never beforeseen a junco's nest except on the ground in remote fields, or inmossy banks by the side of mountain roads. This nest is thefinest to be found upon the ground, its usual lining of horsehairmakes its interior especially smooth and shapely, and the nest inthe haymow showed only a little falling-off, as is usually thecase in the second nest of the season. The songs of the birds, the construction of their nests, and the number of their eggstaper off as the season wanes. The junco impresses me as a fidgety, emphatic, feather-edged sortof bird; the two white quills in its tail which flash out sosuddenly on every movement seem to stamp in this impression. Myjunco was a little nervous at first and showed her white quills, but she soon grew used to my presence, and would alight upon thechair which I kept for callers, and upon my hammock-ropes. When an artist came to paint my portrait amid such rusticsurroundings, the bird only eyed her a little suspiciously atfirst, and then went forward with her own affairs. One night thewind blew the easel with its canvas over against the haymow wherethe nest was placed, but the bird was there on her eggs in themorning. Her wild instincts did not desert her in one respect, atleast: when I would flush her from the nest she would drop downto the floor and with spread plumage and fluttering movementsseek for a moment to decoy me away from the nest, after the habitof most ground-builders. The male came about the barn frequentlywith three or four other juncos, which I suspect were the first orJune brood of the pair, now able to take care of themselves, butstill held together by the family instinct, as often happens inthe case of some other birds, such as bluebirds and chickadees. My little mascot hatched all her eggs, and all went well withmother and young until, during my absence of three or four days, some night-prowler, probably a rat, plundered the nest, and thelittle summer idyl in the heart of the old barn abruptly ended. Isaw the juncos no more. While I was so closely associated with the junco in the old barnI had a good chance to observe her incubating habits. I wassurprised at the frequent and long recesses that she took duringschool-hours. Every hour during the warmest days she was off fromten to twelve minutes, either to take the air or to take a bite, or to let up on the temperature of her eggs, or to have a wordwith her other family; I am at a loss to know which. Toward theend of her term, which was twelve days, and as the days grewcooler, she was not gadding out and in so often, but kept herplace three or four hours at a time. When the young were hatched they seemed mainly fed withinsects--spiders or flies gathered off the timbers and clapboardsof the inside of the barn. It was a pretty sight to see themother-bird making the rounds of the barn, running along thetimbers, jumping up here and there, and seizing some invisibleobject, showing the while her white petticoats--as a French girlcalled that display of white tail-feathers. Day after day and week after week as I look through the big, open barn door I see a marsh hawk beating about low over thefields. He, or rather she (for I see by the greater size andbrowner color that it is the female), moves very slowly anddeliberately on level, flexible wing, now over the meadow, nowover the oat or millet field, then above the pasture and theswamp, tacking and turning, her eye bent upon the ground, and nodoubt sending fear or panic through the heart of many a nibblingmouse or sitting bird. She occasionally hesitates or stops in herflight and drops upon the ground, as if seeking insects or frogsor snakes. I have never yet seen her swoop or strike after themanner of other hawks. It is a pleasure to watch her through theglass and see her make these circuits of the fields on effortlesswing, day after day, and strike no bird or other living thing, asif in quest of something she never finds. I never see the male. She has perhaps assigned him other territory to hunt over. He issmaller, with more blue in his plumage. One day she had a scrapor a game of some kind with three or four crows on the side of arocky hill. I think the crows teased and annoyed her. I heardtheir cawing and saw them pursuing the hawk, and then saw herswoop upon them or turn over in the air beneath them, as if toshow them what feats she could do on the wing that were beyondtheir powers. The crows often made a peculiar guttural cawing andcackling as if they enjoyed the sport, but they were clumsy andawkward enough on the wing compared to the hawk. Time after timeshe came down upon them from a point high in the air, like athunderbolt, but never seemed to touch them. Twice I saw herswoop upon them as they sat upon the ground, and the crows calledout in half sportive, half protesting tones, as if saying, "Thatwas a little too close; beware, beware!" It was like a skillfulswordsman flourishing his weapon about the head of a peasant; butnot a feather was touched so far as I could see. It is the onlytime I ever saw this hawk in a sportive or aggressive mood. Ihave seen jays tease the sharp-shinned hawk in this way, andescape his retaliating blows by darting into a cedar-tree. Allthe crow tribe, I think, love to badger and mock some of theirneighbors. How much business the crows seem to have apart from huntingtheir living! I hear their voices in the morning before sun-up, sounding out from different points of the fields and woods, as ifevery one of them were giving or receiving orders for the day:"Here, Jim, you do this; here, Corvus, you go there, and put thatthing through"; and Jim caws back a response, and Corvus says, "I'm off this minute. " I get the impression that it is conventionday or general training day with them. There are voices in allkeys of masculinity and femininity. Here and there seems to beone in authority who calls at intervals, "Haw-ah, haw, haw-ah!"Others utter a strident "Haw!" still others a rapid, femininecall. Some seem hurrying, others seem at rest, but the landscapeis apparently alive with crows carrying out some plan ofconcerted action. How fond they must be of one another! What booncompanions they are! In constant communication, saluting oneanother from the trees, the ground, the air, watchful of oneanother's safety, sharing their plunder, uniting against a commonenemy, noisy, sportive, predacious, and open and aboveboard inall their ways and doings--how much character our ebony friendpossesses, in how many ways he challenges our admiration! What a contrast the crow presents to the silent, solitary hawk!The hawks have but two occupations--hunting and soaring; theyhave no social or tribal relations, and make no show of businessas does the crow. The crow does not hide; he seems to crave theutmost publicity; his goings and comings are advertised with allthe effectiveness of his strident voice; but all our hawks aresilent and stealthy. Let me return to the red squirrel, because he returns to mehourly. He is the most frisky, diverting, and altogether impishof all our wild creatures. He is a veritable Puck. All the otherwild folk that cross my field of vision, or look in upon me herein my fragrant hay-barn study, seem to have but one feeling aboutme: "What is it? Is it dangerous? Has it any designs upon me?"But my appearance seems to awaken other feelings in the redsquirrel. He pauses on the fence or on the rail before me, andgoes through a series of antics and poses and hilarious gestures, giving out the while a stream of snickering, staccato sounds thatsuggest unmistakably that I am a source of mirth and ridicule tohim. His gestures and attitudes are all those of mingled mirth, curiosity, defiance, and contempt--seldom those of fear. He comesspinning along on the stone wall in front of me, with thoseabrupt, nervous pauses every few yards that characterize all hismovements. On seeing me he checks his speed, and with depressedtail impels himself along, a few inches at a time, in a series ofspasmodic starts and sallies; the hind part of his bodyflattened, and his legs spread, his head erect and alert, histail full of kinks and quirks. How that tail undulates! Now itsend curls, now it is flattened to the stone, now it springsstraight up as if part of a trap, hind feet the while keepingtime in a sort of nervous dance with the shrill, stridentcackling and snickering. The next moment he is sitting erect withfore paws pressed against his white chest, his tail rippling outbehind him or up his back, and his shrill, nasal tones stillpouring out. He hops to the next stone, he assumes a newposition, his tail palpitates and jerks more lively than ever;now he is on all fours, with curved back; now he sits up at anangle, his tail all the time charged with mingled suspicion andmirth. Then he springs to a rail that runs out at right anglesfrom the wall toward me, and with hectoring snickers and shrilltrebles, pointed straight at me, keeps up his performance. Whatan actor he is! What a furry embodiment of quick, nervous energyand impertinence! Surely he has a sense of something like humor;surely he is teasing and mocking me and telling me, both bygesture and by word of mouth, that I present a very ridiculousappearance. A chipmunk comes hurrying along with stuffed cheek-pouches, traveling more on the side of the wall than on the top, stoppingevery few yards to see that the way is clear, but giving littleheed to me or to the performing squirrel. In comparison thechipmunk is a demure, preoccupied, pretty little busybody whooften watches you curiously, but never mocks you or pokes fun atyou; while the gray squirrel has the manners of the best-bredwood-folk, and he goes his way without fuss or bluster, a pictureof sylvan grace and buoyancy. All the movements of the red squirrel are quick, sharp, jerky, machine-like. He does nothing slowly or gently; everything with asnap and a jerk. His progression is a series of interruptedsallies. When he pauses on the stone wall he faces this way andthat with a sudden jerk; he turns round in two or three quickleaps. So abrupt and automatic in his movements, so stiff andangular in behavior, yet he is charged and overflowing with lifeand energy. One thinks of him as a bundle of steel wires andneedles and coiled springs, all electrically charged. One of hissounds or calls is like the buzz of a reel or the whirr of analarm-clock. Something seems to touch a spring there in the oldapple-tree, and out leaps this strident sound as of spinningbrass wheels. When I speak sharply to him, in the midst of his antics, hepauses a moment with uplifted paw, watching me intently, and thenwith a snicker springs upon a branch of an apple-tree that hangsdown near the wall, and disappears amid the foliage. The redsquirrel is always actively saucy, aggressively impudent. Hepeeps in at me through a broken pane in the window and snickers;he strikes up a jig on the stone underpinning twenty feet awayand mocks; he darts in and out among the timbers and chatters andgiggles; he climbs up over the door, pokes his head in, and letsoff a volley; he moves by jerks along the sill a few feet from myhead and chirps derisively; he eyes me from points on the wall infront, or from some coign of vantage in the barn, and flings hisanger or his contempt upon me. No other of our wood-folk has such a facile, emotional tail asthe red squirrel. It seems as if an electric current were runningthrough it most of the time; it vibrates, it ripples, it curls, it jerks, it arches, it flattens; now it is like a plume in hiscap; now it is a cloak around his shoulders; then it is aninstrument to point and emphasize his states of emotionalexcitement; every movement of his body is seconded or reflectedin his tail. There seems to be some automatic adjustment betweenhis tail and his vocal machinery. The tail of the gray squirrel shows to best advantage when he isrunning over the ground in the woods--and a long, graceful, undulating line of soft silver gray the creature makes! In mypart of the country the gray squirrel is more strictly awood-dweller than the red, and has the grace and elusiveness thatbelong more especially to the sylvan creatures. The red squirrel can play a tune and accompany himself. Underneath his strident, nasal snicker you may hear a note inanother key, much finer and shriller. Or it is as if the volumeof sound was split up into two strains, one proceeding from histhroat and the other from his mouth. If the red squirrels do not have an actual game of tag, theyhave something so near it that I cannot tell the difference. Justnow I see one in hot pursuit of another on the stone wall; bothare apparently going at the top of their speed. They make a redstreak over the dark-gray stones. When the pursuer seems toovertake the pursued and becomes "It, " the race is reversed, andaway they go on the back track with the same fleetness of thehunter and the hunted, till things are reversed again. I haveseen them engaged in the same game in tree-tops, each one havinghis innings by turn. The gray squirrel comes and goes, but the red squirrel we havealways with us. He will live where the gray will starve. He is atrue American; he has nearly all the national traits--nervousenergy, quickness, resourcefulness, pertness, not to sayimpudence and conceit. He is not altogether lovely or blameless. He makes war on the chipmunk, he is a robber of birds' nests, andis destructive of the orchard fruits. Nearly every man's hand isagainst him, yet he thrives, and long may he continue to do so! One day I placed some over-ripe plums on the wall in front of meto see what he would do with them. At first he fell eagerly toreleasing the pit, and then to cutting his way to the kernel inthe pit. After one of them had been disposed of in this way, heproceeded to carry off the others and place them here and thereamid the branches of a plum-tree from which he had stolen everyplum long before they were ripe. A day or two later I noted thatthey had all been removed from this tree, and I found some ofthem in the forks of an apple-tree not far off. A small butternut-tree standing near the wall had only a score orso of butternuts upon it this year; the squirrels might be seenalmost any hour in the day darting about the branches of thattree, hunting the green nuts, and in early September the last nutwas taken. They carried them away and placed them, one here andone there, in the forks of the apple-trees. I noticed that theydid not depend upon the eye to find the nuts; they did not lookthe branches over from some lower branch as you and I would havedone; they explored the branches one by one, running out to theend, and, if the nut was there, seized it and came swiftly down. I think the red squirrel rarely lays up any considerable store, but hides his nuts here and there in the trees and upon theground. This habit makes him the planter of future trees, ofoaks, hickories, chestnuts, and butternuts. These heavy nuts getwidely scattered by this agency. One morning I saw a chipmunk catch a flying grasshopper on thewing. Little Striped-Back sat on the wall with stuffed pockets, waiting for something, when along came the big grasshopper in ahesitating, uncertain manner of flight. As it hovered above thechipmunk, the latter by a quick, dexterous movement sprang orreached up and caught it, and in less than one half-minute itsfanlike wings were opening out in front of the captor's mouth andits body was being eagerly devoured. This same chipmunk, I thinkit is, has his den under the barn near me. Often he comes fromthe stone wall with distended cheek-pouches, and pauses fifteenfeet away, close by cover, and looks to see if any danger isimpending. To reach his hole he has to cross an open space a rodor more wide, and the thought of it evidently agitates him alittle. I am sitting there looking over my desk upon him, and heis skeptical about my being as harmless as I look. "Dare I crossthat ten feet of open there in front of him?" he seems to say. Hesits up with fore paws pressed so prettily to his white breast. He is so near I can see the rapid throbbing of his chest as hesniffs the air. A moment he sits and looks and sniffs, then inhurried movements crosses the open, his cheek-pockets showingfull as he darts by me. He is like a baseball runner trying tosteal a base: danger lurks on all sides; he must not leave thecover of one base till he sees the way is clear, and then--offwith a rush! Pray don't work yourself up to such a pitch, mylittle neighbor; you shall make a home-run without the slightestshow of opposition from me. One day a gray squirrel came along on the stone wall beside theroad. In front of the house he crossed an open barway, and thenpaused to observe two men at work in full view near the house. The men were a sculptor, pottering with clay, and his model. Thesquirrel sprang up a near-by butternut-tree, sat down on a limb, and had a good, long look. "Very suspicious, " he seemed to think;"maybe they are fixing a trap for me"; and he deliberately camedown the tree and returned the way he had come, spinning alongthe top of the wall, his long, fine tail outlined by a narrowband of silver as he sped off toward the woods. VI WILD LIFE IN WINTER To many forms of life of our northern lands, winter means a longsleep; to others it means what it means to many fortunate humanbeings--travels in warm climes; to still others, who again havetheir human prototypes, it means a struggle, more or less fierce, to keep soul and body together; while to many insect forms itmeans death. Most of the flies and beetles, wasps and hornets, moths, butterflies, and bumblebees die. The grasshoppers all die, witheggs for next season's crop deposited in the ground. Some of thebutterflies winter over. The mourning cloak, the first butterflyto be seen in spring, has passed the winter in my "Slabsides. "The monarch migrates, probably the only one of our butterfliesthat does. It is a great flyer. I have seen it in the fallsailing serenely along over the inferno of New York streets. Ithas crossed the ocean and is spreading over the world. The yellowand black hornets lose heart as autumn comes on, desert theirpaper nests and die--all but the queen or mother hornet; shehunts out a retreat in the ground and passes the winter beyondthe reach of frost. In the spring she comes forth and begins lifeanew, starting a little cone-shaped paper nest, building a fewpaper cells, laying an egg in each, and thus starting the newcolony. The same is true of the bumblebees; they are the creatures of asummer. In August, when the flowers fail, the colony breaks up, they desert the nest and pick up a precarious subsistence onasters and thistles till the frosts of October cut them off. Youmay often see, in late September or early October, these trampbees passing the night or a cold rain-storm on the lee side of athistle-head. The queen bee alone survives. You never see herplaying the vagabond in the fall. At least I never have. Shehunts out a retreat in the ground and passes the winter there, doubtless in a torpid state, as she stores no food against theinclement season. Emerson has put this fact into his poem on "TheHumble-Bee":-- "When the fierce northwestern blast Cools sea and land so far and fast, Thou already slumberest deep; Woe and want thou canst outsleep; Want and woe, which torture us, Thy sleep makes ridiculous. " In early August of the past year I saw a queen bumblebee quicklyenter a small hole on the edge of the road where there was nonest. It was probably her winter quarters. If one could take the cover off the ground in the fields andwoods in winter, or have some magic ointment put upon his eyesthat would enable him to see through opaque substances, how manycurious and interesting forms of life he would behold in theground beneath his feet as he took his winter walk--life with thefires banked, so to speak, and just keeping till spring. He wouldsee the field crickets in their galleries in the ground in adormant state, all their machinery of life brought to astandstill by the cold. He would see the ants in their hills andin their tunnels in decaying trees and logs, as inert as the soilor the wood they inhabit. I have chopped many a handful of thebig black ants out of a log upon my woodpile in winter, stiff, but not dead, with the frost, and brought them in by the fire tosee their vital forces set going again by the heat. I havebrought in the grubs of borers and the big fat grubs of beetles, turned out of their winter beds in old logs by my axe and frozenlike ice-cream, and have seen the spark of life rekindle in themon the hearth. With this added visual power, one would see the wood frogs andthe hylas in their winter beds but a few inches beneath the mossand leaf-mould, one here and one there, cold, inert, biding theirtime. I dug a wood frog out one December and found him notfrozen, though the soil around him was full of frost; he wasalive but not frisky. A friend of mine once found one in thewoods sitting upon the snow one day in early winter. She carriedhim home with her, and he burrowed in the soil of her flower-potand came out all right in the spring. What brought him out uponthe snow in December one would like to know. One would see the tree-frogs in the cavities of old trees, wrapped in their winter sleep--which is yet not a sleep, butsuspended animation. When the day is warm, or the January thawcomes, I fancy the little frog feels it and stirs in his bed. Onewould see the warty toads squatted in the soil two or three feetbelow the surface, in the same way. Probably not till April willthe spell which the winter has put upon them be broken. I haveseen a toad go into the ground in late fall. He literally elbowshis way into it, going down backwards. Beneath rocks or in cavities at the end of some small hole in theground, one would see a ball or tangle of garter snakes, or blacksnakes, or copperheads--dozens of individual snakes of thatlocality entwined in one many-headed mass, conserving in thisunited way their animal heat against the cold of winter. Onespring my neighbor in the woods discovered such a winter retreatof the copperheads, and, visiting the place many times during thewarm April days, he killed about forty snakes, and since thatslaughter, the copperheads have been at a premium in ourneighborhood. Here and there, near the fences and along the borders of thewood, these X-ray eyes would see the chipmunk at the end of hisdeep burrow with his store of nuts or grains, sleeping fitfullybut not dormant. The frost does not reach him and his stores areat hand. One which we dug out in late October had nearly fourquarts of weed-seeds and cherry-pits. He will hardly be outbefore March, and then, like his big brother rodent thewoodchuck, and other winter sleepers, his fancy will quickly"turn to thoughts of love. " One would see the woodchuck asleep in his burrow, snugly rolledup and living on his own fat. All the hibernating animals thatkeep up respiration, must have sustenance of some sort--either astore of food at hand or a store of fat in their own bodies. Thewoodchuck, the bear, the coon, the skunk, the 'possum, lay up astore of fuel in their own bodies, and they come out in thespring lean and hungry. The squirrels are lean the year through, and hence must have a store of food in their dens, as does thechipmunk, or else be more or less active in their search allwinter, as is the case with the red and gray squirrels. The foxputs on more or less fat in the fall, because he will need itbefore spring. His food-supply is very precarious; he may go manydays without a morsel. I have known him to be so hungry that hewould eat frozen apples and corn which he could not digest. Thehare and the rabbit, on the other hand, do not store up fatagainst a time of need; their food-supply of bark and twigs isconstant, no matter how deep the snows. The birds of prey thatpass the winter in the north take on a coat of fat in the fall, because their food-supply is so uncertain; the coat of fat isalso a protection against the cold. Of course, all the wild creatures are in better condition in thefall than in the spring, but in many cases the fat is distinctlya substitute for food. The skunk is in his den also from December till February, livingon his own fat. Several of them often occupy the same den andconserve their animal heat in that way. The coon, also, is in hisden in the rocks for a part of the winter, keeping warm onhome-made fuel. The same is true of the bear in our climate. Thebats are hibernating in the rocks or about buildings. Themuskrats are leading hidden lives in the upper chambers of theirsnow-covered houses in the marshes and ponds or in the banks ofstreams, feeding on lily-roots and mussels which they get underthe ice. The lean, bloodthirsty minks and weasels are on the hunt allwinter. Our native mice are also active. That pretty stitchingupon the coverlet of the winter snow in the woods is made by ourwhite-footed mouse and by the little shrew mouse. The formeroften has large stores of nuts hidden in some cavity in a tree;what supply of food the latter has, if any, I do not know. In thewinter the short-tailed meadow or field mice come out of theirretreat in the ground and beneath stones and lead gay, fearlesslives beneath the snow-drifts. Their little villages, with theirrunways and abandoned nests, may be seen when the snow disappearsin the spring. Their winter life beneath the snow, where nowicked eye or murderous claw can reach them, is in sharp contrastto their life in summer, when cats and hawks, owls and foxes, pounce upon them day and night. It is only in times of deep snowsthat they bark our fruit-trees. We have in this latitude but one species of hibernatingmouse--the long-tailed jumping mouse, or kangaroo mouse, as it issometimes called from its mode of locomotion. Late one fall, while making a road near "Slabsides, " we dug one out from itshibernation about two feet below the surface of the ground. Itwas like a little ball of fur tied with a string. In my hand itseemed as cold as if dead. Close scrutiny showed that it breathedat intervals, very slowly. The embers of life were there, butslumbering beneath the ashes. I put it in my pocket and wentabout my work. After a little time, remembering my mouse, I putmy hand into my pocket and touched something very warm andlively. The ember had been fanned into a flame, so to speak. Ikept my captive in a cage a day or two and then returned it tothe woods, where I trust it found a safe retreat against thecold. VII BIRD LIFE IN WINTER The distribution of our birds over the country in summer is likethat of the people, quite uniform. Every wood and field has itsquota, and no place so barren but it has some bird to visit it. One knows where to look for sparrows and thrushes and bobolinksand warblers and flycatchers. But the occupation of the countryby our winter residents is like the Indian occupation of theland. They are found in little bands, a few here and there, withlarge tracts quite untenanted. One may walk for hours through the winter woods and not see orhear a bird. Then he may come upon a troop of chickadees, with anuthatch or two in their wake, and maybe a downy woodpecker. Birds not of a feather flock together at this inclement season. The question of food is always an urgent one. Evidently thenuthatch thinks there must be food where the chickadees flit andcall so cheerily, and the woodpecker is probably drawn to thenuthatch for a similar reason. Together they make a pretty thorough search, --fine, finer, finest. The chickadee explores the twigs and smaller branches;what he gets is on the surface, and so fine as to be almostmicroscopic. The nuthatch explores the trunks and larger branchesof the trees; he goes a little deeper, into crevices of the barkand under lichens. Then comes Downy, who goes deeper still. Hebores for larger game through the bark, and into the trunks andbranches themselves. In late fall this band is often joined by the golden-crownedkinglet and the brown creeper. The kinglet is finer-eyed andfiner-billed than even the chickadee, and no doubt gathers whatthe latter overlooks, while the brown creeper, with his long, slender, curved bill, takes what both the nuthatch and thewoodpecker miss. Working together, it seems as if they must makea pretty clean sweep. But the trees are numerous and large, andthe birds are few. Only a mere fraction of tree surface issearched over at any one time. In large forests probably only amere fraction of the trees are visited at all. One cold day in midwinter, when I was walking through thesnowless woods, I saw chickadees, nuthatches, and woodpeckersupon the ground, and upon roots and fallen branches. They werelooking for the game that had fallen, as a boy looks for applesunder the tree. The winter wren is so called because he sometimes braves ournorthern winters, but it is rarely that one sees him at thisseason. I think I have seen him only two or three times in winterin my life. The event of one long walk, recently, in February, was seeing one of these birds. As I followed a byroad, beside alittle creek in the edge of a wood, my eye caught a glimpse of asmall brown bird darting under a stone bridge. I thought tomyself no bird but a wren would take refuge under so small abridge as that. I stepped down upon it and expected to see thebird dart out at the upper end. As it did not appear, Iscrutinized the bank of the little run, covered with logs andbrush, a few rods farther up. Presently I saw the wren curtsying and gesticulating beneath anold log. As I approached he disappeared beneath some loose stonesin the bank, then came out again and took another peep at me, then fidgeted about for a moment and disappeared again, runningin and out of the holes and recesses and beneath the rubbish likea mouse or a chipmunk. The winter wren may always be known bythese squatting, bobbing-out-and-in habits. As I sought a still closer view of him, he flitted stealthily afew yards up the run and disappeared beneath a small plank bridgenear a house. I wondered what he could feed upon at such a time. There was alight skim of snow upon the ground, and the weather was cold. Thewren, so far as I know, is entirely an insect-feeder, and wherecan he find insects in midwinter in our climate? Probably bysearching under bridges, under brush heaps, in holes and cavitiesin banks where the sun falls warm. In such places he may finddormant spiders and flies and other hibernating insects or theirlarvę. We have a tiny, mosquito-like creature that comes forth inMarch or in midwinter, as soon as the temperature is a littleabove freezing. One may see them performing their fantasticair-dances when the air is so chilly that one buttons hisovercoat about him in his walk. They are darker than themosquito, --a sort of dark water-color, --and are very frail to thetouch. Maybe the wren knows the hiding-place of these insects. With food in abundance, no doubt many more of our birds wouldbrave the rigors of our winters. I have known a pair of bluebirdsto brave them on such poor rations as are afforded by thehardhack or sugarberry, --a drupe the size of a small pea, with athin, sweet skin. Probably hardly one per cent. Of the drupe isdigestible food. Bluebirds in December will also eat the berriesof the poison ivy, as will the downy woodpecker. Robins will pass the winter with us when the cover of a pine orhemlock forest can be had near a supply of red cedar berries. Thecedar-bird probably finds little other food in the valley of theHudson and in New England, yet I see occasional flocks of themevery winter month. Sometimes the chickadees and nuthatches, hunting through thewinter woods, make a discovery that brings every bird withinhearing to the spot, --they spy out the screech owl hiding in thethick of a hemlock-tree. What an event it is in the day'sexperience! It sets the whole clan agog. While I was walking in the December woods, one day, my attentionwas attracted by a great hue and cry among these birds. I foundthem in and about a hemlock-tree, --eight or ten chickadees andfour or five red-bellied nuthatches. Such a chiding chorus oftiny voices I had not heard for a long time. The tone was notthat of alarm so much as it was that of trouble and displeasure. I gazed long and long up into the dark, dense green mass of thetree to make out the cause of all this excitement. The chickadeeswere clinging to the ends of the sprays, as usual, apparentlyvery busy looking for food, and all the time uttering theirshrill plaint. The nuthatches perched about upon the branches orran up and down the tree trunks, incessantly piping theirdispleasure. At last I made out the cause of the disturbance, --alittle owl on a limb, looking down in wide-eyed intentness uponme. How annoyed he must have felt at all this hullabaloo, thislover of privacy and quiet, to have his name cried from thetreetops, and his retreat advertised to every passer-by! I have never known woodpeckers to show any excitement at thepresence of hawk or owl, probably because they are rarelypreyed upon by these marauders. In their nests and in theirwinter quarters, deeply excavated in trunk or branch of tree, woodpeckers are beyond the reach of both beak and claw. The day I saw the winter wren I saw two golden-crowned kingletsfly from one sycamore to another in an open field, uttering theirfine call-notes. That so small a body can brave the giant cold ofour winters seems remarkable enough. These are mainly birds ofthe evergreens, although at times they frequent the groves andthe orchards. How does the ruby-crowned kinglet know he has a brilliant bit ofcolor on his crown which he can uncover at will, and that thishas great charms for the female? During the rivalries of themales in the mating season, and in the autumn also, they flashthis brilliant ruby at each other. I witnessed what seemed to bea competitive display of this kind one evening in November. I waswalking along the road, when my ear was attracted by the fine, shrill lisping and piping of a small band of these birds in anapple-tree. I paused to see what was the occasion of so muchnoise and bluster among these tiny bodies. There were four orfive of them, all more or less excited, and two of themespecially so. I think the excitement of the others was only areflection of that of these two. These were hopping around eachother, apparently peering down upon something beneath them. Isuspected a cat concealed behind the wall, and so looked over, but there was nothing there. Observing them more closely, I sawthat the two birds were entirely occupied with each other. They behaved exactly as if they were comparing crowns, and eachextolling his own. Their heads were bent forward, the red crownpatch uncovered and showing as a large, brilliant cap, theirtails were spread, and the side feathers below the wings werefluffed out. They did not come to blows, but followed each otherabout amid the branches, uttering their thin, shrill notes anddisplaying their ruby crowns to the utmost. Evidently it was somesort of strife or dispute or rivalry that centred about thisbrilliant patch. Few persons seem aware that the goldfinch is also a winterbird, --it is so brilliant and familiar in summer and so neutraland withdrawn in winter. The call-note and manner of flight donot change, but the color of the males and their habits are verydifferent from their color and habits in summer. In winter theycongregate in small, loose flocks, both sexes of a duskyyellowish brown, and feed upon the seeds of grasses and weedsthat stand above the snow in fields and along fences. Day after day I have observed a band of five or six of themfeeding amid the dry stalks of the evening primrose by theroadside. They are adepts in extracting the seed from the pods. How pretty their call to each other at such times, --_paisley_ or_peasely_, with the rising inflection! The only one of our winter birds that really seems a part ofthe winter, that seems to be born of the whirling snow, and tobe happiest when storms drive thickest and coldest, is thesnow bunting, the real snowbird, with plumage copied from thefields where the drifts hide all but the tops of the tallestweeds, --large spaces of pure white touched here and there withblack and gray and brown. Its twittering call and chirrup comingout of the white obscurity is the sweetest and happiest of allwinter bird sounds. It is like the laughter of children. Thefox-hunter hears it on the snowy hills, the farmer hears it whenhe goes to fodder his cattle from the distant stack, the countryschoolboy hears it as he breaks his way through the drifts towardthe school. It is ever a voice of good cheer and contentment. One March, during a deep snow, a large flock of buntings stayedabout my vineyards for several days, feeding upon the seeds ofredroot and other weeds that stood above the snow. What boyhoodassociations their soft and cheery calls brought up! How plumpand well-fed and hardy they looked, and how alert and suspiciousthey were! They evidently had had experiences with hawks andshrikes. Every minute or two they would all spring into the airas one bird, circle about for a moment, then alight upon the snowagain. Occasionally one would perch upon a wire or grapevine, asif to keep watch and ward. Presently, while I stood in front of my study looking at them, alarger and darker bird came swiftly by me, flying low andstraight toward the buntings. He shot beneath the trellises, andevidently hoped to surprise the birds. It was a shrike, thirstingfor blood or brains. But the buntings were on the alert, and wereup in the air before the feathered assassin reached them. As theflock wheeled about, he joined them and flew along with them forsome distance, but made no attempt to strike that I could see. Presently he left them and perched upon the top of a near maple. The birds did not seem to fear him now, but swept past thetreetop where he sat as if to challenge him to a race, and thenwent their way. I have seen it stated that these birds, whensuddenly surprised by a hawk, will dive beneath the snow toescape him. They doubtless roost upon the ground, as do mostground-builders, and hence must often be covered by the fallingsnow. VIII A BIRDS' FREE LUNCH One winter, during four or five weeks of severe weather, several ofour winter birds were pensioners upon my bounty, --three blue jays, two downy woodpeckers, three chickadees, and one kinglet, --andlater a snowbird--junco--appeared. I fastened pieces of suet and marrow-bones upon the tree in frontof my window, then, as I sat at my desk, watched the birds at theirfree lunch. The jays bossed the woodpeckers, the woodpeckers bossedthe chickadees, and the chickadees bossed the kinglet. Sometimes in my absence a crow would swoop down and boss thewhole crew and carry off the meat. The kinglet was the least ofall, --a sort of "hop-o'-my-thumb" bird. He became quite tame, andone day alighted upon my arm as I stood leaning against the tree. I could have put my hand upon him several times. I wonder wherethe midget roosted. He was all alone. He liked the fare so wellthat he seemed disposed to stop till spring. During one terriblenight of wind and snow and zero temperature I feared he would beswept away. I thought of him in the middle of the night, when theviolence of the storm kept me from sleep. Imagine this solitaryatom in feathers drifting about in the great arctic out-of-doorsand managing to survive. I fancied him in one of my thickspruces, his head under his tiny wing, buffeted by wind and snow, his little black feet clinging to the perch, and wishing thatmorning would come. The fat meat is fuel for him; it keeps up the supply of animalheat. None of the birds will eat lean meat; they want the clearfat. The jays alight upon it and peck away with great vigor, almost standing on tiptoe to get the proper sweep. The woodpeckeruses his head alone in pecking, but the jay's action involves thewhole body. Yet his blows are softer, not so sharp and abrupt asthose of the woodpecker. Pecking is not exactly his business. He swallows the morsel eagerly, watching all the time lest someenemy surprise him in the act. Indeed, one noticeable thing aboutall the birds is their nervousness while eating. The chickadeeturns that bead-like eye of his in all directions incessantly, lest something seize him while he is not looking. He is not offhis guard for a moment. It is almost painful to observe the stateof fear in which he lives. He will not keep his place upon thebone longer than a few seconds at a time lest he become a markfor some enemy, --a hawk, a shrike, or a cat. One would not thinkthe food would digest when taken in such haste and trepidation. While the jays are feeding, swallowing morsel after morsel veryrapidly, the chickadees flit about in an anxious, peevish manner, lest there be none left for themselves. I suspect the jays carry the food off and hide it, as theycertainly do corn when I put it out for the hens. The jay has acapacious throat; he will lodge half a dozen or more kernels ofcorn in it, stretching his neck up as he takes them, to give themroom, and then fly away to an old bird's-nest or a caterpillar'snest and deposit them in it. But in this respect the littlekettle cannot call the big pot black. The chickadee also willcarry away what it cannot eat. One day I dug a dozen or morewhite grubs--the larvę of some beetle--out of a decayed maple onmy woodpile and placed them upon my window-sill. The chickadeessoon discovered them, and fell to carrying them off as fast asever they could, distributing them among the branches of theNorway spruces. Among the grubs was one large white one half thesize of one's little finger. One of the chickadees seized this;it was all he could carry, but he made off with it. The mate tothis grub I found rolled up in a smooth cell in a mass of decayedwood at the heart of the old maple referred to; it was full offrost. I carried it in by the fire, and the next day it was aliveand apparently wanted to know what had brought spring sosuddenly. How rapidly birds live! Their demand for food is almostincessant. This colony of mine appear to feed every eight or tenminutes. Their little mills grind their grist very rapidly. Oncein my walk upon the sea beach I encountered two small beach birdsrunning up and down in the edge of the surf, keeping just in thethin, lace-like edging of the waves, and feeding upon the white, cricket-like hoppers that quickly buried themselves in the sandas the waters retreated. I kept company with the birds till theyceased to be afraid of me. They would feed eagerly for a fewminutes and then stop, stand on one leg and put their heads undertheir wings for two or three minutes, and then resume theirfeeding, so rapidly did they digest their food. But all birdsdigest very rapidly. My two woodpeckers seldom leave the tree upon which the food isplaced. One is a male, as is shown by his red plume, and theother a female. There is not a bit of kindness or amity betweenthem. Indeed, there is open hostility. The male will not allowthe female even to look at the meat while he is feeding. She willsidle around toward it, edging nearer and nearer, when he willsuddenly dart at her, and often pursue her till she leaves thetree. Every hour in the day I see him trying to drive her fromthe neighborhood. She stands in perpetual dread of him, and givesway the instant he approaches. He is a tyrant and a bully. Theyboth pass the night in snug chambers which they have excavated inthe decayed branch of an old apple-tree, but not together. But in the spring what a change will come over the male. He willprotest to the female that he was only in fun, that she took himfar too seriously, that he had always cherished a liking for her. Last April I saw a male trying his blandishments upon a female inthis way. It may have been the same pair I am now observing. Thefemale was extremely shy and reluctant; evidently she wasskeptical of the sincerity of so sudden a change on the part ofthe male. I saw him pursue her from tree to tree with the mostflattering attention. The flight of the woodpecker is at alltimes undulating, but on such occasions this feature is soenhanced and the whole action so affected and studied on the partof the male that the scene becomes highly amusing. The femaleflew down upon a low stump in the currant-patch and was very busyabout her own affairs; the male followed, alighted on somethingseveral rods distant, and appeared to be equally busy about hisaffairs. Presently the female made quite a long flight to a treeby the roadside. I could not tell how the male knew she had flownand what course she had taken, as he was hidden from her amid thethick currant-bushes; but he did know, and soon followed after inhis curious exaggerated undulatory manner of flight. I havelittle doubt that his suit was finally successful. I watch these woodpeckers daily to see if I can solve the mysteryas to how they hop up and down the trunks and branches withoutfalling away from them when they let go their hold. They comedown a limb or trunk backward by a series of little hops, movingboth feet together. If the limb is at an angle to the tree andthey are on the under side of it, they do not fall away from itto get a new hold an inch or half inch farther down. They are heldto it as steel to a magnet. Both tail and head are involved in thefeat. At the instant of making the hop the head is thrown in andthe tail thrown out, but the exact mechanics of it I cannotpenetrate. Philosophers do not yet know how a backward-falling catturns in the air, but turn she does. It may be that the woodpeckernever quite relaxes his hold, though to my eye he appears to do so. Birds nearly always pass the night in such places as they selectfor their nests, --ground-builders upon the ground, tree-buildersupon trees. I have seen an oriole ensconce himself for the nightamid the thick cluster of leaves on the end of a maple branch, where soon after his mate built her nest. My chickadees, true to this rule, pass the arctic winter nightsin little cavities in the trunks of trees like the woodpeckers. One cold day, about four o'clock, while it was snowing andblowing, I heard, as I was unharnessing my horse near the oldapple-tree, the sharp, chiding note of a chickadee. On lookingfor the bird I failed to see him. Suspecting the true cause ofhis sudden disappearance, I took a pole and touched a limb thathad an opening in its end where the wrens had the past season hada nest. As I did so, out came the chickadee and scolded sharply. The storm and the cold had driven him early to his chamber. Thesnow buntings are said to plunge into the snow-banks and pass thenight there. We know the ruffed grouse does this. IX BIRD-NESTING TIME The other day I sat for an hour watching a pair of wood thrushesengaged in building their nest near "Slabsides. " I say a pair, though the female really did all the work. The male hung aroundand was evidently an interested spectator of the proceeding. Themother bird was very busy bringing and placing the material, consisting mainly of dry maple leaves which the winter had madethin and soft, and which were strewn over the ground all about. How pretty she looked, running over the ground, now in shade, nowin sunshine, searching for the leaves that were just to herfancy! Sometimes she would seize two or more and with a quick, soft flight bear them to the fork of the little maple sapling. Every five or six minutes during her absence, the male would comeand inspect her work. He would look it over, arrange a leaf ortwo with his beak, and then go his way. Twice he sat down in thenest and worked his feet and pressed it with his breast, as ifshaping it. When the female found him there on her return, hequickly got out of her way. But he brought no material, he did no needful thing, he was abird of leisure. The female did all the drudgery, and with whatan air of grace and ease she did it! So soft of wing, so trim ofform, so pretty of pose, and so gentle in every movement! It wasevidently no drudgery to her; the material was handy, and thetask one of love. All the behavior of the wood thrush affects onelike music; it is melody to the eye as the song is to the ear; itis visible harmony. This bird cannot do an ungraceful thing. Ithas the bearing of a bird of fine breeding. Its cousin the robinis much more masculine and plebeian, harsher in voice, and ruderin manners. The wood thrush is urban and suggests sylvan hallsand courtly companions. Softness, gentleness, composure, characterize every movement. In only a few instances among ourbirds does the male assist in nest-building. He is usually only agratuitous superintendent of the work. The male oriole visits thehalf-finished structure of his mate, looks it over, tugs at thestrings now and then as if to try them, and, I suppose, has hisown opinion about the work, but I have never seen him actuallylend a hand and bring a string or a hair. If I belonged to oursentimental school of nature writers I might say that he is tooproud, that it is against the traditions of his race and family;but probably the truth is that he doesn't know how; that thenest-building instinct is less active in him than in his mate;that he is not impelled by the same necessity. It is easy to beseen how important it is that the nesting instinct should bestrong in the female, whether it is or not in the male. The malemay be cut off and yet the nest be built and the family reared. Among the rodents I fancy the nest is always built by the female. Whatever the explanation, the mother bird is really the head ofthe family; she is the most active in nest-building, and in mostcases in the care of the young; and among birds of prey, as amonginsects, the female is the larger and the more powerful. The wood thrush whose nest-building I have just described, laidonly one egg, and an abnormal-looking egg at that--very long andboth ends of the same size. But to my surprise out of theabnormal-looking egg came in due time a normal-looking chickwhich grew to birdhood without any mishaps. The late, cold seasonand the consequent scarcity of food was undoubtedly the cause ofso small a family. Another pair of wood thrushes built a nest on the low branch ofa maple by the roadside, where I had it under daily observation. This nest presently held three eggs, two of which hatched in duetime, and for a few days the young seemed to prosper. Then onemorning, I noticed the mother bird sitting in a silent, meditative way on the edge of the nest. As she made no moveduring the minute or two while I watched her, I drew near to seewhat was the matter. I found one of the young birds in a state ofutter collapse; it was cold and all but lifeless. The nextmorning I found the bird again sitting motionless on the rim ofthe nest and gazing into it. I found one of the birds dead andthe other nearly so. What had brought about the disaster I couldnot tell; no cause was apparent. I at first suspected vermin, butcould detect none. The silent, baffled look of the mother bird Ishall not soon forget. There was no demonstration of grief oralarm; only a brooding, puzzled look. I once witnessed similar behavior on the part of a pair ofbluebirds that were rearing a brood in a box on a grape post nearmy study. One day I chanced to observe one of the parent birds atthe entrance of the nest, gazing long and intently in. In thecourse of the day I saw this act several times, and in no casedid the bird enter the box with food as it had been doing. Then Iinvestigated and found the nearly fledged birds all dead. Onremoving them I found the nest infested with many dark, tough-skinned, very active worms or grubs nearly an inch long, that had apparently sucked the blood out of the bodies of thefledglings. They were probably the larvę of some species ofbeetle unknown to me. The parent birds had looked on and seentheir young destroyed, and made no effort to free the nest oftheir enemy. Or probably they had not suspected what was goingon, or did not understand it if they beheld it. Their instinctswere not on the alert for an enemy so subtle, and one springingup in the nest itself. Any visible danger from without alarmedthem instantly, but here was a new foe that doubtless they hadnever before had to cope with. The oriole in her nest-building seems more fickle than most otherbirds. I have known orioles several times to begin a nest andthen leave it and go elsewhere. Last year one started a nest inan oak near my study, then after a few days of hesitating laborleft it and selected the traditional site of her race, thependent branch of an elm by the roadside. This time she behavedlike a wise bird and came back for some of the material of theabandoned nest. She had attached a single piece of twine to theoak branch, and this she could not leave behind; twine was toouseful and too hard to get. So I saw her tugging at this stringtill she loosened it, then flew toward the elm with it trailingin the air behind her. I could but smile at her thrift. Thesecond nest she completed and occupied and doubtless found herpendent-nest instinct fully satisfied by the high swaying elmbranch. One of our prettiest nest-builders is the junco or snowbird; infact, it builds the prettiest nest to be found upon the ground, I think--more massive and finely moulded and finished than thatof the song sparrow. I find it only in the Catskills, or ontheir borders, often in a mossy bank by the roadside, in the woods, or on their threshold. With what delicate and consummate art itis insinuated into the wild scene, like some shy thing that grewthere, visible, yet hidden by its perfect fitness and harmony withits surroundings. The mother bird darts out but a few yards fromyou as you drive or walk along, but your eye is baffled for somemoments before you have her secret. Such a keen, feather-edged, not to say spiteful little body, with the emphasis of those twopairs of white quills in her tail given to every movement, and yet, a less crabbed, less hasty nest, softer and more suggestive of shysylvan ways, than is hers, would be hard to find. One day I was walking along the grassy borders of a beech andmaple wood with a friend when, as we came to a little low moundof moss and grass, scarcely a foot high, I said, "This is justthe spot for a junco's nest, " and as I stooped down to examineit, out flew the bird. I had divined better than I knew. What apretty secret that little footstool of moss and grass-coveredearth held! How exquisite the nest, how exquisite the place, howchoice and harmonious the whole scene! How could these eggs longescape the prowling foxes, skunks, coons, the sharp-eyed crows, the searching mice and squirrels? They did not escape; in a dayor two they were gone. Another junco's nest beside a Catskill trout stream sticks in mymemory. It was in an open grassy place amid the trees and bushesnear the highway. There were ladies in our trouting party and Icalled them to come and see the treasure I had found. "Where is it?" one of them said, as she stopped and looked arounda few paces from me. "It is within six feet of you, " I replied. She looked about, incredulous, as it seemed an unlikely place for a nest of anysort, so open was it, and so easily swept by the first glance. As she stepped along, perplexed, I said, "Now it is within oneyard of you. " She thought I was joking; but stooping down, determined not to be baffled, she espied it sheltered by a thin, mossy stone that stood up seven or eight inches above the turf, tilted at an angle of about that of one side of a house-roof. Under this the nest was tucked, sheltered from the sun and rain, and hidden from all but the sharpest eye. X A BREATH OF APRIL I It would not be easy to say which is our finest or most beautifulwild flower, but certainly the most poetic and the best belovedis the arbutus. So early, so lowly, so secretive there in themoss and dry leaves, so fragrant, tinged with the hues of youthand health, so hardy and homelike, it touches the heart as noother does. April's flower offers the first honey to the bee and the firstfragrance to the breeze. Modest, exquisite, loving the evergreens, loving the rocks, untamable, it is the very spirit and breath ofthe woods. Trailing, creeping over the ground, hiding its beautyunder withered leaves, stiff and hard in foliage, but in flowerlike the cheek of a maiden. One may brush away the April snow and find this finer snowbeneath it. Oh, the arbutus days, what memories and longings theyawaken! In this latitude they can hardly be looked for beforeApril, and some seasons not till the latter days of the month. The first real warmth, the first tender skies, the first fragrantshowers--the woods are flooded with sunlight, and the dry leavesand the leaf-mould emit a pleasant odor. One kneels down or liesdown beside a patch of the trailing vine, he brushes away theleaves, he lifts up the blossoming sprays and examines andadmires them at leisure; some are white, some are white and pink, a few are deep pink. It is enough to bask there in the sunlighton the ground beside them, drinking in their odor, feasting theeye on their tints and forms, hearing the April breezes sigh andmurmur in the pines or hemlocks near you, living in a presentfragrant with the memory of other days. Lying there, halfdreaming, half observing, if you are not in communion with thevery soul of spring, then there is a want of soul in you. You mayhear the first swallow twittering from the sky above you, or thefirst mellow drum of the grouse come up from the woods below orfrom the ridge opposite. The bee is abroad in the air, findingher first honey in the flower by your side and her first pollenin the pussy-willows by the watercourses below you. The tender, plaintive love-note of the chickadee is heard here and there inthe woods. He utters it while busy on the catkins of the poplars, from which he seems to be extracting some kind of food. Hawks arescreaming high in the air above the woods; the plow is justtasting the first earth in the rye or corn stubble (and it tastesgood). The earth looks good, it smells good, it is good. By thecreek in the woods you hear the first water-thrush--a short, bright, ringing, hurried song. If you approach, the bird fliesswiftly up or down the creek, uttering an emphatic "chip, chip. " In wild, delicate beauty we have flowers that far surpass thearbutus: the columbine, for instance, jetting out of a seam in agray ledge of rock, its many crimson and flame-colored flowersshaking in the breeze; but it is mostly for the eye. Thespring-beauty, the painted trillium, the fringed polygala, theshowy lady's-slipper, are all more striking to look upon, butthey do not quite touch the heart; they lack the soul thatperfume suggests. Their charms do not abide with you as do thoseof the arbutus. II These still, hazy, brooding mid-April mornings, when the farmerfirst starts afield with his plow, when his boys gather thebuckets in the sugar-bush, when the high-hole calls long and loudthrough the hazy distance, when the meadowlark sends up herclear, silvery shaft of sound from the meadow, when the bushsparrow trills in the orchard, when the soft maples look redagainst the wood, or their fallen bloom flecks the drying mud inthe road, --such mornings are about the most exciting andsuggestive of the whole year. How good the fields look, how goodthe freshly turned earth looks!--one could almost eat it as doesthe horse;--the stable manure just being drawn out and scatteredlooks good and smells good; every farmer's house and barnlooks inviting; the children on the way to school with theirdinner-pails in their hands--how they open a door into the pastfor you! Sometimes they have sprays of arbutus in theirbuttonholes, or bunches of hepatica. The partridge is drumming inthe woods, and the woodpeckers are drumming on dry limbs. The day is veiled, but we catch such glimpses through the veil. The bees are getting pollen from the pussy-willows and softmaples, and the first honey from the arbutus. It is at this time that the fruit and seed catalogues areinteresting reading, and that the cuts of farm implements have anew fascination. The soil calls to one. All over the country, people are responding to the call, and are buying farms andmoving upon them. My father and mother moved upon their farm inthe spring of 1828; I moved here upon mine in March, 1874. I see the farmers, now going along their stone fences andreplacing the stones that the frost or the sheep and cattle havethrown off, and here and there laying up a bit of wall that hastumbled down. There is rare music now in the unmusical call of theph[oe]be-bird--it is so suggestive. The drying road appeals to one as it never does at any otherseason. When I was a farm-boy, it was about this time that I usedto get out of my boots for half an hour and let my bare feet feelthe ground beneath them once more. There was a smooth, dry, levelplace in the road near home, and along this I used to run, andexult in that sense of lightfootedness which is so keen at suchtimes. What a feeling of freedom, of emancipation, and of joy inthe returning spring I used to experience in those warm Apriltwilights! I think every man whose youth was spent on the farm, whatever hislife since, must have moments at this season when he longs to goback to the soil. How its sounds, its odors, its occupations, itsassociations, come back to him! Would he not like to return againto help rake up the litter of straw and stalks about the barn, orabout the stack on the hill where the grass is starting? Would henot like to help pick the stone from the meadow, or mend thebrush fence on the mountain where the sheep roam, or hunt up oldBrindle's calf in the woods, or gather oven-wood for his motherto start again the big brick oven with its dozen loaves of ryebread, or see the plow crowding the lingering snow-banks on theside-hill, or help his father break and swingle and hatchel theflax in the barnyard? When I see a farm advertised for rent or for sale in the spring, I want to go at once and look it over. All the particularsinterest me--so many acres of meadow-land, so many of woodland, so many of pasture--the garden, the orchard, the outbuildings, the springs, the creek--I see them all, and am already half inpossession. Even Thoreau felt this attraction, and recorded in his Journal:"I know of no more pleasing employment than to ride about thecountry with a companion very early in the spring, looking atfarms with a view to purchasing, if not paying for them. " Blessed is the man who loves the soil! XI THE WOODCOCK'S EVENING HYMN The twilight flight song of the woodcock is one of the mostcurious and tantalizing yet interesting bird songs we have. Ifancy that the persons who hear and recognize it in the April orMay twilight are few and far between. I myself have heard it onlyon three occasions--one season in late March, one season inApril, and the last time in the middle of May. It is a voice ofecstatic song coming down from the upper air and through the mistand the darkness--the spirit of the swamp and the marsh climbingheavenward and pouring out its joy in a wild burst of lyricmelody; a haunter of the muck and a prober of the mud suddenlytransformed into a bird that soars and circles and warbles like alark hidden or half hidden in the depths of the twilight sky. Thepassion of the spring has few more pleasing exemplars. Themadness of the season, the abandon of the mating instinct, is inevery move and note. Ordinarily the woodcock is a very dull, stupid bird, with a look almost idiotic, and is seldom seenexcept by the sportsman or the tramper along marshy brooks. Butfor a brief season in his life he is an inspired creature, awinged song that baffles the eye and thrills the ear from themystic regions of the upper air. When I last heard it, I was with a companion, and our attentionwas arrested, as we were skirting the edge of a sloping, rathermarshy, bowlder-strewn field, by the "zeep, " "zeep, " which thebird utters on the ground, preliminary to its lark-like flight. We paused and listened. The light of day was fast failing; afaint murmur went up from the fields below us that defined itselfnow and then in the good-night song of some bird. Now it was thelullaby of the song sparrow or the swamp sparrow. Once thetender, ringing, infantile voice of the bush sparrow stood outvividly for a moment on that great background of silence. "Zeep, ""zeep, " came out of the dimness six or eight rods away. Presentlythere was a faint, rapid whistling of wings, and my companionsaid: "There, he is up. " The ear could trace his flight, but notthe eye. In less than a minute the straining ear failed to catchany sound, and we knew he had reached his climax and wascircling. Once we distinctly saw him whirling far above us. Thenhe was lost in the obscurity, and in a few seconds there raineddown upon us the notes of his ecstatic song--a novel kind ofhurried, chirping, smacking warble. It was very brief, and whenit ceased, we knew the bird was dropping plummet-like to theearth. In half a minute or less his "zeep, " "zeep, " came up againfrom the ground. In two or three minutes he repeated his flightand song, and thus kept it up during the half-hour or more thatwe remained to listen: now a harsh plaint out of the obscurityupon the ground; then a jubilant strain from out the obscurityof the air above. His mate was probably somewhere withinearshot, and we wondered just how much interest she took in theperformance. Was it all for her benefit, or inspired by herpresence? I think, rather, it was inspired by the May night, bythe springing grass, by the unfolding leaves, by the apple bloom, by the passion of joy and love that thrills through nature atthis season. An hour or two before, we had seen the bobolinks inthe meadow beating the air with the same excited wing andoverflowing with the same ecstasy of song, but their demure, retiring, and indifferent mates were nowhere to be seen. It wouldseem as if the male bird sang, not to win his mate, but tocelebrate the winning, to invoke the young who are not yet born, and to express the joy of love which is at the heart of Nature. When I reached home, I went over the fourteen volumes ofThoreau's Journal to see if he had made any record of havingheard the "woodcock's evening hymn, " as Emerson calls it. He hadnot. Evidently he never heard it, which is the more surprising ashe was abroad in the fields and marshes and woods at almost allhours in the twenty-four and in all seasons and weathers, makingit the business of his life to see and record what was going onin nature. Thoreau's eye was much more reliable than his ear. He sawstraight, but did not always hear straight. For instance, heseems always to have confounded the song of the hermit thrushwith that of the wood thrush. He records having heard the lattereven in April, but never the former. In the Maine woods and onMonadnock it is always the wood thrush which he hears, and neverthe hermit. But if Thoreau's ear was sometimes at fault, I do not recall thathis eye ever was, while his mind was always honest. He had aninstinct for the truth, and while we may admit that the truth hewas in quest of in nature was not always scientific truth, or thetruth of natural history, but was often the truth of the poet andthe mystic, yet he was very careful about his facts; he liked tobe able to make an exact statement, to clinch his observations bygoing again and again to the spot. He never taxes your credulity. He had never been bitten by the mad dog of sensationalism thathas bitten certain of our later nature writers. Thoreau made no effort to humanize the animals. What he aimedmainly to do was to invest his account of them with literarycharm, not by imputing to them impossible things, but bydescribing them in a way impossible to a less poetic nature. Thenovel and the surprising are not in the act of the bird or beastitself, but in Thoreau's way of telling what it did. To draw uponyour imagination for your facts is one thing; to draw upon yourimagination in describing what you see is quite another. The newschool of nature writers will afford many samples of the formermethod; read Thoreau's description of the wood thrush's song orthe bobolink's song, or his account of wild apples, or of hislife at Walden Pond, or almost any other bit of his writing, fora sample of the latter. In his best work he uses language in theimaginative way of the poet. Literature and science do not differ in matters of fact, but inspirit and method. There is no live literature without a play ofpersonality, and there is no exact science without the clear, white light of the understanding. What we want, and have a rightto expect, of the literary naturalist is that his statement shallhave both truth and charm, but we do not want the charm at theexpense of the truth. I may invest the commonest fact I observein the fields or by the roadside with the air of romance, if Ican, but I am not to put the romance in place of the fact. If youromance about the animals, you must do so unequivocally, asKipling does and as Ęsop did; the fiction must declare itself atonce, or the work is vicious. To make literature out of naturalhistory observation is not to pervert or distort the facts, or todraw the long bow at all; it is to see the facts in their truerelations and proportions and with honest emotion. Truth of seeing and truth of feeling are the main requisite: addtruth of style, and the thing is done. XII THE COMING OF SUMMER Who shall say when one season ends and another begins? Only thealmanac-makers can fix these dates. It is like saying whenbabyhood ends and childhood begins, or when childhood ends andyouth begins. To me spring begins when the catkins on the aldersand the pussy-willows begin to swell; when the ice breaks up onthe river and the first sea-gulls come prospecting northward. Whatever the date--the first or the middle or the last ofMarch--when these signs appear, then I know spring is at hand. Her first birds--the bluebird, the song sparrow, the robin, thered-shouldered starling--are here or soon will be. The crows havea more confident caw, the sap begins to start in the sugar maple, the tiny boom of the first bee is heard, the downy woodpeckerbegins his resonant tat, tat, tat, on the dry limbs, and thecattle in the barnyard low long and loud with wistful lookstoward the fields. The first hint of summer comes when the trees are fully fledgedand the nymph Shadow is born. See her cool circles again beneaththe trees in the field, or her deeper and cooler retreats in thewoods. On the slopes, on the opposite side of the river, therehave been for months under the morning and noon sun only slightshadow tracings, a fretwork of shadow lines; but some morning inMay I look across and see solid masses of shade falling from thetrees athwart the sloping turf. How the eye revels in them! Thetrees are again clothed and in their right minds; myriad leavesrustle in promise of the coming festival. Now the trees aresentient beings; they have thoughts and fancies; they stir withemotion; they converse together; they whisper or dream in thetwilight; they struggle and wrestle with the storm. "Caught and cuff'd by the gale, " Tennyson says. Summer always comes in the person of June, with a bunch ofdaisies on her breast and clover blossoms in her hands. A newchapter in the season is opened when these flowers appear. Onesays to himself, "Well, I have lived to see the daisies again andto smell the red clover. " One plucks the first blossoms tenderlyand caressingly. What memories are stirred in the mind by thefragrance of the one and the youthful face of the other! There isnothing else like that smell of the clover: it is the maidenlybreath of summer; it suggests all fresh, buxom, rural things. Afield of ruddy, blooming clover, dashed or sprinkled here andthere with the snow-white of the daisies; its breath drifts intothe road when you are passing; you hear the boom of bees, thevoice of bobolinks, the twitter of swallows, the whistle ofwoodchucks; you smell wild strawberries; you see the cattle uponthe hills; you see your youth, the youth of a happy farm-boy, rise before you. In Kentucky I once saw two fields, of onehundred acres each, all ruddy with blooming clover--perfume for awhole county. The blooming orchards are the glory of May, the bloomingclover-fields the distinction of June. Other characteristic Juneperfumes come from the honey-locusts and the blooming grapevines. At times and in certain localities the air at night and morningis heavy with the breath of the former, and along the lanes androadsides we inhale the delicate fragrance of the wild grape. Theearly grasses, too, with their frostlike bloom, contributesomething very welcome to the breath of June. Nearly every season I note what I call the bridal day ofsummer--a white, lucid, shining day, with a delicate veil of mistsoftening all outlines. How the river dances and sparkles; howthe new leaves of all the trees shine under the sun; the air hasa soft lustre; there is a haze, it is not blue, but a kind ofshining, diffused nimbus. No clouds, the sky a bluish white, verysoft and delicate. It is the nuptial day of the season; the sunfairly takes the earth to be his own, for better or for worse, onsuch a day, and what marriages there are going on all about us:the marriages of the flowers, of the bees, of the birds. Everything suggests life, love, fruition. These bridal days areoften repeated; the serenity and equipoise of the elementscombine. They were such days as these that the poet Lowell had inmind when he exclaimed, "What is so rare as a day in June?" Hereis the record of such a day, June 1, 1883: "Day perfect intemper, in mood, in everything. Foliage all out except onbutton-balls and celtis, and putting on its dark green summercolor, solid shadows under the trees, and stretching down theslopes. A few indolent summer clouds here and there. A day ofgently rustling and curtsying leaves, when the breeze almostseems to blow upward. The fields of full-grown, nodding ryeslowly stir and sway like vast assemblages of people. How thechimney swallows chipper as they sweep past! The vireo's cheerfulwarble echoes in the leafy maples; the branches of the Norwayspruce and the hemlocks have gotten themselves new light greentips; the dandelion's spheres of ethereal down rise above thegrass: and now and then one of them suddenly goes down: thelittle chippy, or social sparrow, has thrown itself upon thefrail stalk and brought it to the ground, to feed upon itsseeds; here it gets the first fruits of the season. The first redand white clover heads have just opened, the yellow rock-roseand the sweet viburnum are in bloom; the bird chorus is stillfull and animated; the keys of the red maple strew the ground, and the cotton of the early everlasting drifts upon the air. "For several days there was but little change. "Getting towardthe high tide of summer. The air well warmed up, Nature in herjocund mood, still, all leaf and sap. The days are idyllic. I lieon my back on the grass in the shade of the house, and look upto the soft, slowly moving clouds, and to the chimney swallowsdisporting themselves up there in the breezy depths. No hardeningin vegetation yet. The moist, hot, fragrant breath of thefields--mingled odor of blossoming grasses, clover, daisies, rye--the locust blossoms, dropping. What a humming about the hives;what freshness in the shade of every tree; what contentment in theflocks and herds! The springs are yet full and cold; the shadedwatercourses and pond margins begin to draw one. " Go to the topof the hill on such a morning, say by nine o'clock, and see howunspeakably fresh and full the world looks. The morning shadowsyet linger everywhere, even in the sunshine; a kind of bluecoolness and freshness, the vapor of dew tinting the air. Heat and moisture, the father and mother of all that lives, whenJune has plenty of these, the increase is sure. Early in June the rye and wheat heads begin to nod; themotionless stalks have a reflective, meditative air. A littlewhile ago, when their heads were empty or filled only with chaffand sap, how straight up they held them! Now that the grain isforming, they have a sober, thoughtful look. It is one of themost pleasing spectacles of June, a field of rye gently shaken bythe wind. How the breezes are defined upon its surface--a surfaceas sensitive as that of water; how they trip along, littlebreezes and big breezes together! Just as this glaucous greensurface of the rye-field bends beneath the light tread of thewinds, so, we are told, the crust of the earth itself bendsbeneath the giant strides of the great atmospheric waves. There is one bird I seldom hear till June, and that is thecuckoo. Sometimes the last days of May bring him, but oftener itis June before I hear his note. The cuckoo is the true recluseamong our birds. I doubt if there is any joy in his soul. "Rain-crow, " he is called in some parts of the country. His callis supposed to bode rain. Why do other birds, the robin forinstance, often make war upon the cuckoo, chasing it from thevicinity of their nests? There seems to be something about thecuckoo that makes its position among the birds rather anomalous. Is it at times a parasitical bird, dropping its eggs into otherbirds' nests? Or is there some suggestion of the hawk about ourspecies as well as about the European? I do not know. I only knowthat it seems to be regarded with a suspicious eye by otherbirds, and that it wanders about at night in a way that norespectable bird should. The birds that come in March, as thebluebird, the robin, the song sparrow, the starling, build inApril; the April birds, such as the brown thrasher, the barnswallow, the chewink, the water-thrush, the oven-bird, thechippy, the high-hole, the meadowlark, build in May, while theMay birds, the kingbird, the wood thrush, the oriole, the orchardstarling, and the warblers, build in June. The April nests areexposed to the most dangers: the storms, the crows, thesquirrels, are all liable to cut them off. The midsummer nests, like that of the goldfinch and the waxwing, or cedar-bird, arethe safest of all. In March the door of the seasons first stands ajar a little; inApril it is opened much wider; in May the windows go up also; andin June the walls are fairly taken down and the genial currentshave free play everywhere. The event of March in the country isthe first good sap day, when the maples thrill with the kindlingwarmth; the event of April is the new furrow and the firstseeding;--how ruddy and warm the soil looks just opened to thesun!--the event of May is the week of orchard bloom; with whatsweet, pensive gladness one walks beneath the pink-white masses, while long, long thoughts descend upon him! See the impetuousorioles chase one another amid the branches, shaking down thefragrant snow. Here the rose-breasted grosbeak is in the bloomingcherry tree, snipping off the blossoms with that heavy beak ofhis--a spot of crimson and black half hidden in masses of whitepetals. This orchard bloom travels like a wave. In March it is inthe Carolinas; by the middle of April its crest has reached thePotomac; a week or ten days later it is in New Jersey; then inMay it sweeps through New York and New England; and early in Juneit is breaking upon the orchards in Canada. Finally, the event ofJune is the fields ruddy with clover and milk-white with daisies. TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES: The "oe" ligature is represented as [oe]. Title page: Changed typo "Cambridg" to "Cambridge. " Table of Contents/Chapter VIII: Retained punctuation error inchapter title. Page 18: Added missing period to sentence: "The bear was fussing. . . To burying it. " Page 30: Changed typo "sudddenly" to "suddenly. " Pages 31, 79, 95: Retained inconsistent spellings ofhighhole/high-hole. Pages 32 & 58: Retained inconsistent spellings oftreetops/tree-tops. Page 38: Changed single quote to double quote in sentence: "Here, Jim, you do this . . . Thing through". Chapter XII: Changed typo "IIX" to "XII. "