124 "^ BIRD LAND. 



arrived only two or three days before from his winter 

 residence in the south. Very hkely most wood- 

 peckers roost in the cavities which they hew in trees, 

 for I do not see why the one into whose private 

 affairs I pried that evening should have been an 

 exception. He most probably was only following 

 the customs of his tribe from time immemorial.' 



A number of experiments made with young birds 

 purloined from the nest — I must beg the feathered 

 parents' forgiveness — have added several interesting 

 facts to the subject in hand. One spring I became 

 guardian, purveyor, and man-of-all-work to a pair ol 

 young flickers, taken from a cavity in an old apple- 

 tree. They were kept in a large cage, in which 1 

 placed sapling boughs of considerable size. They 

 had not become my prot^g^s many days before they 

 insisted on converting these upright branches into 

 sleeping-couches, clinging to the vertical boles with 

 their stout claws, and pillowing their heads in th-a 

 feathers of their backs. In this position they slej-t 

 as comfortably as the thrushes and orioles confintd 

 in other cages slept on their horizontal perches, or, 

 for that matter, as I slept in my own bed. They 



1 The reader will see, from the facts given in the remainder 

 of the chapter, that I reckoned without my host in supposing 

 that woodpeckers usually sleep in cavities of trees, That they 

 sometimes select such places for roosts cannot be doubled; 

 but that such is always or even generally their habit the ex- 

 periments described farther on conclusively disprove. It is 

 only fair to say that the rest of the chapter was added long 

 after the foregoing had been written, and proves how unsafe 

 it is for the naturalist to make generalizations. 



