TINY 



With few exceptions, writers on outdoor 

 life make it a point to denounce the red 

 squirrel. They claim that he is a nest-robber 

 of the worst kind. The most of this abuse 

 bears the earmarks of the library. One author 

 copies after another, without knowledge of 

 the real life of one of the most interesting 

 wild things of the woods. 



Reliable observers have related isolated 

 cases of nest-robbing, by the squirrel, which 

 we have no reason to doubt. I believe the 

 thing is most unusual, and happens only when 

 the food supply is cut off. If a squirrel in 

 the spring is face to face with a famine, he 

 might be tempted to kill and eat young birds. 

 I have no record against the red squirrel, after 

 eighteen years' observation here on the Cape. 

 In Maine for fifteen years I saw squirrels 

 plentiful enough on my farm. A small fruit 

 orchard, near the farm buildings, usually har- 

 bored several squirrels. Birds nested in the 

 trees and reared their young unless a coon 

 cat got them before they could fly. I never 

 knew a squirrel to molest a birds' nest, and the 

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