Identifier: bitsofbirdlife00unse (find matches)
Title: Bits of bird life
Year: 1895 (1890s)
Authors:
Subjects: Birds
Publisher: Boston, Mass. : Perry Mason & Co.

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ill intoanother. Then he bored into the ice-house on the premises,and in the sawdust filling between the outer and innersheathing found a place to his liking. Every season of late years they bore into the large ice-house on the banks of the river, and cut so many holes andlet out so much sawdust that the men employed about theplace have had to shoot them. One bird seemed like a monomaniac, and drilled holes upand down and right and left as if possessed of an evil spirit.It is quite probable that if a highhole or other woodpeckershrould go crazy, it would take to just this sort of thing,drilling into seasoned timber till it used its strength up.The one I refer to would cut through a dry hemlock boardin a very short time, making the slivers fly. The sound waslike that of a carpenters hammer. It may have been that hewas an unmated bird, a bachelor whose suit had not pros-pered that season, and was giving vent to his outragedinstincts in drilling these mock nesting-places. John Burroughs.
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An Orioles Nest. How suggestive is the orioles nest, swinging from thelong, drooping tips of the old elm boughs ! What a delightfulcradle it must be for the young orioles, swayed all day longby every breath of the summer breeze, and with never a fearof falling ! And the mother-bird must feel very comfortableabout it as she leaves it to go in search of food, for no bird-enemy will trouble it while she is gone. The blacksnake — that horror of all low-nesting birds —will never climb so high. The red squirrel — little cannibalthat he is, eating flesh when he has still a bushel of nuts andacorns stowed away in his old wall — cannot find a footing onthose delicate branches. The crow also can find no resting-place from which to steal the young, should he ever ventureso near the house ; and the hawks legs are hardly longenough to reach down and grasp them, should he perchancehover over the nest. Yet the oriole is a neighborly little body. Though heryoung are kept from harm by the cunn

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