154 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 



knew had been a favorite sap-drinking resort of 

 the yellow-bellied woodpeckers and their attend- 

 ant friends, the humming birds. The woodpeck- 

 ers were at the tree, but unaccompanied as yet 

 by hummers. There was evidence in the large 

 number of new holes already cut in the bark of 

 the tree that the woodpeckers had been back 

 from the south since about April 20. They 

 were busy excavating a new house in a sound 

 poplar tree near their maple fountain, and that 

 also showed a week or more of thought and labor 

 expended. Black and white creeping warblers 

 and Nashville warblers were abundant in the 

 woods near by, and I suspected a downy wood- 

 pecker of having selected a house-lot near the 

 sapsuckers, from the close watch which he kept 

 on me while I was in the neighborhood. Dur- 

 ing the half hour which I spent watching the 

 yellow-bellied woodpeckers drinking the flowing 

 sap on the maple and digging diligently at their 

 hole in the poplar, I heard an unbroken cawing 

 of crows at a distance. At last the uproar was 

 so great that I went to seek an explanation of it. 

 Well hidden on the crest of a kame, I looked 

 across a narrow ravine into the edge of a hang- 

 ing wood of old beeches and yellow birches. 

 Sixteen crows were in these trees, gathered with- 

 in a few yards of each other. They were all caw- 

 ing at once, and shaking their heads, flapping 



