BY THE WAYSIDE 
I 
- 
i 
and with a one-inch ledge around it, 
may be erected at any convenient place 
on a tree trunk or flag pole or on top 
of a post, in such a manner that cats 
cannot reach it. On this may be placed 
the scraps from childrens’ lunch, 
seeds, pieces of meat, cracked acorns, 
and so on. The board should of course 
be kept clean, and food kept constantly 
on it. For this purpose some child may 
be appointed “bird warden” for a 
week at a time. 
With care some of the children may 
nsucceed in getting chickadees and some 
I few other birds to feed out of their 
M 
hands. This requires chiefly patience 
and the ability of keeping quiet. 
Some trouble may be experienced 
from English sparrows. There is no 
sure way of preventing these, but con- 
.stantly annoying them when around 
I usually makes them desert a neighbor¬ 
hood. 
(Continued from page 19) 
of birds is the skull a very solid struc¬ 
ture. Not only is it true that the vari- 
j ous bones comprising the skull are 
: thickened and fused together, but it is 
also true that this thickening and fu¬ 
sion has gone the farthest in those spe¬ 
cies which persistently seek their food 
in hard wood. And there are other 
( adaptations to the bird’s mode of life. 
The tongue, for instance, has its mus¬ 
cles developed in such a way as to en- 
! able it to extract most skillfully an in¬ 
sect from its burrow. The tail, too, 
composed as it is of stiff, rather pointed 
feathers, is a great aid in that it helps 
j to support the bird as it clings to the 
I, tree trunk. Thus we could go on 
j enumerating many special develop¬ 
ments, for the typical woodpecker is a 
highly specialized bird. 
Just as we can distinguish wood¬ 
peckers by their structure, so we can 
separate them from other groups of 
birds and even from one another by 
their habits. As a rule, they are rather 
solitary birds, found most often alone, 
but not infrequently in twos and threes. 
Their flight is not over-rapid, is not 
like the arrowlike flight of a goose; it 
is rather a leisurely, billowy progress, 
wellenartig” the Germans pictur¬ 
esquely term it. Then, too, the wood¬ 
peckers seem to be a happy cheerful 
lot, although one might be led to think 
otherwise because of their ceaseless 
search for food. . Yet the jerky move¬ 
ments of a downy as he hitches himself 
up a tree trunk on a winter morning, 
his querulous calls, his erect carriage, 
the sharp blows delivered upon the bark 
from time to time all give the observer 
an undefinable sense of cheerfulness 
and optimism; the very bearing of our 
feathered friend seems to say, “Clear 
cold air makes the hard earned food 
taste good to a downy and makes him 
feel right happy and cheerful.” This 
exuberance they seem to express in an¬ 
other way also; woodpeckers are not 
gifted songsters, though their calls may 
be rather expressive, but they are mu¬ 
sicians. Often one sees a woodpecker 
perch upon a dry limb and drumb upon 
it, and the more resonant the wood, 
the more he performs. Civilization has 
furnished them with better instruments 
and nowadays the telegraph or tele¬ 
phone pole, the house top, windmills 
both wooden and metallic, and other 
fixtures afford more attractive drum¬ 
ming-places. 
The family of woodpeckers is a large 
one and is found in almost all parts of 
the world. On the whole they are 
birds of the trees, but not always In 
