114 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



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 The wood-mice or deer-mice eat apples, surely 



and many other things, including maple seeds. They 

 also harvest hazel and beech nuts in great quantities, 

 and they are not at all averse, as I can unfortunately 

 testify, to Spanish iris bulbs and the bark of young 

 apple trees. They nest not only in the woods, but in 

 our gardens, preferably under a pile of pea brush, or the 

 straw protection on the flower beds, and often I have 

 found their tracks in the snow all about the weed stalks, 

 and the dust of trampled seeds, as if they had shaken 

 down their food by climbing the stems. 



The mention of maple seeds brings us around, by a 

 process of suggestion plain enough to the Yankee, to 

 Spring. When the sap runs in the maple trees, when 

 the melting snow steams in the sugar grove and makes a 

 haze that is permeated with the aroma of wood-smoke 

 and boiling syrup, Spring indeed is on the way. It is 

 then that the yellow-bellied woodpecker, or sapsucker, 

 comes into prominence, if not into repute. He makes 

 one or two holes in a tree deep holes, sufficient to in- 

 duce a good run of sap and then goes to another tree, 

 and another, and still another. When his taps are all 

 running, he starts back and makes the rounds, drinking 

 insatiably, and also, some say, feeding on the insects 

 which stick to the wet bark around his bores. Mr. 

 Burroughs denies this, and on the occasions when I 

 have driven a bird away from his bores I have never 

 yet found anything but clean sap and bark in the hole. 



