FROM WOODPECKER INTO SWALLOW. 203 



form of life sits on the very inch, just vacated 

 by the buzzard. Red, white and black his col- 

 ors are, and he too is changing flesh, once grass, 

 into living potent energy. A red-headed wood- 

 pecker is he, gathering his dinner not by drill- 

 ing into the dead wood at his feet, but by using 

 the highest branch as a lookout and diving there- 

 from in all directions after flying insects. He 

 "eats 'em alive," catches them on the wing, 

 swallows them as he turns, then backward flies 

 to the selfsame spot, the uppermost one of the 

 old tree. Three times has he sallied forth while 

 I have written and I can see him turn his head 

 and gaze in all directions, his keen eye allowing 

 nothing possessing nutriment to pass by. 



In a century from now the bills of his de- 

 scendents will be broader, their eyes keener, 

 their throats wider, and they will be part swal- 

 low, part woodpecker, creatures better adapted 

 to the life they have adopted. For he is slowly 

 changing from a simon-pure woodpecker, where 

 the struggle for life grows ever more bitter as 

 the forests grow fewer, into a cleaver of the air, 

 a swallower on the wing, a contortionist who can 

 rise and fall, twist and turn in rapid flight 

 after his oft-times elusive prey. The buzzard, 

 sluggish of wing and slow of thought, will re- 

 main a buzzard still, but my friend the red-head, 

 ever alert, will become modified in muscle and 

 in brain cell and will develop into a higher, 



