AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY. 3 



oak bark would fly to the ground where the snow was soon dotted 

 with irregular dark spots. How he worked! His little head flew back 

 and forth with an energy that made my own neck fairly ache, while 

 his pauses seemed to be scarcely long enough to eat the larvae or 

 egg he had uncovered. I wonder if I were suddenly to become 

 possessed of a mad desire to gain my sustenance by boring through 

 solid wood and oak wood at that, if Nature would see fit to change my 

 nose into a hard bony chisel. There have been fewer Woodpeckers 

 than usual this year, owing I believe to the entire absence of beech 

 nuts and the scarcity of other food. Last winter when the beech nut 

 crop was remarkably large the beechwoods had quite a colony of win- 

 ter birds and it was unusual to go there without finding both Hairy 

 and Downy Woodpeckers and White-breasted Nuthatches. 



Some days in November and December, before the snow was deep, 

 I would come upon places where the crows had been nut gathering. 

 The snow would be brushed away and the leaves would be lying about 

 in little heaps or tossed to one side to lay bare the nuts beneath. Even 

 after it grew quite cold and I thought they would have gone, I came 

 upon their drinking place, a hole in the ice which covered the brook, 

 and the snow was marked all over with the tracks they had evidently 

 just made, for the light snow then falling had not obliterated them. 

 Their home was in a pine woods across the river, and every morning 

 I could see and hear them as they flew across the valley on their way 

 to the beech woods. They seemed to start from home in a close 

 company, save for two or three leaders, and in five minutes they would 

 be out of hearing, and in five minutes more out of sight. But when 

 they flew back at night they played along the road like boys coming 

 from school and sometimes I could hear them for fifteen or twenty 

 minutes from the time the first one started for home until the last 

 straggler disappeared cawing among the pines. This winter I have 

 not heard a crow since November, and in winter when birds are few, 

 one misses the touch of animation they give to the woods and snowy 

 fields. I had meant to cross the field above the beeches and go home 

 along the meadows of the North Hill by way of making going home a 

 continuation of my walk; but the result of several excursions after 

 twigs and branches warned me that the snow would not bear my weight, 

 and I turned to come back along the same road, only now I was facing 

 the west where the sun was going down behind banks of purple clouds 

 that hung low over the hills or moved slowly toward the south. 



Something was going on in the hemlocks which hung over the last 

 bit of the road just before it leaves the woods and loses itself and its 

 individuality in the common placeness of a village street. 



