PHASES OF BIRD LIFE. 197 
One day in spring I was witness to a curious inci- 
dent. A red-headed woodpecker had been flying 
several times in and out of a hole in a tree where 
he (or she) had a nest. At length, when he re- 
mained within the cavity for some minutes, I stepped 
to the tree and rapped on the trunk with my cane. 
The bird bolted like a small cannon-ball from the 
orifice, wheeled around the tree with a swiftness 
that the eye could scarcely follow, and then dashed 
up the lane to an orchard a short distance away. 
But he had only leaped out of the frying-pan into 
the fire. In the orchard he had unconsciously got 
too near a king-bird’s nest. The king-bird swooped 
toward him, and alighted on his back. The next 
moment the two birds, the king-bird on the wood- 
pecker’s back, went racing across the meadow like 
a streak of zigzag lightning, making a clatter that 
frightened every echo from its hiding-place. That 
gamy flycatcher actually clung to the woodpecker’s 
back until he reached the other end of the meadow. 
I cannot be sure, but he seemed to be holding to 
the woodpecker’s dorsal feathers with his bill. 
Then, bantam fellow that he was, he dashed back 
to the orchard with a loud chippering of exultation. 
“ Ah, ha!” he flung across to the blushing wood- 
pecker; “stay away the next time, if you don’t 
fancy being converted into a beast of burden!” 
A large part of a bird’s toil, after there are chil- 
dren in the nest, consists in providing victuals for 
them. For this purpose the whole country around 
must be scoured, and sometimes long journeys must 
