Happenings by the Way 109 



There is the companionable white-breasted nuthatch, 

 which goes scudding up and down the tree trunks with 

 as much ease and aplomb as a fly gliding over a window- 

 pane. I have already told you something about him. 

 I had long been aware that he wedged grains of corn, sun- 

 flower seeds, and kernels of nuts in the crannies of the 

 bark ; but one day he invented a trick that was a surprise 

 to me. It occurred at a summer resort in northern Indi- 

 ana, where I noticed a nuthatch hitching up and down 

 and around the slender stem of a sapling, pausing at inter- 

 vals to thrust something into the crevices of the bark. 

 My curiosity led me to pry into the bird's affairs. Step- 

 ping smartly forward, .1 drove him away, not heeding 

 his vigorous protest of "yank, yank," and examined the 

 bark of the sapling. What did I discover? A colony of 

 black ants were scuttling up and down the tree, appar- 

 ently under stress of great excitement; and good reason 

 they had, for here and there one of their number was 

 tightly wedged into a chink of the bark, often doubled 

 up into a bow or an angle. They were not killed, at least 

 not all of them, for they were still wiggling their legs and 

 antennae; but they were evidently benumbed, or some 

 of their backs were broken, and they were fastened so 

 securely in the fissures that they could not escape. Does 

 it not look as if the forehanded nuthatch was laying by 

 a supply of ants for a coming time of hunger? 



One day a family of wood pewees visited the dooryard 

 of my tent. A multitude of gnats circling about in the 

 air, seemed to be precisely to the taste of the pewee 



