put it through at any rate;--a singularly frivolous and whimsical
fellow;--and so he would get off with it to where he lived, perhaps
carry it to the top of a pine tree forty or fifty rods distant, and
I would afterwards find the cobs strewn about the woods in various
directions.

At length the jays arrive, whose discordant screams were heard long
before, as they were warily making their approach an eighth of a mile
off, and in a stealthy and sneaking manner they flit from tree to tree,
nearer and nearer, and pick up the kernels which the squirrels have
dropped. Then, sitting on a pitch pine bough, they attempt to swallow in
their haste a kernel which is too big for their throats and chokes
them; and after great labor they disgorge it, and spend an hour in
the endeavor to crack it by repeated blows with their bills. They
were manifestly thieves, and I had not much respect for them; but the
squirrels, though at first shy, went to work as if they were taking what
was their own.

Meanwhile also came the chickadees in flocks, which, picking up the
crumbs the squirrels had dropped, flew to the nearest twig and, placing
them under their claws, hammered away at them with their little bills,
as if it were an insect in the bark, till they were sufficiently reduced
for their slender throats. A little flock of these titmice came daily to
pick a dinner out of my woodpile, or the crumbs at my door, with faint
flitting lisping notes, like the tinkling of icicles in the grass, or
else with sprightly day day day, or more rarely, in spring-like days,
a wiry summery phe-be from the woodside. They were so familiar that at
length one alighted on an armful of wood which I was carrying in, and
pecked at the sticks without fear. I once had a sparrow alight upon my
shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt
that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have
been by any epaulet I could have worn. The squirrels also grew at last
to be quite familiar, and occasionally stepped upon my shoe, when that
was the nearest way.

When the ground was not yet quite covered, and again near the end of
winter, when the snow was melted on my south hillside and about my
wood-pile, the partridges came out of the woods morning and evening to
feed there. Whichever side you walk in the woods the partridge bursts
away on whirring wings, jarring the snow from the dry leaves and twigs
on high, which comes sifting do