MY RED-HEADED NEIGHBORS. 



For five years, with each returning 

 spring, a pair of red-headed woodpeckers 

 has come, to make their nest and rear 

 their brood of young near my cabin 

 door. It was on a cold drizzly day the 

 last of April, when I first observed my 

 new neighbor. He was closely watching 

 me as he dodged about the trunk of a 

 dead tree standing in the yard. 



Unmindful of the falling rain, he put 

 in the day pecking and pounding away, 

 seemingly in search of food, occasionally 

 flying away or hitching around the tree 

 as some one passed, returning to his 

 quest as soon as the coast was clear. 



Not until the next morning on awak- 

 ing and hearing my neighbor industri- 

 ously hammering away, did I suspect he 

 was making a nest, having selected a 

 place on the trunk of the tree about ten 

 feet from the ground, and facing the 

 noon-day sun. He proved to be no 

 stickler for time, working early and late 

 with short intermissions, when he would 

 dart out into the air and stop some pass- 

 ing insect that was quickly disposed of. 

 At the end of two weeks the nest had 

 been completed and on the same day the 

 female arrived. Was it a coincidence? 

 It would seem so, for each succeeding 

 year the male preceded his mate by a 

 fortnight, in which time the place was se- 

 lected and the new home made ready in 

 which there was no straw, no feathers, 

 nothing but the deep cavernous pocket, 

 clean and fresh, perfumed with the pun- 

 gent odor of decaying wood. 



As the days went by they came to be 

 less afraid of and more neighborly with 

 me, paying little or no attention to my 

 passing or repassing. 



After repeatedly testing every avail- 

 able object in the vicinity of the nest, the 

 male finally selected as his drumming 

 place the roof-board of the cabin, where 

 in lieu of song, he beat off many a short 

 strain, like the roll of a snare drum, that 



was intended for and easily heard by his 

 mate as she kept warm the eggs in the 

 nest near by. 



In the matter of incubating each took 

 part, though the female devotes by far 

 the more time, usually remaining on the 

 nest from one to two hours, when the 

 old man would spell her for about twenty 

 minutes, in which time she makes her 

 toilet and indulges her insectivorous 'ap- 

 petite. At the end of two weeks they 

 carried out of the nest and dropped, as 

 they flew across the yard, the broken 

 fragments of shell. Now the greatest 

 of all mysteries has taken place. Like 

 some beautiful creation of art that is to 

 be, but as yet is an unexpressed thought 

 in some human brain, so the bird within 

 the egg is but a thought till, warmed 

 by the parent's soft downy breast, the 

 lite lines throb and pulsate till the swefl- 

 ing life within bursts the shell. Now in- 

 stead of eggs requiring warmth the old 

 birds have two hungry mouths demand- 

 ing food, that keeps them busy. Yet 

 they knew it, knew it all from the very 

 first; every act was intelligent, not in- 

 stinctive. During the first days of the 

 baby birds, much care was given to the 

 preparation of their food ; the legs, wings 

 and antennae were removed from each 

 bug or beetle. On some dead limb con- 

 venient to the nest, a small hole the size 

 lof a lady's thim.ble had been prepared, 

 and into this improvised mortar the body 

 of the insect was placed and pounded to a 

 pulp before feeding. This care was not 

 long continued, as the young birds were 

 soon capable of eating whatever is given 

 them. 



The next ten days Avere full of business 

 for my neighbors. Throughout the days 

 they were constantly in pursuit of the 

 passing life that filled the air. Each 

 catch was quickly delivered to the baby 

 birds, whose appetite seemed never to be 

 satisfied. 



The young birds quickly grew to be 



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