Cooper Shrew 1103 



On one of these side expeditions he had captured a Shrew 

 {Sorex personatus) which had also left its track in the sand. 

 The tracks of the two animals showed that the Shrew was not 

 killed until he had led his enemy a sharply zigzag chase. The 

 Mink left the tail and hind-quarters of the Shrew lying on the 

 sand, and continued his way directly to my trap." 



At Duck Mountain, Man., June 15, 1884, I found a 

 dead Masked Shrew in a catbird's nest about six feet from 

 the ground. As the Shrew could not have climbed there 

 itself, I suspect that a jay or shrike had killed it for food, 

 but changed his mind about eating it, on fully realizing the 

 foul deed he had done. 



In my Journal for 1882 I find a note that may record a 

 similar incident: 



October 27, 1882, while examining an old stump in the 

 woods to the north of Carberry, I met with an excellent illustra- 

 tion of the aptitude of the Spanish name for the woodpecker, 

 'II Carpentero,' as applied to our flicker. I mean in the 

 sense of its being a worker in wood and house-provider for 

 others. The history of the case was briefly this, as far as the 

 circumstantial evidence revealed it: 



First came the hard-working flicker and excavated the 

 hole, perhaps while yet the stump was sound, and in the years 

 that followed we know not how many young flickers cracked 

 their glass-like shells in this narrow chamber; and after the 

 flickers came no more it was taken by some bird, a grakle 

 perhaps, that, like the 'foolish man, founded his nest on sand,' 

 finishing its superstructure with mud, sticks, and straw. Next 

 came a new possessor, who built a strong shapely nest of moss 

 and mud; but for the situation it might have been the work of 

 a robin. Lastly, this many-storied tenement house became the 

 eyrie of a sparrowhawk, whose household furniture of straw 

 and moss reached half-way up to the doorway. A strange tale 

 of a hole, surely; but there was more yet to be learned from the 

 old stub, and, allowing fullest weight to circumstantial evidence 

 and accepting the supposititious as fact, I may be allowed 

 to relate, as a matter of established history, that on a certain day 



