ZERO BIRDS 27 
and the wild-folk use its hidden bed like one of their 
own trails. Foxes pad along its rain-washed course, 
and rabbits and squirrels hop and scurry across its 
narrow width, while in spring and summer wild 
ginger, ebony spleenwort, the blue-and-white porce- 
lain petals of the hepatica, and a host of other flowers 
bloom on its banks. The birds too nest there, from 
the belted gray-blue and white kingfisher, which has 
bored a deep hole into the clay under an overhanging 
wild-cherry tree, down to the field sparrow, with its 
pink beak and flute-song, which watches four speck- 
led eggs close-hidden in a tiny cup of woven grass. 
To-day we followed the windings of the road, until 
we came to the vast black oak tree which marks the 
place where Darby Road, after running for nearly 
ten miles, stops to rest. Beyond stretched the un- 
broken expanse of Blacksnake Swamp, bounded by 
the windings of Darby Creek. The Band seated 
themselves on one of their favorite resting-places, 
a great log which lay under the trees. Above us a 
white-breasted nuthatch, with its white cheeks and 
black head, was rat-tat-tatting up and around a 
half-dead limb, picking out every insect egg in sight 
from the bark. As the bird came near the broken 
top of the bough, out of a hole popped a very angry 
red squirrel exactly like a jack-in-the-box. The red 
squirrel is the fastest of all the tree-folk among the 
animals, but a nuthatch on a limb is not afraid of 
anything that flies or crawls or climbs. He can run 
up and down around a branch, forward and back- 
ward, unlike the woodpeckers, which must always 
