A ruffed grouse nest was looted by the crows when it contained but four eggs, after which the bird resorted to a swamp, and reared a brood.
Several of the nests named were destroyed, but none by the squirrel. In the light of my observations I cannot consistently denounce the red squirrel.
BLACK-THROATED GREEN WARBLER.
V.
CHANGES IN HERMIT-LIFE
For several years I had slept in a hammock without a roof to keep off the night air. I had found this method inconvenient on account of stormy nights, when I was obliged to seek the shelter of the cabin. I overcame the difficulty by putting a tent roof over my hammock. The sides and ends were open so that I was practically exposed to the night air. The tent roof protected me on stormy nights, and with this slight shelter I slept out-doors from April 1st until Christmas, unless there was a heavy, fall of snow, meantime.
I found it inconvenient to cook my breakfast, and then, after eating it, go to the city. Why I did so was on account of my coffee habit. I had tried to find a good cup of coffee in the city and had failed, so had depended on my own brewing.
One morning I dropped into the little store at the head of Pavilion Beach, and the proprietor asked me to have a cup of coffee. He piloted me into a back shop, where he told me that he served a light lunch with coffee, to the farmers. The coffee was just to my taste, and for twelve years I patronized the coffee trade in that little back shop. My note-book shows that during the twelve years I had missed only eighty mornings. I had paid six hundred and forty-five dollars, during that time, for my lunch and coffee, and had walked, on account of my breakfast, seventeen thousand two hundred miles. Whew! It makes me feel poor and tired to recall it. I do not remember that I remained at home to breakfast on account of a storm. The eighty mornings which I missed in the twelve years were accounted for by absence from the city.
I would leave my cabin, summer or winter, at half-past five o'clock, so I could sit down to breakfast in the back shop about six.
In the winter months it was dark at half-past five in the morning, but that did not disturb me. I did not use a lantern because I would not be bothered with it, and for another reason. It made one a bright and shining object for early ghouls or tramps.