A JOLLY RED-HEAD. 



One of the most interesting birds of my ac- 

 quaintance is the red-headed woodpecker. In 

 Ohio he is the most abundant species of the wood- 

 pecker family, the flicker coming next in point of 

 numbers. You may see him almost everywhere ; 

 in the city as well as in the country ; in the low- 

 lands and meadows, if there are a few trees, as 

 well as in the uplands ; in the open spaces and in 

 the dense woods, and wherever found, he is the 

 same jolly, companionable fellow. I suppose every 

 boy knows this bird, which, as Mr. Burroughs 

 prettily says, " festoons the woods " with red, 

 white and blue-black. He may be readily identi- 

 fied by his crimson head and neck, making him 

 look as if he had plunged up to his shoulders into 

 a keg of red paint. 



Like all other woodpeckers, he is a hewer of 

 timber, chiselling out a parlor — or rather, perhaps, 

 a nursery — in a dead limb or tree-trunk, where he 

 rears his young and trains them in the way tliey 



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