260 HASTY OBSERVATION 



few seasons ago by a mouse or squirrel, I was 

 apprehensive lest this nest share the same fate. 

 Hence when, one morning, the birds were miss- 

 ing, and I found on inspection what appeared 

 to be the hair of some small animal adhering to 

 the edges of the hole that leads to the nest, I 

 concluded that the birds had been cleaned out 

 again. Later in the day I examined the sup- 

 posed hair with my pocket glass, and found it 

 was not hair, but some vegetable fibre. My 

 next conclusion was that the birds had not been 

 molested, but that they Avere furnishing their 

 apartment, and some of the material had stuck 

 to the door jambs. This proved to be the cor- 

 rect inference. The chickadee makes a little 

 felt-like mat or carpet with which it covers the 

 bottom of the nest-cavity. A day or two later, 

 in my vineyard near by, I found where a piece 

 of heavy twine that held a yoimg grapevine to a 

 stake had been pulled down to the ground and 

 picked and beaten, and parts of it reduced to 

 its original tow. Here, doubtless, the birds 

 had got some of their carpeting material. 



I recently read in a work on ornithology that 

 the rings of small holes which we see in the 

 trunks and limbs of perfectly sound apple-trees 

 are made by woodpeckers in search of grubs and 

 insects. This is a hasty inference. These 

 holes are made by woodpeckers, but the food 

 they obtain at the bottom of them is not the 

 flesh of worm or insect, but the flesh of the 

 apple-tree — the soft, milky inner bark. The 

 same writer says these holes are not hurtful to 



