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. Kot 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, jnst 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 calm day, the rattling of their bills, 

 and the rapid motions of their bodies, thrown like so many 



