ing motion of the horse, and never an egg did I see broken. One rider told us 

 that he depended largely on the egg crop for a living and that he couldn't 

 afford to smash any. He further volunteered the information that he thought 

 he could fall down hill with his horse "and never crack a shell." 



Our way led us through a little hamlet. At the crossing of two roads there 

 was a tavern with a huge tree standing in front of its door. There were six 

 bronzed grackles holding a "windy congress" in the branches. A redbird oc- 

 cupied a perch at the very top of a small tree which stood at the gate of a 

 cottage next the inn. Four boys were playing about the gate, and though the 

 bird was calling loudly, the youngsters paid no heed. I thought it promised well 

 for the future of the race of redbirds when a songster of such brilliancy could 

 sit and sing unmolested just above the heads of four boys who were passing 

 through the sling-shot and bird-nesting age. Thinking it barely possible that 

 the boys, intent on play, had not noticed the bird, I purposely called their atten- 

 tion to it and asked them what it was. They were not backward in expressing 

 surprise at my supposed ignorance, and the answer to my question was, "Don't 

 you know a redbird, mister?" Then they told me there were lots of redbirds 

 around, and that they could whistle "bully." It is more than likely that the 

 very commonness of certain birds of brilliant plumage saves them from de- 

 struction. It is to the unaccustomed that human attention is most sharply at- 

 tracted. In the East in many places the red-headed woodpecker has been prac- 

 tically exterminated. He never was as common a bird there as he is today with 

 us in the Middle Western country. His rarity and beauty invited destruction, 

 and it came. In the prairie towns and villages the red-headed woodpecker is 

 as common as the robin, and despite his beauty, the small boy passes him by 

 with barely a thought. 



The red-headed woodpecker came into my mind while we stood at the 

 gate talking to the little Hoosier lads ; and following came a thought that 

 not one of these birds had we seen, though I had understood from a friend 

 who had visited the locality before that the red-headed woodpeckers were 

 abundant. When we had left the little village behind us we accepted standing 

 room in a grain wagon, offered by a boy who was driving home from the rail- 

 road station. I asked him about the red-headed woodpeckers. He said that 

 generally they were the commonest birds that they had, but that the fall before 

 they had all disappeared, and that he had not seen one all through the winter 

 nor thus far in the spring. I asked him how he accounted for their disap- 

 pearance, and he answered that the birds left because the beechnut crop was 

 a failure. "The red-heads," he said, "like beechnuts better than any other food. 

 They live on them all winter. Last fall, for some reason, there wasn't a beech- 

 nut in the country, and the birds all cleared out." 



The lad's explanation was undoubtedly the true one. He said that he 

 had studied something about the birds in school, and that there wasn't as much 

 shooting going on now as there used to be. When he discovered that we were 



317 



