The path now trends somewhat away from the stream and skirts a ploughed
field, where the hedges are cropped close and the elms stripped of the
lesser boughs about the trunks, that the sparrows may not find shelter.
But all the same there are birds here too--one in the thick low hedge,
two or three farther on, another in the ditch perching on the dead white
stems of last year's plants that can hardly support an ounce weight, and
all calling to each other. It is six marsh tits, as busy as they can
well be.
One rises from the ditch to the trunk of an elm where the thick bark is
green with lichen: he goes up the tree like a woodpecker, and peers into
every crevice. His little beak strikes, peck, peck, at a place where
something is hidden: then he proceeds farther up the trunk: next he
descends a few steps in a sidelong way, and finally hops down some three
inches head foremost, and alights again on the all but perpendicular
bark. But his tail does not touch the tree, and in another minute down
he flies again to the ditch.
A shrill and yet low note that sounds something like 'skeek-skeek' comes
from a birch, and another 'skeek-skeek' answers from an elm. It is like
the friction of iron against iron without oil on the bearings. This is
the tree-climber calling to his mate. He creeps over the boles of the
birch, and where the larger limbs join the trunk, trailing his tail
along the bark, and clinging so closely that but for the sharp note he
would be passed.
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