IN THE WREN ORCHARD. 203 



seven or eight inches, and then cut a neat door 

 into it from above. There on a mass of soft 

 shredded bark and odds and entls of forest fibre 

 lay seven tiny eggs. They were round little 

 eggs, having a salmon-white groundwork thickly 

 and uniformly covered with hundreds of minute 

 reddish brown spots. 



Bluebirds also build in this orchard, and so 

 do downy woodpeckers, flickers, and chickadees ; 

 all birds which rear their families in the hollows 

 of trees. A bluebird's nest which I found here 

 was placed at the bottom of a dark dry cavity in 

 an apple trunk. The hole was large enough for 

 a somewhat slender hand to pass through, and 

 so deep that half the forearm was in the hole be- 

 fore the eggs could be touched. Once in a while 

 the bluebird lays pure white eggs, but generally 

 they are pale blue, and to an unpracticed eye 

 might suggest a reflection of the sky in a pool of 

 rain water at the bottom of the hole. Almost all 

 birds which nest in hollow trees lay unmarked 

 white eggs. 



While I am writing a downy woodpecker and 

 a flicker both make their voices heard in the 

 orchard. 



The barberry bushes are in bloom to-day, and 

 I have amused my buttercup hunters by show- 

 ing them how the barberry flowers set traps for 

 their insect visitors. As one turns up the yellow 



