232 Bird- Lore 



several tree trunks in rapid succession where they had recently gleaned, and 

 then fly off to new pastures. 



In going to the nest now, they generally entered without warning; perhaps 

 because, as the young grew older, their nerves reacted more quickly to parental 

 stimulus and it was no longer necessary to rouse them. When a parent actually 

 fed from outside, one day, it seemed to mark an epoch. The nestlings were 

 certainly growing up. Owing to uneasy movements in the nest, perhaps, 

 nesting material was now sticking out of the crack in the bark. As the days 

 passed and the sun got farther around it fell on the nest slit, and ht up the 

 head of the parent as it came with food. 



One of the old birds, whom I took to be the father, once worked slowly up 

 the tree next the nest, talking to himself or his little ones, as he went; and as 

 the young grew older, a slight song was often heard, a song composed of the 

 same high-pitched notes as the call, beginning in fact with the call note, I-i, 

 and being little more than a fine rather plaintive I-i, high-y, I-y. 



When sitting between the trees watching the nest, one day, I laid my 

 kaki hat on the moss and leaves beside me and, after a while, glancing down, 

 was attracted by a slight movement and, on watching closely, discovered a 

 little long-pointed brown nose, followed by the slender brown body of a tiny 

 shrew. It nosed under my hat brim and then explored still farther till, with a 

 dart and a dash, it ran swiftly away. Beyond the cleared circle sometimes the 

 swaying of a branch was followed by the titter of a chipmunk or a pine squirrel, 

 while overhead came the call of the Red-shafted Flicker, the sweet swee'-ah- 

 swee-see of a Chestnut-backed Chickadee, or the kimp, kimp, of Crossbills 

 passing over; and up on a stump top close by sometimes came a cocky little 

 brown Winter Wren, swaying from side to side, giving his tinkling song with 

 abandon. The day the shrew appeared, when I had moved back to sit on the 

 edge of the piazza, a noise on the shake roof overhead made me look up just 

 in time to see a disappearing mouse-like tail. Then came the tchip of a Junco 

 and the sound of little feet alighting on the roof. Inside the deserted cabin the 

 handsome large-eyed wood rats were thought to have found shelter, and in 

 the peak of the attic, interesting long-eared bats were discovered hanging. 

 Surely the mossy cabin was stiU befriending its little neighbors — fulfilling 

 kindly offices as it had when itself a part of the forest. 



Just as the Creeper family were getting more and more interesting, there 

 was an enforced break in my visits. When at last I was able to return to my 

 small friends, two weeks after my discovery of the nest, while still in the sunny 

 prairie outside, I heard Creeper voices, and no sooner had I stepped inside 

 the cool woods than I realized what had happened. There was no need to 

 go back to the nest ! 



The air was full of tiny voices and the tree trunks, on close scrutiny, revealed 

 little creeping forms. Instead of the solitary figure of an ascending parent, 

 there were now often two, evidently parent and child. Attracted by a slight 



