it from the top of a young
cedar where he had been, a moment before, practising his mating song.
He did not intend to light, but some idle curiosity, like my own, made
him pause a moment on the old gray rail. Then a woodpecker lit on the
side of a post, and sounded it softly. But he was too near the ground,
too near his enemies to make a noise; so he flew to a higher perch and
beat a tattoo that made the woods ring. He was safe there, and could
make as much noise as he pleased. A wood-mouse stirred the vines and
appeared for an instant on the lower rail, then disappeared as if very
much frightened at having shown himself in the sunlight. He always
does just so at his first appearance.

Presently a red squirrel rushes out of the thicket at the left,
scurries along the rails and up and down the posts. He goes like a
little red whirlwind, though he has nothing whatever to hurry about.
Just opposite my stump he stops his rush with marvelous suddenness;
chatters, barks, scolds, tries to make me move; then goes on and out
of sight at the same breakneck rush. A jay stops a moment in a young
hickory above the fence to whistle his curiosity, just as if he had
not seen it fifty times before. A curiosity to him never grows old. He
does not scream now; it is his nesting time.--And so on through the
afternoon. The old fence is becoming a part of the woods; and every
wild thing that passes by stops to get acquainted.

I was weaving an idle history of the old fence, when a chickadee
twittered in the pine behind me. As I turned, he flew over me and lit
on the fence in front. He had something in his beak; so I watched to
find his nest; for I wanted very much to see him at work. Chickadee
had never seemed afraid of me, and I thought he would trust me now.
But he didn't. He would not go near his nest. Instead he began hopping
about the old rail, and pretended to be very busy hunting for insects.

Presently his mate appeared, and with a sharp note he called her down
beside him. Then both birds hopped and twittered about the rail, with
apparently never a care in the world. The male especially seemed just
in the mood for a frolic. He ran up and down the mossy rail; he
whirled about it till he looked like a little gray pinwheel; he hung
head down by his toes, dropped, and turned like a cat, so as to light
on his feet on the rail below. While watching his performance, I
hardly noticed that his mate had gone till she reappeared suddenly on
t