WAITING IN THE WILDERNESS 29 



Two summers later it was occupied by a pair of 

 hairy woodpeckers. 



One day, hearing a rather alarmed "peek, peek," 

 and thinking that something was happening to one 

 of the woodpeckers, I made haste to the brook, 

 where I saw two kingfishers looking upstream. The 

 alarm cry of these birds is very like that of the 

 hairy woodpecker. There on a log sat a mink, 

 evidently the cause of the excitement. The view 

 I had of these kingfishers' heads as they stood up 

 reminded me of the heads of two football players. 

 Returning from this inspection I was astonished to 

 see a flicker alight on the nest tree and take a peek 

 into the doorway of the woodpecker nest. The 

 arrival of one of the bird owners made him take a 

 hurried leave. 



There are three hundred and fifty known species 

 of woodpeckers in the world. They are found 

 nearly everywhere that there are trees and in a few 

 treeless places. I believe that there are no wood- 

 peckers in Australia. Of the twenty-five species 

 found in North America one of the smaller and 

 more common is the hairy woodpecker. He is a 

 valuable bird and saves many a tree from insect 

 death. 



The Rocky Mountain hairy woodpecker has a 

 length of about nine inches. Although he is 

 whitish beneath, with grayish legs, the general 

 effect when he is at rest is blackish. The outer 

 tail feathers are white-tipped and the wings show 



