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A LONE QUEEN

Once, while walking in the woods, I saw quite a large nest in the top of a pine-tree. On climbing up to it, I found that it had originally been a crow’s nest. Then a red squirrel had appropriated it; he had filled up the cavity with the fine inner bark of the red cedar, and made himself a dome-shaped nest upon the crow’s foundation of coarse twigs. It is probable that the flying squirrel, or the white-footed mouse, had been the next tenants, for the finish of the interior suggested their dainty taste. But when I found it, its sole occupant was a bumblebee,–the mother or queen bee, just planting her colony. She buzzed very loud and complainingly, and stuck up her legs in protest against my rude inquisitiveness, but refused to vacate the premises. She had only one sack or cell constructed, in which she had deposited her first egg, and, beside that, a large loaf of bread, probably to feed the young brood with, as they should be hatched. It looked like Boston brown bread, but I examined it and found it to be a mass of dark brown pollen, quite soft and pasty. In fact, it was unleavened bread, and had not been got at the baker’s. A few weeks later, if no accident befell her, she had a good working colony of a dozen or more bees.

This was not an unusual incident. Our bumblebee, so far as I have observed, invariably appropriates a mouse-nest for the site of its colony, never excavating a place in the ground, nor conveying materials for a nest, to be lined with wax, like the European species. Many other of our wild creatures take up with the leavings of their betters or strongers. Neither the skunk nor the rabbit digs his own hole, but takes up with that of a wood-chuck, or else hunts out a natural den among the rocks. In England the rabbit burrows in the ground to such an extent that in places the earth is honeycombed by them, and the walker steps through the surface into their galleries. Our white-footed mouse has been known to take up his abode in a hornet’s nest, furnishing the interior to suit his taste. A few of our birds also avail themselves of the work of others, as the titmouse, the brown creeper, the bluebird, and the house wren. But in every case they refurnish the tenement: the wren carries feathers into the cavity excavated by the woodpeckers, the bluebird carries in fine straws, and the chickadee lays down a fine wool mat upon the floors. When the high-hole occupies the same cavity another year, he deepens and enlarges it; the ph�œbe-bird, in taking up her old nest, puts in a new lining; so does the robin; but cases of reoccupancy of an old nest by the last-named birds are rare.

A BOLD LEAPER

One reason, doubtless, why squirrels are so bold and reckless in leaping through the trees is, that, if they miss their hold and fall, they sustain no injury. Every species of tree squirrel seems to be capable of a sort of rudimentary flying,–at least of making itself into a parachute, so as to ease or break a fall or a leap from a great height. The so-called flying squirrel does this the most perfectly. It opens its furry vestments, leaps into the air, and sails down the steep incline from the top of one tree to the foot of the next as lightly as a bird. But other squirrels know the same trick, only their coat-skirts are not so broad. One day my dog treed a red squirrel in a tall hickory that stood in a meadow on the side of a steep hill. To see what the squirrel would do when closely pressed, I climbed the tree. As I drew near, he took refuge in the topmost branch, and then, as I came on, he boldly leaped into the air, spread himself out upon it, and, with a quick, tremulous motion of his tail and legs, descended quite slowly and landed upon the ground thirty feet below me, apparently none the worse for the leap, for he ran with great speed and escaped the dog in another tree.