370 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



dees peeping about the tree trunks asking me to please give 

 them more peanuts. While this was going on I heard a hoarse 

 " Quank, quank, quank! " that sounded very near, and on look- 

 ing up saw a white-breasted nuthatch, a blue-gray bird with a 

 very distinct black band on the top of his head that extends back 

 across his shoulders. His short tail and legs make him look very 

 funny when on the ground. On a tree, however, he is a regu- 

 lar circus, walking head up or head down on the limbs and trunk, 

 and now and then doing the giant swing, completely circling 

 some twig, just to show what he can do when he tries. He 

 was attracted by the noise and conduct of the chickadees, his 

 winter companions, and was calling for something for himself. 

 His long, slim bill is not made for cracking things as the spar- 

 rows can with their short, strong bills, but he punches holes in 

 them very much as tlie woodpeckers do. When he came down 

 to the path and picked up a peanut he flew off to a near-by tree 

 and hunted up and down until he found a place in the bark where 

 he could wedge the nut in and then proceeded to hatch or crack it 

 into bits to suit his taste. A brown creeper was walking up his 

 tree a short distance away very much as the nuthatch does, poking 

 his long, curved bill into the bark, though I did not see him for 

 some time, as his brown and gray feathers were so like the color 

 of the tree on which he walked. He circles round the trunk or 

 limb, and you have to keep a sharp lookout to get more than an 

 occasional rapid glance at him. A loud rapping and a noise that 

 sounded a good deal like a giggle attracted my attention to a downy 

 black-and-white woodpecker, with a bright-red spot on the back of 

 his head. He was hammering away with all his might, and the 

 limb on which he hung, back down, fairly rattled as he drove his 

 chisel-like bill into the wood. Another woodpecker, the big and 

 beautifully marked flicker, with his brown back barred with black, 

 his spotted breast with its big black crescent and the red band on 

 the back of his head, stopped for a minute or two on a tree a 

 hundred feet away. His cry of alarm rang out shrilly as he flew 

 away. All of these birds are handsomely marked, though none 

 of them compare, in the mere matter of color, with some of the 

 many beautiful summer species. There was one bird there that 

 day, though, whose brilliant plumage and altogether tropical aspect 

 comes as a great surprise to the unaccustomed visitor to the park 

 in winter. As he lighted on the snow-covered ground among a 

 group of feeding whitethroats the cardinal, with his splendid crest, 

 stood out like a jet of flame, and the black spot at the base of his 

 bill only made the rest of him seem the brighter, !^^r. and Mrs. 

 Cardinal spend their winters regularly in Central Park, and I hear 



