NEW GLEANINGS IN OLD FIELDS 



ers that come in winter and feed on the suet on 

 the maple in front of my window, how much com- 

 pany they are to me! What thoughts and associa- 

 tions they bring with them! What a pleasure to 

 have them as my guests on the old tree! The cold, 

 naked, snow-choked woods what can those little 

 pilgrims get there? I think the nuthatch touches me 

 the most closely; he is pretty to look upon, and his 

 voice is that of a child, soft, confiding, contented, and 

 his ways are all ways of prettiness his sliding up 

 and down and round the tree, his pose, with head 

 standing out at right angles to the body, which en- 

 ables him to see the approach of danger as readily 

 as if he were perched on a horizontal limb, his 

 pretty habit of making a vise of a crevice in the bark 

 to hold a nut. All his notes and calls are pleasing; 

 he is incapable of a harsh sound. His call in the 

 spring woods when we made maple sugar in my boy- 

 hood "yank, yank, yank" how it comes back 

 to me! Not a song, but a token the spirit of the 

 leafless maple-woods finding a voice. 



And now for two or three weeks I have had an- 

 other guest at the free-lunch table, the prettiest 

 of them all, the red-breasted nuthatch from the 

 North, and he so appreciates my bounty that he 

 has taken up his temporary abode here in a wren's 

 box a few yards from the lunch-table. One cold day 

 I saw him go into the box and remain for some time. 

 So at sundown I went and rapped on his retreat, and 

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