HARVEST OF WILD PLACES 109 



As you are tracking your deer through the woods, 

 you will come upon many other signs of wild harvesting. 

 Perhaps you may be sitting under a pine tree, when sud- 

 denly a cone scale will fall on your head. Listen, and 

 you will hear the sound of crackling far above you. 

 Creep out away from the tree, and look up. It may 

 take you several seconds to find him, but presently you 

 will spot a red squirrel sitting in a crotch, tearing 

 busily at a cone held in his fore paws, to shred it down to 

 the edible part. Perhaps if you are very quiet you may 

 see him descend the trunk, spring out to the ground 

 when he gets three or four feet from the bottom, and 

 leap across the snow toward an old stump, or some other 

 tree which contains his hole. Occasionally, even, he 

 will disappear into the snow, working through a tunnel 

 he has built to some hiding place. There will be scarce 

 a clump in the pine woods without its litter of cone scales 

 on the snow about it, and scarce a tree without tracks 

 leading close to it, and tracks leading away from it which 

 start three, four, or even five feet out. The pine and 

 purple finches feed on the cones, also, as well as the rare 

 pine grosbeaks, and the crossbills. If you ever get a 

 chance to observe a crossbill at work shredding a cone, 

 you will no longer consider his odd bill poorly adapted 

 to its purpose. It never slips, but holds like a vise while 

 the hidden neck muscles under those brick-red feathers 

 do the work. This is the bird which an old German 

 legend says got its twisted bill from trying to pull the 



