36 NATURE IN ACADIE. 



with a loud imperious note, much like that of their 

 Old World cousins. They appeared to be at least as 

 wary as the latter, and it is difficult to shoot one of 

 them, while residents in this part will seriously assure 

 you that it brings " bad luck " to kill one of these birds. 



Among the pines here, I met with a pair of red- 

 breasted nuthatches, a bird which has much of the 

 habits and appearance of our familiar species. I 

 noticed that these birds crept about upon the lesser 

 limbs of the pines, usually the higher ones, and I did 

 not hear them utter any kind of note. Like other 

 small birds at this season, they traversed the woods 

 from one tree to another, with but little stay upon 

 each, and I soon lost sight of them. Now and again 

 I observed a few crossbills or grosbeaks (I could not 

 be certain which) at work upon the cones in the sum- 

 mits of the taller trees. I also heard the sibilous note 

 of the brown creeper, and detected a pair of these 

 little birds creeping up the trunk of a small fir. 



In spite of the cold I noticed some few of the small 

 red squirrels about soon after entering the forest. 

 Unless alarmed they were quite fearless, and would call 

 one another from the branches close to me with a 

 curious little cough or bark, also squeaking and chatter- 

 ing :— 



" Sprang the squirrel, Adjidaumo, 

 In and out among the branches, 

 Coughed and chattered from the oak tree." 



On the whole, however, very little life was to be 

 observed about the woods during this long ramble, 

 sometimes through great tracts of forest with nothing 

 but the crunching of the snow under foot to break the' 

 strange stillness, or across densely-wooded bottoms 

 strewn with great granite boulders now covered with 

 four or five inches of snow, but beneath this green with 

 the luxuriant growth of moss, while after a time I 

 gained the higher land, open and scrub-covered for the 

 most part, but with many little hollows filled with a 

 dense growth of young hemlocks and firs dim with the 

 faint mist of a January day, clothed with long tufts of 



