20 fN BIRD LAND. 



aplomb, apparently, as a fly creeping up the smooth 

 surface of a window-pane ! Then he flew ahead a 

 short distance, and began mounting the cliff where 

 its face was quite smooth and hard. Presently he 

 encountered a bulging protuberance, and tried to 

 creep along the oblique under side of it ; but 

 that feat proved to be beyond his skill, agile as he 

 was, and so he abandoned the attempt, and swung 

 away to another part of the vertical wall. I have 

 never seen, in any of the manuals which I have con- 

 sulted, a description of a similar performance ; and 

 if any of my readers have ever witnessed such a 

 " coruscation " of creeper genius, I should be glad 

 to hear from them. 



In one's out-of-the-way saunterings, one dashes 

 up against many a faunal problem that defies, even 

 while it challenges, solution. On a cold day of 

 early winter I was strolling along the bare, wind- 

 swept banks of a river, keeping my eyes alert, as 

 usual, for bird curios. In the small bushes that 

 fringed the bank were some cunningly placed nests. 

 In the bottom of one of them lay many seeds of 

 dogwood berries, with the kernels bored out, — the 

 work, no doubt, of the crested tits. But there were 

 no dogwood-trees within twenty-five rods of the 

 place ! Why had the birds carried the shells to this 

 nest, and dropped them into it? This is all the 

 more curious because it was not a tit's nest, but 

 very likely a cat-bird's. One can only surmise that 

 the tits had gathered these seeds in the fall, and 

 stowed them away in the nest for winter use, and 



