A FEATHERED CRYBABY. 209 



before the babes in tlie woods began to make 

 themselves heard. No sooner had these little 

 folk found their voices than they made the woods 

 fairly echo. Cry-babies in feathers I thought 

 I knew before, but the young woodpecker out- 

 does anything in my experience. No wonder 

 the woodpecker mamma sets up her nursery out 

 of the reach of prowlers of all sorts ; so loud and 

 so persistent are the demands of her nestlings 

 that they would not be safe an hour, if they 

 could be got at. The tone, too, must always 

 arrest attention, for it is of the nasal quality I 

 have mentioned. The first baby whisper, hardly 

 heard at the foot of the tree, has a squeaky 

 twang, which strengthens with the infant's 

 strength, and the grown-up murmurs of love 

 and screams of war are of the same order. 



It was during the nest-feeding days that we 

 discovered most of the sapsucker homesteads; 

 for, having many nests nearer our own level to 

 study, we never sought them, and noticed them 

 only when the baby voices attracted our atten- 

 tion. The home that apparently belonged to 

 our bird of the lawn was beautifully placed in 

 a beech-tree heavy with foliage. At first we 

 thought the owner an eccentric personage, who 

 had violated all sapsucker traditions by building 

 in a living tree ; but, on looking closely, it was 

 evident that the top of the tree had been blown 



