 13. On the morning after our first hard frost in late October or early November, how rapidly the leaves let go their hold upon their parent's stems. I stood for some minutes one such morning under a maple by the roadside to witness the silent spectacle. The leaves came down one by one like great golden flakes. There was no motion in the air to loosen them. The hour had come, and they gave up life easily and gracefully. What a gay company they had made on that tree all summer, clapping their hands in gladness and joyously drinking in the air in the sunshine, whispering wrestling, swayed by emotion or stilled by the night do's, and each and all doing their work. Now their day is done, and one by one they let go their hold upon the parent's stem and fall to the earth. Some come hurrying and tumbling down, some drop almost like clods, some come eddying and balancing down, and now and then one comes down as gracefully as a bird, sailing around in an easy spiral like a dove alighting, its edges turned up like wings, and its stems pointing downward like a head and neck. One can hardly believe it is not a thing of life. It reaches the ground as lightly as a snowflake. If one could only finish his own career so gracefully. What a contrast to the falling of the leaves of some other trees, say those of the mulberry. The leaves of this tree fall on such mornings, like soldiers slain in battle with all their powers in full force. They drop heavily and clumsily, apparently untouched by the ripening process that so colors the maple and other leaves. They are rank green and full of sap. So with alocas and the apple and cherry leaves, they all seem cut off prematurely. But the leaves of most of our native trees, oak, ash, hickory maple, seem to fall in the fullness of time. They have ripened like the grain and the fruit. They are colored like the clouds at sunset, and their demise seems a welcome event. They make the woods and groves gay. They carpet the ground as with sunset clouds. It is a funeral that is like a festival. It is the golden age come back. The falling of these gaily colored leaves seems to make a holiday in nature. It is like the fluttering of ribbons and scarves. It does not suggest age and decay. It suggests some happy celebration. They seem to augment the sunshine to diffuse their own color into it, or to give back to it the light they have been so long absorbing. The day itself drops upon the earth like a great golden leaf falling from the tree of Yggdrasil. 2. It always gives me a little pleasurable emotion when I see in the autumn woods where the downy woodpecker has just been excavating his winter quarters in a dead lamb or tree trunk. I am walking along a trail or wood road when I see something like coarse nustada scattered on the ground. I know at once what carpenter has been at work in the trees overhead, and I proceed to scrutinize the trunks and branches. Presently, I am sure to detect a new round hole about an inch and a half in diameter. On the underside of a dead lamb or in a small tree trunk. This is Downy's cabin, where he expects to spend the winter nights and a part of the stormy days too. When he excavates it in an upright tree trunk, he usually chooses a spot beneath the lamb. The lamb forms a sort of rude hood and prevents the rainwater from running down into it. It is a snug and pretty retreat and a very safe one I think. I doubt whether the driving snow ever reaches him, and no predatory owl could hook him out with its claw. Near town or in town, the English bear would probably drive him out, but in the woods I think he is rarely molested, the one one instance I knew him to be dispossessed by a flying squirrel. On stormy days, I have known Downy to return to his chamber in mid-afternoon and to lie a bed there till 10 in the morning. I have no knowledge that any other species of our woodpeckers excavate these winter quarters, but they probably do. The chickadee has too slender a beak for such work and usually spends the winter nights in natural cavities or in the abandoned holes of Downy. Three. As I am riding here in my study these November days, a Downy woodpecker is excavating a chamber in the top of a chestnut post in the vineyard a few yards below me, or rather he is enlarging a chamber which he or one of his fellows excavated last fall. He is making it ready for his winter quarters. A few days ago I saw him enlarging the entrance and making it a more complete circle. Now he is in the chamber itself working away like a carpenter. I hear his muffled hammering as I approach cautiously on the grass. I make no sound and the hammering continues till I have stood for a moment beside the post. Then it suddenly stops and Downy's head appears at the door. He glances at me suspiciously and then hurries away in much excitement. How did he know there was someone so near? As birds have no sense of smell it must have been by some other means. I return to my study and in about fifteen minutes Downy is back at work. Again I cautiously and silently approach but he is now more alert and when I am the width of three grape rows from him he rushes out of his den and lets off his sharp metallic cry as he hurries away to some trees below the hill. He does not return to his work again that afternoon but I feel certain that he will pass the night there and every other night all winter unless he is disturbed. So when my son and I are passing along the path by his post with the lantern about eight o'clock in the evening I pause and say let's see if Downy is at home. A slight tap on the post and we hear Downy jump out of bed as it were and his head quickly fills the doorway. We pass hurriedly on and he does not take flight. A few days later just as it's undone as I am walking on the terrace above I see Downy comes sweeping swiftly down through the air on that long galloping flight of his and a light on the big maple on the brink of the hill above his retreat. He sits perfectly still for a few moments surveying the surroundings and seeing the coast is clear drops quickly and silently down and disappears in the interior of his chestnut lodge. He will do this all winter long coming home when the days are stormy by four o'clock and not stirring out in the morning till nine or ten o'clock. Some very cold blustery days he will probably not leave his retreat at all. He has no mate or fellow lodger though there is room in his cabin for three birds at least. Where the female is I can only conjecture. Maybe she's occupying a discarded last year's lodge as I noticed there are a good many new holes drilled in the trees every fall though many of the old ones still seem intact. During the inclement season Downy is anything but chivalrous or even generous. He will not even share with the female the marrow bone or bit of suet that I fasten on the maple in front of my window but drives her away rudely. Sometimes the hairy woodpecker a much larger bird routes Downy out and wrecks his house. Sometimes the English barrels mob him and dispossess him. In the woods the flying squirrels often turn him out of doors and furnish his chamber cavity to suit themselves. Four I am always content if I can bring home from my walks a least bit of live natural history as when the other day I saw a red-headed woodpecker having a tilt with a red squirrel on the trunk of a tree. Doubtless the woodpecker had a nest nearby and had had some experience with this squirrel as a nest robber. When I first saw them the bird was chasing the squirrel around the trunk of an oak tree his bright colors of black and white and red making his every movement conspicuous. The squirrel avoided him by darting quickly to the other side of the tree. Then the woodpecker took up its stand on the trunk of a tree a few yards distant and every time the squirrel ventured timidly around where he could be seen the woodpecker was swooped down at him making another loop of bright color. The squirrel seemed to enjoy the fun and to tempt the bird to make this ineffectual swoop. Time and again he would poke his head around the tree and draw the fire of his red-headed enemy. Occasionally the bird made it pretty hot for him and pressed him closely but he could escape because he had the inside ring and was so artful a dodger. As often as he showed himself on the woodpecker side the bird would make a vicious pass at him and there would follow a moment of lively scurrying around the trunk of the old oak then all would be quiet again. Finally the squirrel seemed to get tired of the sport and ran swiftly to the top and off through the branches into the neighboring trees as this was probably all the woodpecker was fighting for he did not give chase. While I was watching the squirrel and the woodpecker I discovered a crow's nest with nearly grown young the parent crow came low over the fence into the grove and flew to a branch of an oak and alighted only 10 or 12 feet from the ground then it flew to a higher branch in another tree and then to the top of a group of spruces where I saw one of the young crow's rise and take the food how cautious and artful the whole proceeding was. One of our latest nature writers pretends to see what the crow brings her young at such times had I had the most powerful opera glasses on this occasion I could not have told the nature of the morsel she brought in her beak the thing is done very quickly and deathly and it's not meant for the eye of any onlooker there may chance to be about thus all the little ways and doings of the birds interest me they are curiously human while yet they afford glimpses into a new and strange world we look on we are interested we understand we sympathize we may lend a hand we share much in common one nature mothers us all our lives run parallel in many respects similar problems similar needs similar fatalities similar tribulations come home to us all and yet we are separated by a gulf the gulf that lies between conscious reasoning soul and unconscious unreasoning instinct but I must not plunge into the gulf nor seek to clear it here five it always amuses me to see in late may a chippy or a gold bench ride down the dandelion stock that is carrying its frail globe of down high above the grass you are looking out over the lawn when you see one of these silver balls suddenly go down a chippy or a goldfinch has thrown itself upon the stock and born it to the ground for the seed the dandelion seeds are about the first that ripen and the seed eating birds are hard put for food at this time hence these globes are godsend to them not long before I had seen the goldfinches and the purplefinches pecking to pieces the button balls of the sycamore for the seeds they held put up so compactly in May the squirrels are hard put also it is at this season that the chipmunk pulls up the corn and that the red squirrel robs the bird's nest of both eggs and youngs their last year's stores of nuts and grains are exhausted and the new crop is not yet formed I think that the chipmunk has learned that there is something for him also in the dandelion seed but I doubt whether the red squirrel has the ladder has found out that there is something for him in the seeds of the elm tree which usually get fully developed in May the elm affords shortcomings but it's better than nothing the chaff is big and the grain small but probably sweet morning noon and night I see the squirrels feeding in the elms about my cabin and see the road strewn with the elm flakes from which the germ in the center has been cut do they know an elm tree when they see it or did they explore all their trees in quest of food if again I belong to the new school of nature riders I should say they know an elm as well as you or I and the day on which the seeds are edible and that they taught this word to their young but as it is I will only venture to say that at this season there they are in the top most branches of the scattered elms very busy with these green scales reaching and swaying and hanging by their hind feet or sitting up in that pretty way with tails over their backs and hands definitely submitting the samaras as a tease the red squirrel is much more of a hustler than is the gray and will make shift to live where the ladder will starve the red squirrel abides while the gray seems to go and come with the seasons of scarcity or plenty yet I've seen the gray eating the fruit of the poison ivy and apparently relishing it but he rarely disturbs the birds though with this misdemeanor he is probably not entirely innocent small things small doings train our powers of observation the big things all can see who sees the finer shire play of wildlife that goes on about us not all of nature's book is writ large the fine print is quite as interesting and it is this that trains the eye a schoolgirl wrote me one day that she had seen a hawk carrying a snake in its beak now as she had had a trained eye she would have seen that the hawk carried the snake in its talons one of our recent nature writers has made the same mistake in his book birds of prey all carry their game in their talons other birds carry it in their beaks a recent magazine writer errors in the other direction when he makes the crow carry in its claws the corn and is pulled up as the crow is one of the birds that carries everything in its beak emerson says the day does not seem holy profane in which we have given heed to some natural object it is such little incidents as I have been relating that redeem many of my own days and give to my pastimes a touch of something I would not willingly miss from them end of section 13 end of nature near home and other papers by jambrose recorded by 8th fern southern california december 2009