n8 



AUTUMN AND WINTER 



and winter in the hoards collected by the wood-mice in their 

 nocturnal rovings, and piled together in a deserted bird's 

 nest, or on some nestlike cushion where the falling seed- 

 plumes of the wild clematis have collected among its pliant 

 bines. As autumn goes on, the store of unopened seeds 

 decreases, and the gnawed litter grows more abundant ; but 

 the wood-mouse is a wasteful feeder, and many sound seeds are 

 left hidden among the husks, or spilt on the ground beneath. 



The work of the wood-mouse can 

 be recognised on these opened 

 seeds and stones by the fineness of 

 the hole through which the kernel 

 is extracted, and the very delicate 

 marks of its teeth. Traces of many 

 different creatures can be found in 

 the shells scattered among the dry 

 leaves in the bottom of wide hedge- 

 rows, and in the heart of a mixed 

 thicket. Squirrels crack nutshells 

 into irregular fragments. Dormice 

 gnaw them at the edge of the rough 

 patch at their lower end, and make 

 a neat round hole extending up the 

 side, through which they extract the kernel. Wood-mice 

 drill a hole at the top. Nuthatches fix them into crevices 

 in posts, or the bark of trees, and hammer them to pieces 

 with their bill ; and the ground beneath oaks and some 

 other trees with deeply furrowed bark is often found 

 sprinkled with fragments of different shapes, according as 

 the nut has been split or roughly shattered. Great tits split 

 the stones of yew and hawthorn and whitebeam berries in a 

 less skilful way, by holding them in their bills and hammer- 

 ing them on a bough, as thrushes break snails' shells on 



SQUIRREL WOOD-MOUSE 



NUTHATCH 



