WILD LIFE ABOUT MY CABIN 



fruit-eaters, and seed-eaters mostly migrate. Our 

 all-the-year-round birds, like the chickadees, wood- 

 peckers, jays, and nuthatches, live mostly on nuts 

 and the eggs and larvae of tree-insects, and hence 

 their larder is a restricted one; hence, also, thes^ 

 birds rear only one brood in a season. A hairy wood- 

 pecker passed the winter in the woods near me by 

 subsisting on a certain small white grub which he 

 found in the bark of some dead hemlock-trees. He 

 " worked " these trees, — four of them, — as the 

 slang is, " for all they were worth." The grub was 

 under the outer shell of bark, and the bird literally 

 skinned the trees in getting at his favorite morsel. 

 He worked from the top downward, hammering or 

 prying off this shell, and leaving the trunk of the tree 

 with a red, denuded look. Bushels of the frag- 

 ments of the bark covered the ground at the foot of 

 the tree in spring, and the trunk looked as if it had 

 been flayed, — as it had. 



The big chimney of my cabin of course attracted 

 the chimney swifts, and as it was not used in sum- 

 mer, two pairs built their nests in it, and we had 

 the muflled thunder of their wings at all hours 

 of the day and night. One night, when one of the 

 broods was nearly fledged, the nest that held them 

 fell down into the fireplace. Such a din of screeching 

 and chattering as they instantly set up ! Neither my 

 dog nor I could sleep. They yelled in chorus, stop- 

 ping at the end of every half-minute as if upon sig' 



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