KNIGHTS OF THE CHISEL 



the wood too hard for my knife, so I borrowed a dull 

 hatchet and finally, standing on the spikes of my 

 climbing irons, with great difficulty managed to enlarge 

 the entrance enough to reach in. There were three 

 young, which I put in my creel, and a dead one full of 

 maggots. What a horrible time young woodpeckers 

 must have in these pestilential holes! I noticed, 

 though, that they kept up from the bottom, and clung 

 to the sides near the entrance, thus being able to stand 

 it — in more senses than one. 



At first when I tried to pose them before the camera 

 — clinging to a tree trunk, on a post, or ranged along a 

 branch — they were very unruly. But in time, like 

 most young birds, they finally wearied of trying to 

 escape and submitted to the inevitable. One was 

 particularly lively and troublesome, doubtless the one 

 which got the most food. The people of the house had 

 been watching the feeding process, and had noticed 

 that one youngster seemed to cling by the entrance for 

 hours at a time and block the others, getting most of 

 the feeding from the stupid or partial parents. Having 

 photographed them, I put them back in the hole, after 

 cleaning it out and partly filling it with grass. The 

 old birds had been quite concerned and soon one of 

 them came sliding dow^n the trunk, making a rather 

 pretty plaintive w^hining call which set the youngsters 

 almost frantic, for they well knew what it meant. She 

 was a little shy of the group watching her, but she soon 

 went and fed the first one that stuck out his head. It 



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