THE GOLDEN-WINGED WOODPECKER 



beside you, as if the heart of the old tree 

 was pulsating with audible life. It is 

 startlingly suggestive of disturbed yel- 

 low-jackets, but when you move around 

 the trunk in cautious reconnoissance, you 

 discover the round portal of a flicker's 

 home, and the sound resolves itself into 

 harmlessness. It is only the callow 

 young clamoring for food, or complain- 

 ing of their circumscribed quarters. 



Not many days hence they will be out 

 in the wide world of air and sunshine of 

 which they now know as little as when 

 they chipped the shell. Lusty fellows 

 they will be then, with much of their 

 parents' beauty already displayed in their 

 bright new plumage and capable of an 

 outcry that will hold a bird-eating cat 

 at bay. A little later they will be, as 

 their parents are, helpful allies against 

 the borers, the insidious enemies of our 

 apple-tree. It is a warfare which the 

 groundling habits of the golden -wings 

 make them more ready to engage in than 

 any other of the woodpecker clans. 



In sultry August weather, when the 

 shrill cry of the cicada pierces the hot 

 air like a hotter needle of sound, and the 

 6i 



