XXXI. 



THE GREEN WOODPECKER. 



WE live so closely and familiarly with nature 

 on the isolated hilltop, where my cottage is 

 perched, that we often behold from our own 

 drawing-room windows pretty rural sights, 

 which seem intensely strange to more town- 

 bred visitors. A little while since, for 

 example, I was amused at reading in an 

 evening newspaper a lament by a really 

 well-informed and observant naturalist on 

 the difficulty of actually seeing the nightjar, 

 or fern-owl, alight upon a tree, and stand, 

 as is his wont, lengthwise, not transversely 

 to the branch that bears him. Now, from 

 our little bay lattice that doubting Thomas 

 might see the weird bird nightly, not twenty 

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