THE WRY-NECK. 93 



tacked by the fiery little bird, and obliged to abandon the locili- 

 ty altogether. 



Safe as the habitation of the Woodpecker may seem, it is in 

 America exposed to many and strange dangers. One of the per- 

 ils which environ the burrows of this bird has already been men- 

 tioned, but a worse remains to be told. The blacksnake espies 

 the parent birds as they enter and leaVe their nest, presses its 

 sombre body against the tree, glides slowly up the trunk, and 

 enters the apartment of the Woodpecker. Eggs or young are 

 equally acceptable to the snake, which, finding itself in a com- 

 fortable and sheltered spot, coils itself round and abandons itself 

 to repose. " The eager schoolboy," writes Wilson, " after hazard- 

 ing his neck to reach the Woodpecker's hole, at the triumphant 

 moment when he thinks the nestlings his own, and strips his arm, 

 launching it down into the cavity, and grasping what he con- 

 ceives to be the callow young, starts with horror at the sight of a 

 hideous snake, and almost drops from his giddy pinnacle, retreat- 

 ing down the tree with terror and precipitation. 



" Several adventures of this kind have come to my knowledge, 

 and one of them that was attended with serious consequences, 

 where both snake and boy fell .to the ground, and a broken thigh 

 and long confinement cured the adventurer completely of his am- 

 bition for robbing woodpeckers' nests." The unlucky bird-nester 

 might have saved himself a fall, had he been any thing of a nat- 

 uralist. The blacksnake which is mentioned in the anecdote 

 (Coryphodon constrictor) is as harmless as the common snake of 

 England, though it is a fierce-looking reptile, and very irascible 

 of temper, darting with open mouth at the hand of any one who 

 annoys it, and making believe to bite. It is sometimes called the 

 racer snake, on account of its swiftness. 



There are' many birds which make use of holes in trees for the 

 deposition of their eggs, but which seldom, if ever, excavate the 

 burrow by their o^n exertions. One of the best known exam- 

 ples of these birds is the Wry-neck ( Yunx torquilld) or Emmet- 

 eater, a pretty though not a gorgeously-decorated creature. In 

 Wales it is known by the name of Gwas-y-gog, or Cuckoo's 

 knave, because it is said to follow the cuckoo as a servant follows 

 a master. It is a rather elegantly-shaped bird, with plumage 

 beautifully mottled with various shades of brown, and with a 

 kind of low crest on the head, movable at pleasure. This bird 



