According to the season it eats fruit or seeds, buds, twigs, shells, berries, grain and mushrooms. The seeds, buds and young shoots of fir and pine trees probably form its principal food.
As soon as the animal is provided with food in abundance it lays by stores for later and less plenteous times, carrying to its storerooms nuts, grains and kernels, sometimes from a great distance. In the forests of southeastern Siberia the squirrels also store away mushrooms, and that in a very peculiar manner.
"They are so unselfish," says Radde, "that they do not think of hiding their supply of mushrooms, but pin them on the pine needles or in larch woods on the small twigs. There they leave the mushrooms to dry, and in times of scarcity of food these stores are of good service to some roaming individual of their kind."
THE ROBIN'S MISTAKE.
L. WHITNEY WATKINS.
The scene was the bank of a crystal brook
Where a saucy young robin had paused to look,
As the morning sun had gilded the waves
Which sparkled and sang thro' the autumn days.