strings hanging from the nest of the
kingbird. The bird was too hurried or too careless to pull in the
skin. Mr. Sharp adds that he cannot "give the bird credit for
appreciating the attitude of the rest of the world toward snakes, and
making use of the fear." Moreover, a cast-off snake-skin looks very
little like a snake. It is thin, shrunken, faded, papery, and there is
no terror in it. Then, too, it is dark in the cavity of the nest,
consequently the skin could not serve as a scarecrow in any case.
Hence, whatever its purpose may be, it surely is not that. It looks
like a mere fancy or whim of the bird. There is that in its voice and
ways that suggests something a little uncanny. Its call is more like
the call of the toad than that of a bird. If the toad did not always
swallow its own cast-off skin, the bird would probably use that too.

At the best we can only guess at the motives of the birds and beasts.
As I have elsewhere said, they nearly all have reference in some way
to the self-preservation of these creatures. But how the bits of an
old snake-skin in a bird's nest can contribute specially to this end,
I cannot see.

Nature is not always consistent; she does not always choose the best
means to a given end. For instance, all the wrens except our house
wren seem to use about the best material at hand for their nests. What
can be more unsuitable, untractable, for a nest in a hole or cavity
than the twigs the house wren uses? Dry grasses or bits of soft bark
would bend and adapt themselves easily to the exigencies of the case;
but stiff, unyielding twigs! What a contrast to the suitableness of
the material the hummingbird uses--the down of some plant, which seems
to have a poetic fitness!

Yesterday in my walk I saw where a red squirrel had stripped the soft
outer bark off a group of red cedars to build its winter's nest with.
This also seemed fit,--fit that such a creature of the trees should
not go to the ground for its nest-material, and should choose
something soft and pliable. Among the birches, it probably gathers the
fine curling shreds of the birch bark.

Beside my path in the woods a downy woodpecker, late one fall, drilled
a hole in the top of a small dead black birch for his winter quarters.
My attention was first called to his doings by the white chips upon
the ground. Every day as I passed I would rap upon his tree, and if he
was in he would appear at his door and ask plainly enough what I
wanted