Everyday Adventures

tomb. Probably daylight would have found me frozen to death if it had not been for a saving idea. Hurrying into the children's room, I selected two of the warmest and chubbiest. Banking them on eithe

ne forty-foot hickory tree before the glad New Year. For a while I decided that there was nothing on earth worth exchanging for that warm bed. Finally, however, my better nature conquered, and the dusk before the dawn found me in the woods i

ndictive spice-bush in falling knocked off my glasses, and they fell into the snow somewhere ahead of me. Without them I am in the same condition as a mole or a shrew

inging song that could be heard for half a mile. "Wheedle-wheedle-wheedle," it began full of liquid bell-like overtones. Then the singer added another syllable to his strain and sang, "Whee-udel, whee-udel, whee-udel." Three times, with a short rest between, he sang the full double strain through, although it was so dark that only the ghostly, black tree-trunks could be seen against the white snow. I needed no sight of him, however, to recogni

sh-brown, while the house wren, which is half an inch shorter, is cinnamon-brown. The long-billed marsh wren also has a white line over the eye and is about the same size, but is never found away from the tall grass bordering on water, and has no such song as the Carolina. The winter wren and the short-billed marsh wren could neither

rf was well past the heart of the tree. As I chopped I could hear the quick strokes of a far better wood-cutter than I shall ever be. Suddenly he gave a loud, rattling call, and I recognized the hairy woodpecker. He is much larger than the downy, being nearly the size of a robin, while his call is wilder and louder and lacks the downward run of the downy's note. We chopped on together, he at his tree and I at mine. S

ested blood-red bird at the edge of a green-brier thicket. In that same place I had found his nest the spring before, made of twigs and strips of bark and lined with grass and roots and holding three speckled eggs. It was the cardinal grosbeak, another bird unknown to me in New England. No matter how often I meet this crimson-crested grosbeak, he will never become a common bird to me

ls I can imitate. Before long his dove-colored mate also appeared. Her wings and tail were of a duller red, while the upper-parts of her sleek body were of a brownish-ash tint. The throat and a patch by the base of the bill were bl

by the same letters as those used in writing the grosbeak music-"Teu, teu, teu, teu." Suddenly, from a farther corner of the sun-warmed slope, I heard a few tinkling notes followed by a tantalizing snatch of rich, sweet song shot through with canary-like trills and runs. I hurried over the snow and caug

n warm winter days, one may hear his spring song, which is "Quee-quee-quee." It is not much of a song, but Mr. Nuthatch is very proud of it and usually pauses admiringly between each two strains. In my early bird-days I used to mistake this spring song for the note of an early flicker, and would scandalize better-educated ornit

pleasant byways which we plan to come back and explore when we have reached the end of the straight, steep, and intensely narrow road that leads to achievement. The trouble is that there is no returning. Men die rich, famous, or successful, who have never taken the time to companion their children or to find their way into the world of the wild-folk which lies at their very doors. It was not always

this plan. They all held high office in a military organization known for short as the Band. There was First Lieutenant Trottie, Second Lieutenant Honey, Sergeant Henny-Penny, and Corporal Alice-Palace, while I had been honored with a captain's commission in this re

OW C

oud cawing, and we saw four ruffianly crows assaulting a respectable female broad-winged hawk. One after the other they would flap over her as closely as possible, aiming vicious pecks as they passed. The broad-winged beat the air frantically with her short, wide, fringed wings, and seemed to make no effort to

ighly in fact. As my friend was swinging back and forth on a rope in front of the perpendicular cliff, said duck-hawk dashed at him at the rate of some ninety miles per hour. Being scared off by a blank cartridge, the enraged falcon towered. A passing crow flapping through the air made a peck at the hawk as it shot past. That was one of the last and most unfortunate acts in tha

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 porcelain petals of the hepatica, and a host of other flowers bloom

eat 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

strong squirrel-language, he dived back into his hole. He was hardly out of sight when the nuthatch was tapping again at his door. Once more the squirrel rushed out chattering and sputtering. Once more the nuthatch was not there. Then he tried chasing the bird around the limb, but there was nothing in that. The nuthatch could turn in half the time and space, and moreover did not have to be afraid of falling, for a drop of fifty feet to froz

ore the hidden places which we had never yet seen. We had scarcely passed through the outer fringe of tall grasses and cat-tails, when we heard everywhere through the cold air little tinkling notes, and caught glimpses of dark sparrow-like birds with forked tails, striped breasts, and streaked rich brown backs, each one showing a fine zigzag whitish line at the bend of the wing. Another field-mark was a light patch over each eye, and we identified the first

HE NEST-YOUNG

rough the air in a labored up-and-down flight, and, as he disappeared, he gave the wild cry of the hairy woodpecker, a bird nearly twice the size of his smaller brother, the downy. Close by the side of the creek, we heard a tiny note like "pheep, pheep, pheep," and, even as we looked for the bird, it flew past and lit on a tree on the

heath of the fine branches of a swamp maple. In a fork at the end of one of the branches, all silver-gray, was the empty nest of a goldfinch, the last of all the birds to nest. It was made of twisted strands of the silk of the milkweed pods hackled by the bird's beak. In the snow, we came across a strange track almost like the trail of a snake. It was a wide trough, with little

usly inquired Henny-Penny, th

an my middle finger," th

ical bric-a-brac, a great thought came to

they shouted w

r necessaries and luxuries, had been wrapped up in another package and intrusted to Honey as head of the commissary department for the day-and Honey had left the package on the hall table! It was a grief almost too great to be borne. The Band regard

placing one hand over Alice-Palace's widely-opened mouth, "all is not l

ee. The Captain scanned the trees carefully. Everywhere were trails in the snow which he told them were the tracks of gray squirrels. Suddenly he reached up and picked out from between a little twig and the smooth trunk of a swamp-maple sapling, a big, dry, beautifully-seasoned black walnut. That started the Band to looking, and they found that the little trees were filled with walnuts, each one wedged

down with bunches of what looked like tiny purple plums. Each one had a layer of pulp over a flat stone, and this pulp, what there was of it, had a curious attractive spicy sugary taste. The Captain told the Band that

ches were covered with scores and scores of golden-red globes. Some were wrinkled and frost-bitten until they had turned brown, but others still hung plump and bright in the winter air. It was a grove of persimmon trees. Before he could be stopped, Henny-Penny had picked on

," warned the Captain. "Try s

ere all matted together in bunches which looked like birds' nests. The twigs were laden down with round, purple berries about the size of a wild cherry, and the Captain told the Band that these were hackberries, otherwise kno

irches which grew on the fringe of the swamp. This burned like paper, and in a minute the little ball of dry twigs was crackling away with a steady flame. Over this he piled dry sassafras and hickory boughs, and in a few moments the Band was seated around a column of flame which roared up fully four feet hi

AR DEE

lush, with the hair a warm reddish-brown at the ends and gray at the roots. Underneath he was snowy-white, although there, too, the fur showed mouse-gray under the surface. He had little brown claws and six tiny pink disks on each paw, which enabled him to run up and down perpendicular surfaces. His eyes were big and brown and lustrous, and he had flappy, pinky-gray, velvet ears, each one of which was half the size of his funny little face and thin as gossamer. His paws were pink and his long tail was covered with the finest of hairs. When he

he flock had crimson crowns and rose-colored breasts, while at the base of the streaked gray-and-brown backs showed a tinge of pink. It was our first flock of the lesser redpolls all the way down from the Arctic Circle. They were restless but not shy, and sometimes we were able to get within six feet of them. They would continually fly back and forth from the tree to the ground, keeping up a soft chatte

hen it hopped to a low twig and then raised its tail stiffly as I watched, I recognized the hermit thrush, which always betrays itself by this curious mannerism. The last one I had seen was singing like Israfel, in the twilight of a Canadian forest. To-day the

r toward the other side of the sky, great golden Jupiter echoed back her rays. Below the green, the sky was a mass of dusky gold which deepened into amber and then slowly faded. As we walked home through the twilight, we heard the last, sweetest, and saddest singer of that winter day. Through the air shuddered a soft tremolo call, like