When the little princes were about a month old, I arranged with a neighboring photographer to have them sit for their picture. He drove over to the sycamore, and the lad who had rescued the prisoners took them down to keep their appointment. One of them tried to tuck its head up the boy's sleeve, being attracted by dark holes. While we were waiting for the photographer, the boy put Jacob in a hollow of the tree, where he began pecking as if he liked it. He worked away till he squeezed himself into a small pocket, and then, with his feathers ruffled up, sat there, the picture of content. Indeed, the little fellow looked more at home than I had ever seen him anywhere. The rescuer was itching to put the little princes back in their hole, to see what they would do, but I wouldn't listen to it, being thankful to have gotten them out once.
When Bairdi was on the bark and Jacob was put below him, he turned his head, raised his red cap, and looked down at his brother in a very winning way.
Soon the photographer came, and asked, "Are these the little chaps that try to swallow your fingers?" We were afraid they would not sit still enough to get good likenesses, but we had taken the precaution to give them a hearty breakfast just before starting, and they were too sleepy to move much. In the picture, Jacob is clinging to the boy's hand in his favorite way, and Bairdi is on the tree trunk.
Mountain Billy pricked up his ears when he discovered the woodpeckers down at the sycamore, but he often saw them up at the ranch and took me to make a farewell call on them before I left for the East. We found the birds perched on the tobacco-tree in front of the ranch-house, with a tall step-ladder beside it so the little girl could take them in at night. Their cup of bread and milk stood on the ladder, and when I called them they came over to be fed. They were both so strong and well that they would soon be able to care for themselves, as their fathers had done before them. And when they were ready to fly, they might have help; for an old woodpecker of their family—possibly an unknown uncle—had been seen watching them from the top of a neighboring oak, and may have been just waiting to adopt the little orphans. In any case, however they were to start out in the world, it was a great satisfaction to have rescued them from their prison tower.
VI.
HINTS BY THE WAY.
On our way back and forth along the line of oaks and sycamores belonging to the little prisoners, the little lover, and the gnatcatchers, Mountain Billy and I got a good many hints, he of places to graze, and I of new nests to watch.
While waiting for the woodpeckers one day I saw a small brownish bird flying busily back and forth to some green weeds. She was joined by her mate, a handsome blue lazuli bunting, even more beautiful than our lovely indigo bunting, and he flew beside her full of life and joy. He lit on the side of a cockle stem, and on the instant caught sight of me. Alas! he seemed suddenly turned to stone. He held onto that stalk as if his little legs had been bars of iron and I a devouring monster. When he had collected his wits enough to fly off, instead of the careless gay flight with which he had come out through the open air, he timidly kept low within the cockle field, making a circuitous way through the high stalks.