CLIMBING BEAR MOUNTAIN IN THE SNOW . 247 
piled in ramparts. The many roads reaching 
up the mountain are in places set so closely to¬ 
gether that their ramparts of top wood touch 
each other, forming almost impassable barriers. 
It was in one of these tangles that I discov¬ 
ered two small woodpeckers at work tapping 
upon the trunks of two unhealthy spruces 
spared by the axe. I saw at a glance that the 
birds were unfamiliar in coloring, and I crawled 
in among the top wood to examine them more 
closely. To whistles, hooting, and squeaks they 
paid no attention, but kept on hammering the 
trees until small flakes of loose bark flew at 
every blow. My crashing through snow and 
branches startled one bird, but the other stood 
his ground until I got within about fifteen feet 
of him. My glass brought out every detail of 
his plumage. Upon his head was a yellow cap, 
his throat was snowy white, his sides were 
finely, delicately barred with black and white, 
his back was largely black, but down his spine 
ran a belt of black and white cross-lining. In¬ 
stead of having four toes like the downy and 
other common woodpeckers, this stranger from 
the north had but three toes. He was the lad¬ 
der-backed woodpecker of the great northern 
forests. During the twenty minutes that I 
watched him he made no vocal sound, but 
worked incessantly, tearing away bark, and 
