o, the robin, and the wood-thrush pursuing it
with angry voice and gestures. A friend of mine saw a pair of robins
attack one in the top of a tall tree so vigorously that they caused it
to lose its hold, when it fell to the ground, and was so stunned by the
blow as to allow him to pick it up. If you wish the birds to breed and
thrive in your orchard and groves, kill every red squirrel that infests
the place; kill every weasel also. The weasel is a subtle and arch enemy
of the birds. It climbs trees and explores them with great ease and
nimbleness. I have seen it do so on several occasions. One day my
attention was arrested by the angry notes of a pair of brown-thrashers
that were flitting from bush to bush along an old stone row in a remote
field. Presently I saw what it was that excited them--three large red
weasels, or ermines coming along the stone wall, and leisurely and half
playfully exploring every tree that stood near it. They had probably
robbed the thrashers. They would go up the trees with great ease, and
glide serpent-like out upon the main branches. When they descended the
tree they were unable to come straight down, like a squirrel, but went
around it spirally. How boldly they thrust their heads out of the wall,
and eyed me and sniffed me, as I drew near,--their round, thin ears,
their prominent, glistening, bead-like eyes, and the curving, snake-like
motions of the head and neck being very noticeable. They looked like
blood-suckers and egg-suckers. They suggested something extremely
remorseless and cruel. One could understand the alarm of the rats when
they discover one of these fearless, subtle, and circumventing creatures
threading their holes. To flee must be like trying to escape death
itself. I was one day standing in the woods upon a flat stone, in what
at certain seasons was the bed of a stream, when one of these weasels
came undulating along and ran under the stone upon which I was standing.
As I remained motionless, he thrust his wedge-shaped head, and turned it
back above the stone as if half in mind to seize my foot; then he drew
back, and presently went his way. These weasels often hunt in packs like
the British stoat. When I was a boy, my father one day armed me with
an old musket and sent me to shoot chipmunks around the corn. While
watching the squirrels, a troop of weasels tried to cross a bar-way
where I sat, and were so bent on doing it that I fired at them,
boy-like, simply to thwart thei