terest, as one looks
down upon a herd with whom he has nothing in common. But when those
birds departed, and the visitors were of a different character, mostly
cardinals, with an occasional blue jay, he at once took the place he
felt belonged to him--that of dictator.

The Virginia cardinal, a genuine F. F. V., and a regular attendant at my
corn breakfast, was a subject of special study with me; indeed, it was
largely on his account that I had set up my tent in that part of the
world. I had all my life known him as a tenant of cages, and it struck
me at first as very odd to see him flying about freely, like other wild
birds. No one, it seemed to me, ever looked so out of place as this
fellow of elegant manners, aristocratic crest, and brilliant dress,
hopping about on the ground with his exaggerated little hops, tail held
stiffly up out of harm's way, and uttering sharp "tsips." One could not
help the feeling that he was altogether too fine for this common
work-a-day existence; that he was intended for show; and that a gilded
cage was his proper abiding-place, with a retinue of human servants to
minister to his comfort. Yet he was modest and unassuming, and appeared
really to enjoy his life of hard work; varying his struggles with a
kernel of hard corn on the ground, where his color shone out like a
flower against the green, with a rest on a spruce-tree, where

"Like a living jewel he sits and sings;"

and when he had finished his frugal meal, departing, if nothing hurried
him, with a graceful, loitering flight, in which each wing-beat seemed
to carry him but a few inches forward, and leave his body poised, an
infinitesimal second for another beat. With much noise of fluttering
wings he would start for some point, but appear not to care much whether
he got there. He was never in haste unless there was something to hurry
him, in which he differed greatly from some of the fidgety, restless
personages I have known among the feathered folk.

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
degre