CONCORD 
1908 
April 27 
Chickadees 
building 
This is the fourth day that the Chickadees have 
been at work excavating their nest in the apple tree by 
our dining-room window. They begin soon after sunrise 
ana labor ceaselessly through the forenoon but, as far as 
we have observed, they never work at all in the afternoon, 
8 .1though they sometimes come to the hole as if to see 
that all is right there. They are boring nearly straight 
down and have already got to a depth of about five inches. 
The work is shared equally, one bird succeeding the other 
the instant the first has taken wing with a mouthful of 
chips. Each bird usually makes a visit to the hole 
about once every ten seconds , so rapidly do they work. 
Nuthatches 
building 
in squirrel 
hole high up 
There is a round hole about 3-g- inches in diameter 
sixty feet above the ground in our big elm, in which a 
pair of Flickers reared their brood six or seven years 
ago. It has since been occupied at all seasons by Gray 
Squirrels. I have seen three animals enter and leave it 
within a week. Yet this morning about 8 o'clock a pair 
of White-bellied Nuthatches were building a nest there. 
The female did most of the work and performed it with 
remarkable rapidity. She would run out on a large branch, 
pry off a scale of bark 5 or 6 inches long, take it into 
the hole and almost instantly reappear and go after 
another. The male occasionally got one and simply poked 
it into the hole, without entering himself. 
