CHAPTER II 



WAITING IN THE WILDERNESS 



THEY were a pair of hairy woodpeckers 

 engaged in examining a fourteen-inch dead 

 aspen. As it was nesting time I lingered to 

 watch them. After taking a number of grubs 

 from beneath the bark of the tree the birds centred 

 their woodpecking work at one spot, about a man's 

 height above the roots. 



Mrs. Woodpecker pecked a number of tiny holes 

 or dots, forming a circle about two inches in diam- 

 eter. Then she pecked and hammered away 

 within this circle. Presently this space began to 

 take on the form of a doorway or entrance hole 

 to a nest. Chips and broken bits flew. The birds 

 worked rapidly, one at a time. While Mrs. Wood- 

 pecker worked her mate watched near by and tried 

 two or three times to take a hand, but she thrust 

 him aside and kept on pecking and hammering 

 until at last she grew tired and his turn came. 

 After three hours a sizable impression was made in 

 the tree and both birds flew away into the aspen 

 grove. I waited half an hour, but they did not 

 come back. After spending more than an hour 

 looking over a beaver house on the bank of a brook, 



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