THE OUTDOOR WORLD 



283 



house, and late in May after I came 

 to the place we heard young wood- 

 peckers peeping in the dense foliage. 

 But one morning in June we were sur- 

 prised and pained to find feathers of 

 the parent bird scattered on the ground 

 near the nest. Naturally we concluded 

 that the poor mother bird had been 

 eaten by a cat, and the thought of the 

 little ones apparently doomed to star- 

 vation made their cry heartrending. 

 Pushing aside thick poison ivy, the nest 

 was located hidden in the trunk of a 

 dead tree. The wood was cut away and 

 behold, four young woodpeckers were 

 rescued and made as comfortable as 

 possible in a small basket. But they 

 refused the milk and bread we offered 

 them and our attendant physician Dr. 

 Bartlett, good amateur ornithologist as 

 he is, could not enlighten us as to how 

 to feed them. For a day or two we 

 were in despair, and then we noticed 

 a grown-up woodpecker perching on 

 top of the bush screaming piteously as if 

 missing the little ones. The basket was 

 put on a branch and soon we had the 

 great satisfaction of hearing the joyous 

 noise of their being supplied with prop- 

 er food. Day by day I watched with 

 fascination the progress of the young- 

 sters, but one afternoon I was again 

 startled to hear the same piteous cry 

 of the foster-parent proceeding from 

 the top of the same bush. Did the 

 wicked feline devour all my pets? I 

 hastened to the spot and found the 

 basket overturned on the ground. To 

 my immense relief three of them were 

 still under the basket while one was hop- 

 ping away in the thick grass. They 

 were safely restored to their former 

 abode although the old bird did not 

 recognize this for some time. It flew 

 excitedly from one tree to another con- 

 tinuing its pathetic appeal, until I 

 wished I might have caught it and 

 showed it how to cut short its sorrows. 

 After fully half an hour of this tragic 

 scene, the woodpecker tentatively ap- 

 proached the bush three times before 

 its plaintive tones turned to the inde- 

 scribably happy ones in the recovery 

 of the lost children. Two weeks later 

 T found one of the rising generation 

 gone and in the afternoon of the same 

 day the others followed : In the ensu- 

 ing days I saw them learning to fly 

 from one apple tree to another, and once 



I found and caught one of them rest- 

 ing its wings in the grass, which caus- 

 ed a protest of alarm and anxiety from 

 the teacher bird. But who was this 

 teacher bird after all ? Could it be the 

 father of the little ones? If so, we 

 humans are wrong in concluding that 

 only the mother could rear her babes. 

 If it were a maternal aunt, we ought 



♦ *-v 



M. HONDA. 

 The illustration also shows the bush and one of the 

 young birds mentioned in his article. 



to learn from nature a good lesson in 

 family instinct and sentiment! 



Late in the summer my attention was 

 called to a strange insect apparently bor- 

 ing through the bark of a dead hickory 

 tree, at a point about a foot above the 

 ground. It had a long slender body, 

 resembling a wasp, from the middle 

 of which projected a needle reaching 

 beyond the tail and sheathed in two 

 pieces of horn-like covers. When in 

 use this needle is held at right angles 

 to the body and is driven with great 

 muscular exertion to the extent 

 of almost an inch. We found an- 

 other of these insects quite dead on the 

 same tree, with its needle firmly plant- 

 ed in the bark, and again from the fact 

 that the first one was engaged in the 

 same labor on another part of the tree, 

 when we looked for it a few hours later, 



