HASTY OBSERVATION 259 



maple, indulging in a tipple of maple sap every four 

 or five minutes. As fast as his well holes filled up 

 he would sip them dry. 



A lady told me that a woodpecker drilled holes in 

 the boards that form the eaves of her house, for the 

 grubs of the carpenter bumblebee. This also seemed 

 to me a hasty conclusion, because the woodpeckers 

 made holes so large that the next season the blue- 

 birds nested there. The woodpeckers were probably 

 drilling for a place to nest. A large ice-house stands 

 on the river bank near me, and every season the man 

 in charge has to shoot or drive away the high-holes 

 that cut numerous openings through the outer sheath- 

 ing of hemlock boards into the spaces filled with 

 sawdust, where they find the digging easy and a 

 nesting-place safe and snug. 



My neighbor caught a small hawk in his shad-net, 

 and therefore concluded the hawk ate fish. He put 

 him in a cage, and offered him fragments of shad. 

 The little hawk was probably in pursuit of a bird 

 which took refuge under the net as it hung upon 

 the drying-poles; or he may have swooped down 

 upon the net in the spirit of pure bluster and bra- 

 vado, and thus came to grief in a hurry. The fine, 

 strong threads of the net defied his murderous beak 

 and talons. He was engulfed as completely as is 

 a fly in a spider's web, and the more he struggled 

 the more hopeless his case became. It was a pigeon 

 hawk, and these little marauders are very saucy. 



My neighbor says that in the city of Brooklyn he 

 has known kingbirds to nest in boxes like martins 



