MOUNTAIN TREES 



Look on the bark of the yellow pines 

 for the ingeniously made cupboards of 

 acorns fashioned and filled with food by 

 the California Woodpecker, El Carpin- 

 tero, as the Mexicans love to call him. 

 Perhaps some day you may hear and 

 watch him tinkering around, gouging 

 out holes, or fitting acorns into them. 

 Whole trees are often covered with his 

 work and tens of thousands of snuggly- 

 fitting acorns await the day of his winter 

 hunger. Only the sweet-tasting acorns 

 are chosen and these he stores, not so 

 much for the grubs that may grow with- 

 in them, as for the sweet nut meats 

 which he likes to eat. High, dry and 

 embosomed in the bark of the tree, the 

 Carpenter's pantry provides him a din- 

 ner when the food of other birds is hid- 

 den in the snow. The squirrels are not 

 the most honest creatures and the wood- 

 pecker seems to know it. Were the 

 acorns stored otherwise than they are or 

 fitted in less ingeniously he knows their 

 fate at the nimble hands of the squirrel. 



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