[1]Some months after the foregoing had appeared in the columns of a popular journal I had occasion to modify one assertion. For many years I had been studying the creeper, and had never seen him descend a tree or bough head-first until one autumn day while loitering in the woods. A creeper was hitching up the stem of a sapling in his characteristic manner; as I drew near, he seemed to catch a glimpse of a tidbit in his rear, near the sapling’s root. In his extreme haste to secure it before I drove him away, he wheeled around, scuttled down over the bark head-foremost a distance of perhaps two feet, picked up his morsel, and then dashed out of sight, as if ashamed of his breach of creeper etiquette, probably to eat humble pie at his leisure. That was in the autumn of 1892. Since then no creeper, to my knowledge, has been guilty of a similar offence against the convenances.
[2]Long after this statement had appeared in print, Mr. Bradford Torrey described, in the “Atlantic Monthly,” a similar performance which he witnessed in Florida; and, rather oddly, myrtle warblers were also the actors in this instance.
[3]Mr. Eldridge E. Fish, to whom reference has already been made, after reading this article, which first appeared in a weekly paper, suggested in a letter that the little warbler could not well remove the intruded egg without breaking it, which would spoil her nest altogether. Hence she simply adds another story to her dwelling. This is doubtless the true explanation.
[4]This is, after all, no exception, for I have since found a number of turtle-doves’ nests on the ground.
[5]The reader will see, from the facts given in the remainder of the chapter, that I reckoned without my host in supposing that woodpeckers usually sleep in cavities of trees. That they sometimes select such places for roosts cannot be doubted; but that such is always or even generally their habit the experiments described farther on conclusively disprove. It is only fair to say that the rest of the chapter was added long after the foregoing had been written, and proves how unsafe it is for the naturalist to make generalizations.
[6]Since this was written, I have found several more nests, and have even watched the skilful architects at their house-building.
[7]This series of papers, as well as some others in this volume, was written at the suggestion of Mr. Amos R. Wells, of “The Golden Rule,” Boston, and was first published in that journal.
[8]This episode is referred to in the chapter on “Nest-Hunting.”
[9]This article, under the title of “Lowell and the Birds” was first published in the “New England Magazine,” for November, 1891, shortly after the poet’s death. Copyright credit is here given to the publisher of that magazine.
[10]The one noted in the chapter on “The Wood-Pewee.” As the poem on this bird is quoted in that article, it has been purposely omitted from this collection of passages.
