iak; the gray-crowned, which breeds in
British America near the Rocky Mountains, comes to Colorado in winter,
and has been taken as far east as western Iowa; the Hepburn, dwelling
chiefly in the mountain ranges of the Pacific coast, breeding mostly in
the far North, and in winter coming as far south and east as Nevada and
Colorado; and, lastly, the black leucosticte, which winters in the
central latitudes in the Rocky Mountains and whose summer range and
breeding home is unknown to men of science.

HAPPENINGS BY THE WAY

If one were to keep on writing monographs of all our interesting avian
species, the books that would result would make a good-sized library.
The few examples that have been given will illustrate what can be done
in this direction with the help of the field glass and the handbook. A
few chapters will now be given on what might be called "odds and ends
of bird life," and these are written not only for the information they
may impart, but also for the purpose of showing how many interesting
facts can be gathered along the way by the method of bird study
commended in our opening chapter.

The prince of American ornithologists, Dr. Elliott Coues, has somewhere
said that he would travel a long distance to discover a new kind of
bird, or even to ascertain a new fact about a familiar species. I
would applaud and echo that sentiment, for by all means let us have
bird news that really is news, instead of revamping the familiar facts
again and again, as some amateurish writers do. While I am not able to
add any new species to science, I have made note of many pleasing
incidents in the bird realm, and these, I venture to hope, may be of
not a little general interest.

[Illustration: Pewee, or Phoebe (missing from book)]

There is the companionable white-breasted nuthatch which goes scudding
up and down the tree trunks with as much ease and aplomb as a fly
gliding over a window-pane. I have already told you something about
him. I had long been aware that he wedged grains of corn, sunflower
seeds, and kernels of nuts in the crannies of the bark; but one day he
invented a trick that was a surprise to me. It occurred at a summer
resort in northern Indiana, where I noticed a nuthatch hitching up and
down and around the slender stem of a sapling, pausing at intervals to
thrust something into the crevices of the bark. My curiosity led me to
pry into the bird's affairs. Stepping smartly forward, I drove