that, as a whole, they have become a suburban 

 people. 



But life is more than meat for the birds. 

 There is a subtle yet real attraction for them 

 in human society. They like its stir and 

 change, its attention and admiration. The 

 shyest and most modest of the birds pines for 

 appreciation. The cardinal grosbeak, retiring 

 as he is, cannot believe that he was born to 

 blush unseen— to the tip of his beautiful crest. 

 And the hermit-thrush, meditative, spiritual, 

 and free as the heart of the swamp from world- 

 liness— even he loves a listener, and would not 

 waste his sweetness any longer on desert forest 

 air. I do not know a single bird who does not 

 prefer a wood with a wagon- road through it. 



My friends had smiled at such assertions be- 

 fore their introduction to the bird in the pole. 

 They knew just enough of woodpeckers to ex- 

 pect High-hole to build in the woods, and, when 

 driven from there, to disappear, to extinguish 

 himself, rather than stoop to an existence with- 

 in walls of hardly the dignity and privacy of 

 a hitching-post. 



He is a proud bird and a wild bird, but a 

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