OUR WINTER BIRDS. 121 
till the top is reached, when they dive straight to the roots 
of the next tree, and begin a new exploration. There is 
no time wasted by these little engineers in foolish flying 
about or profitless research. Not allowing a cranny to go 
untouched, they drag out every unhappy grub it shelters 
before raiding the next hiding-place of insect-life. Their 
feet are broad and strong for clinging; their bills are small 
pickaxes, their tongues harpoons, and their brains marine 
clocks, just as steady one side up as another. Thus they 
are able to live on the injurious borers and the like which 
pass through their metamorphoses beneath the bark; and, 
except when everything is incased in ice, do not eat seed, 
or even alight on the ground. They are among the most 
active and serviceable of the fruit-grower’s benefactors, 
continuing, during the cold months, the good work drop- 
ped in October by the summer birds, and finding in his in- 
sidious enemies their favorite food. The nuthatch is the 
leader of that admirable little company composed of the 
chickadee, the crested titmouse, the downy woodpecker, 
and sometimes of the red-bellied nuthatch and spirituel 
creeper, which Wilson truthfully describes as “ proceeding 
regularly from tree to tree through the woods like a corps 
of pioneers; while, in a cali day, the rattling of their bills, 
and the rapid motions of their bodies, thrown like so many 
