FAR AND NEAR 



exaggerated undulatory manner of flight. I have 

 Uttle doubt that his suit was finally successful. 



I watch these woodpeckers daily to see if I can 

 solve the mystery as to how they hop up and down 

 the trunks and branches without falling away from 

 them when they let go their hold. They come down 

 a Umb or trunk backward by a series of httle hops, 

 moving both feet together. If the Hmb is at an angle 

 to the tree and they are on the under side of it, they 

 do not fall away from it to get a new hold an inch or 

 half inch farther down. They are held to it as steel 

 to a magnet. Both tail and head are involved in 

 the feat. At the instant of making the hop the head 

 is thrown in and the tail thrown out, but the exact 

 mechanics of it I cannot penetrate. Philosophers 

 do not yet know how a backward-falUng cat turns 

 in the air, but turn she does. It may be that the 

 wood-pecker never quite relaxes his hold, though to 

 my eye he appears to do so. 



Birds nearly always pass the night in such places 

 as they select for their nests, — ground-builders upon 

 the ground, tree-builders upon trees. I have seen 

 an oriole ensconce himself for the night amid the 

 thick cluster of leaves on the end of a maple branch, 

 where soon after his mate built her nest. 



My chickadees, true to this rule, pass the arctic 



winter nights in little cavities in the trunks of trees 



Hke the woodpeckers. One cold day, about four 



o'clock, while it was snowing and blowing, I heard, 



188 



