32 BIRDS IN THEIR RELATIONS TO MAN. 



finding these strewn upon the ground seem ready to accept 

 them, as are also the woodpeckers and the brown creepers, 

 when fortune favors them with stray kernels in famine time. 



Hemlock cones are so much smaller than those of the 

 white pine that the seeds are more accessible, and conse- 

 quently have a somewhat larger following. The siskins and 

 the cross-bills are very fond of them, and wherever they find 

 a fruitful growth they are likely to remain till the store is 

 spent, — usually about midwinter. After the snow has come, 

 covering the weeds, goldfinches also resort to the hemlocks. 

 Even the chickadees, nuthatches, and woodpeckers seem to 

 find it agreeable to sandwich these seeds in with their fare of 

 frozen insects. 



The spruces have larger and more refractory cones than 

 the hemlock, and rank about with the white pine in bird 

 economy. The other coniferous trees are of varying impor- 

 tance in this connection, but an account of them would not 

 differ materially from that for those already mentioned. 



Comparatively few of the vegetivorous birds are capable 

 of devouring nuts. Crows and blue-jays, by holding them 

 between their toes and their perch, are able with their strong 

 bills to remove the shells from any of the thin-shelled nuts, 

 and during the mast season feed largely upon them. The 

 wild doves, pigeons, grouse, turkeys, and many of the ducks 

 eat them entire, leaving the task of shelling to their muscular 

 gizzards. To all these birds nuts are a standard article of 

 diet. To the nuthatches and woodpeckers they are among 

 the contingencies, as a rule, though some of the western 

 woodpeckers seem to depend upon them considerably for 

 winter food. The smaller nuts, or nutlets, approaching the 

 borderland of the seed-like achenes, such as those of the 

 hornbeams and basswood, are eaten to some extent by the 

 grosbeaks and woodpeckers. 



There are a number of dry fruits intermediate between 

 nuts and soft fruits which are of some consequence to birds 



