WINTER NEIGHBORS 



way changing their habits so as to take ad- 

 vantage of his presence in nature. The pine 

 grosbeaks will come in numbers upon your 

 porch to get the black drupes of the honey- 

 suckle or the woodbine, or within reach of 

 your windows to get the berries of the moun- 

 tain-ash, but they know you not ; they look 

 at you as 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 actually rap at my door are the nut- 

 hatches and woodpeckers, and these do not 

 know that it is my door. My retreat is 

 covered with the bark of young chestnut- 

 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 nuthatches ; 

 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 



23 



