Happenings by the Way 115 



Most birds, however, do not take their dinner at night, 

 and therefore it is easier to watch them at their table 

 d'hote. One day a red-headed woodpecker was giving a 

 strapping youngster as large as herself his noonday meal. 

 She came close to him with a morsel in her long bill, 

 and, after pounding it awhile against a limb, she thrust 

 it into the screaming youngling's mouth. But she had 

 failed to reduce it to a swallowable size; it stuck in his 

 throat, and, do what he would, he could not bolt it. It 

 was so large that he was choking; what should be done? 

 The simplest thing you can conceive. The mother bird 

 reached over and impatiently jerked the refractory morsel 

 out of her baby's throat, thumped it vigorously several 

 times against the branch, then gave it to him again, as 

 much as to say, "Now try it! I guess you can manage 

 it this time." And he did, for down his gullet it went 

 with very little effort. Then she went after more prov- 

 ender for his spacious craw. Whenever she came with 

 a tidbit, she would first drop it into a kind of pocket in 

 the bark, and pound it a while to reduce it to a proper 

 consistency; the while the youngster would sit near and 

 watch her with hungry eyes, and often spream in his 

 coaxing way and twinkle his wings, until she was ready 

 to deliver up the tempting fragment. 



Once, after she had given him all she had brought, 

 he still opened his mouth and whimpered for more. At 

 this exhibition of gluttony she lost her patience. Would 

 he never be satisfied, the great, greedy, overgrown lubber? 

 He was simply making a slave and a drudge of her. She 



