WILDWOOD WAYS 



New England orchids in the summer, 

 and the rarer migrant birds of our sum- 

 mer woods find asylum here for their 

 nests and young. In the winter the 

 ruffed grouse comes here to drink, finds 

 gravel for his crop always bare and un- 

 frozen on the hillside where the first seep- 

 ings of water come forth, and no doubt 

 gets an agreeable change of food in the 

 succulent green things of the shallows. 

 Several of these birds cling to the place, 

 nor can I drive them away by simply 

 flushing them. They circle and come 

 back to the brook margin or its immedi- 

 ate neighborhood every time. 



Where the swamp maples have grown 

 large on the bank and lifted the soil with 

 their roots high enough to form minia- 

 ture dry islands the mink have built their 

 burrows and thence they go forth to 

 hunt the region all about, but especially 

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