She was a beautiful creature, a picture of grace; and when she had beguiled us some distance away from where we heard the baby-cry, she suddenly slipped behind a branch and was gone; and we felt repaid for missing the young one by the beautiful exhibition she had made of herself. We never saw her again.
XXI.
TWO LITTLE DRUMMERS.
Last summer I made the acquaintance of an outlaw; an unfortunate fellow-creature under the ban of condemnation, burdened with an opprobrious name, and by general consent given over to the tender mercies of any vagabond who chooses to torture him or take his life. One would naturally sympathize with the "under dog," but when, instead of one of his peers as opponent, a poor little fellow, eight inches long, has arrayed against him the whole human race, with all its devices for catching and killing, his chances for life and the pursuit of happiness are so small that any lover of justice must be roused to his defense, if defense be possible.
The individual of whom I speak is, properly, the yellow-bellied woodpecker, though he is more commonly known as the sapsucker, in some places the squealing sapsucker; and I hailed with joy his presence in a certain protected bit of woods, a little paradise for birds and bird lovers, where, if anywhere, he could be studied. There is some propriety in applying to him the strange epithet "squealing," I must allow, for the bird has a peculiar voice, nasal enough for the conventional Brother Jonathan; but "sapsucker" is, in the opinion of many who have studied his ways, undeserved. Dr. Merriam, even while admitting that the birds do taste the sap, says positively, "It is my firm belief that their chief object in making these holes is to secure the insects which gather about them."
My introduction to the subject of my study took place just after sundown on a beautiful June evening. We were riding up from the railway station, three miles away. The horses had climbed to the top of the last hill, and trotted gayly through a belt of fragrant woods which reached like an arm around from the forest behind, as if lovingly inclosing the attractive scene,—a pleasant, old-fashioned homestead, with ample lawn sloping down toward the valley we had left, and looking away over low hills to the apparently unbroken forests of the Adirondacks.
At this moment there arose a loud, strange cry, of distress it seemed, and I turned hastily to see a black and white bird, with bright red crown and throat, bounding straight up the trunk of an elm-tree, throwing back his head at every jerk with a comical suggestion of Jack's "Hitchety! hatchety! up I go!" as he joyously mounted his beanstalk, in the old nursery story. There was surely nothing amiss with this little fellow, and, knowing almost nothing of the
"Greys, whites, and reds,
Of pranked woodpeckers that ne'er gossip out,
But always tap at doors and gad about,"