stately
stalks, and I could hear the wind in the moving treetops.

Mountain Billy grazed near me till it occurred to him that stubble was
unsatisfactory, when he betook him to my haycock. Though I lectured him
upon the rights of property and enforced my sermon with the point of the
parasol, he was soon back again, with the amused look of a naughty boy
who cannot believe in the severity of his monitor; and later, I regret
to state, when I was engrossed with the woodpeckers, a sound of munching
arose from behind my back.

The woodpeckers talked and acted very much like their cousins, the
red-heads of the East. When they went to the nest they called
_chuck'-ah_ as if to wake the young, flying away with the familiar
rattling _kit-er'r'r'r'_. They flew nearly half a mile to their regular
feeding ground, and did not come to the nest as often as the wrens when
bringing up their brood. Perhaps they got more at a time, filling their
crops and feeding by regurgitation, as I have seen waxwings do when
having a long distance to go for food.

I first heard the voices of the young on June 16; nearly three weeks
later, July 6, the birds were still in the nest. On that morning, when
I went out to mount Billy, I was shocked to find the body of one of the
old woodpeckers on the saddle. I thought it had been shot, but found it
had been picked up in the prune orchard. That afternoon its mate was
brought in from the same place. Probably both birds had eaten poisoned
raisins left out for the gophers. The dead birds were thrown out under
the orange-trees near the house, and not many hours afterward, when I
looked out of the window, two turkey vultures were sitting on the
ground, one of them with a pathetic little black wing in his bill. The
great black birds seemed horrible to me,--ugly, revolting creatures. I
went outside to see what they would do, and after craning their long red
necks at me and stalking around nervously a few moments they flew off.

Now what would become of the small birds imprisoned in the tree trunk,
with no one to bring them food, no one to show them how to get out, or,
if they were out, to feed them till they had learned how to care for
themselves? Sad and anxious, I rode down to the sycamore. I rapped on
its trunk, calling _chuck'-ah_ as much like the old birds as possible.
There was an instant answer from a strong rattling voice and a weak
piping one. The weak voice frightened me. If that little bird's life
were