ice gnawed or barked the apple-trees when there was a
deep coverlid of snow upon the ground. Was it because they found it
difficult to get up through the deep, frozen snow to the surface to get
seeds to eat? He did not seem to know that meadow mice are not
seed-eaters, but that they live on grass and roots and keep well hidden
beneath the ground during the day, when there is a deep fall of snow
coming up out of their dens and retreats and leading a free holiday life
beneath the snow, free from the danger of cats, foxes, owls, and hawks.
Life then becomes a sort of picnic. They build new nests on the surface
of the ground and form new runways, and disport themselves apparently in
a festive mood. The snow is their protection. They bark the trees and
take their time. When the snow is gone, their winter picnic is at an
end, and they retreat to their dens in the ground and beneath flat
stones, and lead once more the life of fear.

XII

Sitting on my porch recently, wrapped in my blanket, recovering from a
slight indisposition, I was in a mood to be interested in the everyday
aspects of nature before me--in the white and purple lilacs, in the
maple-leaves nearly full grown, in the pendent fringe of the
yellowish-white bloom of the chestnut and oak, in the new shoots of the
grapevines, and so forth. All these things formed only a setting or
background for the wild life near by.

The birds are the little people that peep out at me, or pause and regard
me curiously in this great temple of trees,--wrens, chippies, robins,
bluebirds, catbirds, redstarts, and now and then rarer visitants. A few
days earlier, for a moment, a mourning ground warbler suddenly appeared
around the corner, on the ground, at the foot of the steps, and glanced
hastily up at me. When I arose and looked over the railing, it had gone.
Then the speckled Canada warbler came in the lilac bushes and syringa
branches and gave me several good views. The bay-breasted warbler was
reported in the evergreens up by the stone house, but he failed to
report to me here at "The Nest." The female redstart, however, came
several times to the gravel walk below me, evidently looking for
material to begin her nest. And the wren, the irrepressible house wren,
was and is in evidence every few minutes, busy carrying nesting-material
into the box on the corner of the veranda. How intense and emphatic she
is! And the male, how he throbs and palpitates with song! Yesterday an
int