428 NOTES ON THE 



severe the weather, it may be seen peering about the freshly- 

 fallen pines in the vicinity of the lumber camps and in the 

 evergreen thickets of the same regions. Noisy, restless, 

 cheery, he is soon a favorite of the woodsman. 



The earliest nests I have met were built about the last week 

 in April and were in holes in trees like those of the nuthatches 

 and woodpeckers. It is somewhat enlarged as it extends 

 down into the decayed tree or stump for eight or ten inches 

 and is lined with soft flexible mosses and animal hairs of dif- 

 ferent kinds. Sometimes it appropriates a few birds' feathers 

 and always weaves them nicely into a smooth warm receptacle 

 for from six to ten nearly pure white eggs with a slightly red- 

 dish tint, and spotted thickly at the larger end with reddish 

 brown. These are nearly spherical and measure about. 62x. 52. 

 They generally have two broods in the season. 



The most noteworthy habit I have recognized in this species 

 which has so many times been omitted in descriptions of it is 

 its almost invariable association with the nuthatches, which if 

 not exactly with it are not far away. Next to this their pro- 

 clivity to approach so near to one when seated in the deep 

 woods. Its notes are too familiar to need description, formu- 

 lating so remarkably the words cheiveek-a-dee-dee-dee, cheweek-a- 

 dee-dee-dee in a clear, distinct and really sweet tone. Its flight 

 is not unlike the woodpecker from tree to tree in its search for 

 food, and like that species is undulating, and gliding when 

 higher in the air. 



As I have been often called upon for my opinion of its habits 

 of destroying the buds of fruit trees in blossom, I am cheerful 

 to say that I believe no buds ever suffer which have not first 

 been made worthless by containing a grub which is destined to 

 destroy it. An examination of these buds afterward uniformly 

 reveals a burrow which his faithful bill has just emptied. This 

 to my mind fully substantiates his claim to friendship and pro- 

 tection. He makes no mistakes which sacrifice the perfect buds. 

 Endowed also in common with birds in general as he is with 

 eyes so constructed as to permit their microscopic as well as 

 telescopic use, he is prepared to examine with unerring cer- 

 tainty not only the buds but the bark where eggs as well as the 

 hatched vermin are hidden. 



"The eggs of the moth of the destructive leaf -rolling cater- 

 pillar — the canker worm, the apple -tree moth, and others of 

 these well-known plagues are greedily eaten by it, and this in 

 the inclement winter when most of our other birds have aban- 



