The Red-headed Woodpecker 
171 
Feeding 
the Babies 
confirmed them. Did I mean harm? Why had I come? One of them 
leaned far down across a dead limb and inspected me, rattling and bow- 
ing nervously; the other stationed itself on the back of a branch over 
which it peered at me with one eye. Both of them cried krit’-tar-rah 
every time I ventured to take a step. As they positively would not com- 
mit themselves as to which one of the many Woodpecker-holes in sight 
belonged to them I had to make a tour of the grove. 
On its edge was a promising old stub with a number of big, round 
holes, and, picking up a stick, I rapped on the trunk. Both birds were 
over my head in an instant, rattling and scolding till you would have 
thought I had come to chop down the tree and carry off the young before 
their eyes. I felt injured, but having found the nest could afford to 
watch events from a distance. 
It was not long before the old birds began feeding their young. 
They would fly to the stub and stand under the nest while rousing the 
brood by rattling into the hole, which had the odd 
effect of muffling their voices. When, as they flew to 
and fro, a Flicker stopped in passing, they drove him 
off in a hurry. They wanted that grove to themselves. 
On my subsequent visits, if, in spite of my precautions, they dis- 
covered me, they flew to dead tree-tops to watch me, or startled me by 
an angry quarr’ quarr’ quarr’ over my head. When they found that I 
made no attempt to go near the nest, however, they finally put up with 
me and went about their business. 
After being at the nest together they would often fly off in opposite 
directions, to hunt on different beats. If one hunted in the grove, the 
other would go out to the rail-fence. A high maple was a favorite look- 
out and hunting-ground for the one who stayed in the grove, and cracks 
in the bark afforded good places into which to wedge insects. The bird 
who hunted on the fence, if suspecting a grub in a rail, would stand as 
motionless as a Robin on the grass, apparently listening; but when the 
right moment came would drill down rapidly and spear the grub. 
If an insect passed that way the Redhead would make a sally into 
the air for it, sometimes shooting straight up for fifteen or twenty feet 
and coming down almost as straight ; at other times flying out and back 
in an ellipse, horizontally or obliquely up in the air, 
or down over the ground. But oftener than all, 
perhaps, it flew down to the ground to pick up some- 
thing which its sharp eyes had discovered. Once it brought up some 
insect, hit it against the rail, gave a business-like hop, and flew off to 
feed its young. 
The young left the nest between my visits, but when, chancing to 
focus my glass on a passing Woodpecker, I discovered that its head was 
gray instead of red, I knew for a certainty what had happened. The 
fledgling seemed already much at home on its wings. It flew out into 
the air, caught a white miller and went back to the tree with it, shaking 
Insect 
Hunting 
