315
Concord, Mass.
1897. 
Nov. 3
(No 3)
 Just after breakfast I spent nearly half-an-hour
watching two Gray Squirrels which were building
a nest in a tall, slender white pine fully
sixty feet above the ground. The tree is one of
a group of the dozen or more standing on the
north slope of Ball's Hill. The Squirrels were
working very hard and steadily collecting oak
twigs with bunches of leaves attached. In order
to get that they ran down the pine quite
to the ground and thence rambled off into
the woods beyond my range of sight always
returning within two or three minutes, however.
In no instance did either of them attempt
to bring more than one twig at a time
and even this burden seemed to embarrass their
movements greatly especially when, as was
often the case, they climbed one of the other
pines and crossed to the nest by leaping from
branch to branch. It was surprising to me the
boldness with which they sprang from the
tip of a slumber & often dead & brittle branch
to the extremity of another over a gap of
three or four feet in width and at a height
of fifty or sixty feet. I was just saying to
myself that their judgment in matters of this
kind must be infallible when a startling
catastrophe occurred. Both animals had met at
the nest and had just entered it together when
the whole structure gave way and came
tumbling down to the ground breaking up
into fragments as it struck against the