A SWISS BIRD-STORY.
[TO THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR."]
is a bird-story from Switzerland. An old peasant from the Prittigau who was dining with us to-night gave us an amusing account of a woodpecker at Couters, his home in that quiet valley. One day this bird began boring its hole in one of the logs of Herr Brosi's chalet. All night it went on working, and never stopped until at last it succeeded in getting inside the wainscoting of their " stube," or living. room. Its continual tapping began to worry Herr Brosi's wife, who said that she could not stand it. So next morning out he went and nailed a piece of wood over the hole. No sooner had he left than the woodpecker began its work again, but this time above its last hole. Again it was stopped, and so it went on until the perforated log was almost covered by Herr Brosi's pieces of board. In the end, the bird's perse- verance was rewarded, and it was allowed to have its own way, built its nest in the hole it had worked so hard to obtain, and since then has returned many succeeding years, and brought up numerous flourishing families. But once before its arrival, two tomtits, searching for a suitable place in which to build, discovered this sheltered hole, which suited their habits, and immediately began to gather materials for lining it. When they had almost finished, the woodpecker, dis- covering their intrusion, turned them out of the domain which it had conquered with such trouble, and again took Am Hof, Davoa Flab, Switzerland, June 218t.
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