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Updated: June 10, 2025
The woodpecker's way of making himself disagreeable to this distinguished guest, was to keep watch from his tree (an elm overlooking the supply of corn) till he came to eat, and then fly down, aiming for exactly the spot occupied by the bird on the ground. No one, however brave, could help "getting out from under," when he saw this tricolored whirlwind descending upon him. The cardinal always jumped aside, then drew himself up, crest erect, tail held at an angle of forty-five degrees, and faced the woodpecker, calm, but prepared to stand up for his right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of his breakfast. Sometimes they had a little set-to, with beaks not more than three inches apart, the woodpecker making feints of rushing upon his vis-
"They are not very easy to reach, though you can readily see the rounded hole that leads into the nest, for it is almost always bored in a bare, dead part of the tree. I can show you some Woodpecker's eggs in my cabinet. They are all alike, except in size more round than most birds' eggs are, very smooth and glossy, like porcelain, and pure white.
He stood in the mud: long, thin, brown in his doctor's gown of fur, with his black flapped cap that buttoned well under his chin and let out his brown, lean, shaven and humorous face like a woodpecker's peering out of a hole in a tree. The volumes beneath his arms were heavy: they poked out his gown on each side, and the bitter cold pinched his finger ends as if they had been caught in a door.
There is a curious Indian legend about Meeko the red squirrel the Mischief-Maker, as the Milicetes call him which is also an excellent commentary upon his character. Simmo told it to me, one day, when we had caught Meeko coming out of a woodpecker's hole with the last of a brood of fledgelings in his mouth, chuckling to himself over his hunting.
I had misgivings, but, not liking to fail old Hughy at a pinch, I let him rig me up for the feat and at last, taking the plug, started to walk up the slightly inclined tree trunk to the woodpecker's hole, which was close to the point where the basswood rested against the hemlock. I found it was not hard to walk up the sloping trunk if I did not look down into the gully.
The coachman turned the horse's head and vanished down the woodland track by which they had ascended. The viscount moved on, uttering private chuckles as numerous as a woodpecker's taps, and Ethelberta with him. She walked as by a miracle, but she would walk. She would have died rather than not have walked then. She perceived now that they were somewhere in Enckworth wood.
The lark, too, was pouring from the clouds, where he circled and flickered like a ball of light, the glory of his song; and from an old, dead oak, which raised its straight trunk just without the garden, came the quick rattle of the woodpecker's bill, or the scream of that red-winged drummer, as he darted off, playing and screaming, with his fellows.
Under this treatment he grew more abusive, and now Madam Woodpecker dodged every time she came within his reach. It made the Cardinal feel so vengeful that he longed to go up and drum the sycamore with the woodpecker's head until he taught him how to treat his mate properly.
The boys had been out in the woods ever since three o'clock, seeking for eggs for the cabinet, and had been very successful; but now the sun was setting, and the last rays were turning the sky overhead into one glorious golden canopy; the forest shades were getting deeper, and as Fred said, he would not have cared only it was so dreadfully quiet, and Harry was lost; and what was worse than all was, they were lost themselves; and this is how it fell out: Mr Inglis had been talking about the collection of eggs they had in the little museum, and said he would go with the boys to Beechy Wood, to see if they could get a few more specimens; for he particularly wanted two or three eggs rather difficult to obtain, such as the great spotted woodpecker's, hawfinch's, and coletit's.
His head was going so fast that it looked like a quick series of heads and the tree rattled so it could be heard afar. Most writers regard this as the woodpecker's love call, a sign of spring, as it were but Downy is usually heard and seen doing it on warm days every month in the winter.
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