rved that in excavating a cavity for a nest the downy
woodpecker makes the entrance smaller than when he is excavating his
winter-quarters. This is doubtless for the greater safety of the young
birds.

The next fall, the downy excavated another limb in the old apple-tree,
but had not got his retreat quite finished, when the large hairy
woodpecker appeared upon the scene. I heard his loud click, click, early
one frosty November morning. There was something impatient and angry
in the tone that arrested my attention. I saw the bird fly to the tree
where downy had been at work, and fall with great violence upon the
entrance to his cavity. The bark and the chips flew beneath his
vigorous blows, and before I fairly woke up to what he was doing, he had
completely demolished the neat, round doorway of downy. He had made a
large ragged opening large enough for himself to enter. I drove him away
and my favorite came back, but only to survey the ruins of his castle
for a moment and then go away. He lingered about for a day or two and
then disappeared. The big hairy usurper passed a night in the cavity,
but on being hustled out of it the next night by me, he also left, but
not till he had demolished the entrance to a cavity in a neighboring
tree where downy and his mate had reared their brood that summer, and
where I had hoped the female would pass the winter.

NOTES BY THE WAY.

I. THE WEATHER-WISE MUSKRAT

I am more than half persuaded that the muskrat is a wise little animal,
and that on the subject of the weather, especially, he possesses some
secret that I should be glad to know. In the fall of 1878 I noticed that
he built unusually high and massive nests. I noticed them in several
different localities. In a shallow, sluggish pond by the roadside,
which I used to pass daily in my walk, two nests were in process of
construction throughout the month of November. The builders worked only
at night, and I could see each day that the work had visibly advanced.
When there was a slight skim of ice over the pond, this was broken up
about the nests, with trails through it in different directions where
the material had been brought. The houses were placed a little to one
side of the main channel, and were constructed entirely of a species of
coarse wild grass that grew all about. So far as I could see, from first
to last they were solid masses of grass, as if the interior cavity or
nest was to be excavated afterward, as