A 
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pened yesterday (i3th)* 
taking my opera glass, 
chimney I perceived a % 
Cambridge, Mass. 
To~day it began again and I at once went out 
As soon as I got a clear view of the Museum 
Flicker clinging to its eastern face about 
I five feet below the top busily engaged in digging out the mortar between, 
the bricks. He would work at it for half a minute or so alternately 
poking and prying with his bill and then rest for a somewhat longer 
period before b<- ginning again. I watched him for ten or fifteen minute^ 
More than once I thought I saw him swallow a small fragment of the hard 
. 
mortar — it is years since the chimney was re~pointed — but of this I 
could not make sure. That he had already done considerable damage was 
evident enough for with the aid of my glass I could see that the lines 
of “pointing" were broken in many places by the recent removal of more 
or less mortar. He must have been working at the mortar capping on the 
top of the chimney when he sent the fragments down into my fireplace but 
that I did not see. Verily "the devil finds mischief for idle hands 
{and bills) to do". Holand Thaxter told me this evening (February 16.) 
I of watching a Flicker picking out mortar from the vertical face of the 
brick wall of the Museum of Comparative Zoology within a few feet of his 
window. I understood him to say that this happened within the past two 
i or three days. He was so very near the bird that he could see without 
bz&ri-Cij 
ns 
