BIRDS-NESTS 97 



maple. For better protection against driving rains, 

 the hole, which was rather more than an inch in 

 diameter, was made immediately beneath a branch 

 which stretched out almost horizontally from the 

 main stem. It appeared merely a deeper shadow 

 upon the dark and mottled surface of the bark with 

 which the branches were covered, and could not be 

 detected by the eye until one was within a few feet 

 of it. The young chirped vociferously as I ap- 

 proached the nest, thinking it was the old one with 

 food; but the clamor suddenly ceased as I put my 

 hand on that part of the trunk in which they were 

 concealed, the unusual jarring and rustling alarming 

 them into silence. The cavity, which was about 

 fifteen inches deep, was gourd-shaped, and was 

 wrought out with great skill and regularity. The 

 walls were quite smooth and clean and new. 



I shall never forget the circumstance of observing 

 a pair of yellow-bellied woodpeckers — the most 

 rare and secluded, and, next to the red-headed, the 

 most beautiful species found in our woods — breed- 

 ing in an old, truncated beech in the Beaverkill 

 Mountains, an offshoot of the Catskills. We had 

 been traveling, three of us, all day in search of a 

 trout lake, which lay far in among the mountains, 

 had twice lost our course in the trackless forest, 

 and, weary and hungry, had sat down to rest upon 

 a decayed log. The chattering of the young, and 

 the passing to and fro of the parent birds, soon 

 arrested my attention. The entrance to the nest 

 was on the east side of the tree, about twenty-five 



