WINTER NEIGHBORS 135 



Innocently and unconcernedly as at a bear or moose 

 in their native north, and your house is no more 

 to them than a ledge of rocks. 



The only ones of my winter neighbors that ac- 

 tually rap at my door are the nuthatches and wood- 

 peckers, and these do not know that it is my door. 

 My retreat is covered with the bark of young chest- 

 nut-trees, and the birds, I suspect, mistake it for 

 a huge stump that ought to hold fat grubs (there 

 is not even a book- worm inside of it), and their 

 loud rapping often makes me think I have a caller 

 indeed. I place fragments of hickory-nuts in the 

 interstices of the bark, and thus attract the nut- 

 hatches; a bone upon my window-sill attracts both 

 nuthatches and the downy woodpecker. They peep 

 in curiously through the window upon me, pecking 

 away at my bone, too often a very poor one. A 

 bone nailed to a tree a few feet in front of the win- 

 dow attracts crows as well as lesser birds. Even 

 the slate-colored snowbird, a seed-eater, comes and 

 nibbles it occasionally. 



The bird that seems to consider he has the best 

 right to the bone both upon the tree and upon the 

 sill is the downy woodpecker, my favorite neighbor 

 among the winter birds, to whom I will mainly 

 devote the remainder of this chapter. His retreat 

 is but a few paces from my own, in the decayed 

 limb of an apple-tree which he excavated several 

 autumns ago. I say " he " because the red plume 

 on the top of his head proclaims the sex. It seems 

 not to be generally known to cmr writers upon orn> 



