[Contents]CHAPTER XXIIWOODPECKERSGreater Spotted WoodpeckerGreater Spotted WoodpeckerIn front of Uncle Paul’s house there is a grove of beeches several centuries old, its branches interlacing at a great height and forming a continuous canopy supported by hundreds of tree trunks as smooth and white as stone columns. In the autumn that is where Emile and Jules go and hunt in the moss for mushrooms of all colors to show to their uncle, who tells the boys how to distinguish the edible from the poisonous kinds. There, too, they hunt for beetles: the stag-beetle, whose large fat head bears enormous branching nippers; great black capricorn-beetles that may be seen at sunset running along the dead branches and clinging to them, as they go, with their jointed antennæ, which are longer than the insect’s body; and long-horn beetles, likewise furnished with antennæ of unusual length, and also remarkable for their wing sheaths richly colored with blue or yellow or red, with spots and stripes of black velvet.[169]A multitude of birds of many kinds make this grove their abode. There the quarrelsome jay fights with one of its own species for the possession of a beechnut; there the magpie chatters on a high branch and then flies down and alights in a neighboring field, jerking up its tail and looking around with an air of defiance; crows have their evening rendezvous there; and there the woodpecker hammers away at old bark to make the insects come out so that it may snap them up with its viscous tongue. Listen to the bird at its work:toc, toc, toc!If it is interrupted in its task it flies away with a cry ofteo, teo, teo, repeated thirty or forty times in quick succession and resembling a noisy burst of laughter.“What bird is it that seems to be making fun of us with such loud laughter as it flies off?” Emile and Jules asked each other one day when they were watching from their window the woodpeckers and the jays at play in the branches of the old beech-trees.Jacques, their uncle’s gardener, heard them as he was watering the cabbage bed. After finishing a series of little trenches to carry the water to all parts of the bed, he came up to the window for a talk with the boys.“That bird you see there,” said he, “with green plumage and a red head, is a woodpecker. It has several different cries. If it is going to rain it saysplieu, plieu, in a long-drawn and plaintive tone. When at work, in order to keep up its spirits it every now and then gives a harsh cry,tiackackan,[170]tiackackan, so that the whole forest echoes with it. In the nesting season it gives a quickteo, teo, teo, just like what you heard a moment ago.”“Then it has its nest now in the beech grove?” asked Jules.PiculetPiculet(A small soft-tailed woodpecker)“It is at work on it, for all the morning I’ve heard it hammering away with all its might. You see, it makes its nest in a hole that it hollows out by pecking the trunk of a tree with its beak. It’s a fine beak it has, too, so hard and pointed that the bird is always afraid of going too deep into the wood. So after two or three good hard pecks it skips round to the other side of the trunk to see if it hasn’t bored clear through.”“Bah! you’re only in fun,” returned Jules.“Not at all,” protested Jacques; “it’s what I’ve heard said, and I’ve often seen the woodpecker hurry round to look at the other side of the trunk.”“But the bird must have some other reason than just to see whether or not the tree is bored through. I’m going to ask Uncle.”“Ask him, too, if he knows the ironweed that the woodpecker rubs its beak on to make it harder than steel.”[171]“Your ironweed sounds to me like a fairy tale.”“Well, I’m only telling you what I’ve heard. I don’t know anything about it, myself; but they say it’s a very rare weed and that the woodpecker goes to look for it in the mountains so that it may harden and whet its beak on it. And anything you touch to that weed becomes as hard as the best steel. What a find that would be for my scythe and my hedging-bill, my sickle and grafting-knife! I know many a man that would give a bag of gold for the woodpecker’s secret.”The young cabbage plants had by this time received enough water, and it was now the lettuce’s turn. Jacques went back to his work and left the boys to puzzle over the question whether or not there was any truth in this story of the woodpecker’s fear lest it might bore through the tree trunk with each peck of its beak. They brought the matter up that evening in their talk with their uncle.“There is both truth and falsehood in what my good Jacques told you,” he said. “The true is what he saw with his own eyes, the false what he repeats from hearsay among the country folk. He told you correctly about the woodpecker’s different cries, which he knows so well from having heard them over and over again; and he was right about the bird’s way of running around to the other side of the trunk that it has just struck several times with its beak. All the rest is false, or, rather, an amusing legend with a basis of fact which we will now examine.[172]“Woodpeckers live solely on insects and larvæ, especially those species of insects and larvæ that are found in wood. The large grubs of capricorn-beetles, stag-beetles, long-horn beetles, and others are their favorite dish. To get at them they have to clear away the dead bark and bore into the worm-eaten wood beneath. The instrument used in this rough work is the bird’s beak, which is straight and wedge-shaped, square at the base, fluted lengthwise, and shaped at the point like a carpenter’s chisel. It is so hard and durable that, in order to account for a tool of such perfection, some simple-minded wood-cutter made up the story that has been repeated ever since, the childish story of the ironweed. Need I tell you that there is nothing in the world that by its mere touch can give to objects the hardness of iron or steel?”“I had my doubts,” Jules declared, “when Jacques was telling us about it; I couldn’t believe in his wonderful weed.”“The woodpecker has no need to rub its beak against anything to give it the hardness necessary for the work to be done; it is born with a good strong beak, to begin with, and keeps it to the end, and that beak never has to be retempered. It is the continuation of a very thick skull which can withstand rather violent shocks, and it is operated by a short, strong neck which can keep up its hammering without fatigue even should the bird wish to bore into the very heart of a tree trunk. After it has drilled its hole the woodpecker darts into it an exceedingly[173]long tongue, worm-shaped and viscous—that is, coated with a sort of mucilage made by the saliva—and armed with a hard barbed point with which it transfixes the larvæ that have been uncovered.“To climb the trunk of the tree to be operated upon and, for hours at a time if need be, to stay there where larvæ seem to be lurking, the woodpecker has short, muscular legs which end in stout claws, each foot having four talons or toes, two pointing forward and two backward, armed with curved nails of great strength. The bird’s way of standing on the vertical surface of a tree trunk is made possible not only by the division of its talons as I have described them, with their strong nails clinging to rough bark, but also by a third support furnished by the tail. The large tail feathers are stiff, slightly bent downward, worn at the tip, and supplied with rough barbs. When the woodpecker starts in on what promises to be a long job, it plants itself firmly on the tripod of its tail and two feet and holds itself steady even in positions that would seem to be highly uncomfortable. Without fatigue and without pause it can strip an entire tree trunk of its dried-up bark.“The objects of its persevering search are the insects hidden under this bark. It can tell by the sound made when it strikes the tree with its beak whether or not the wood is decayed and full of insects, a hollow sound being of good omen to the bird. If the wood does not give out this hollow sound, the woodpecker[174]knows that further drilling at that point would be but so much labor wasted. In the first case it strips off the bark, makes the wood beneath fly this way and that in a shower of little chips, clears off the worm-hole dust, and finally reaches the plump grub in its snug retreat. In the second case it strikes two or three well-directed blows to start the dry bark and frighten any insects that may be lurking underneath. Immediately this insect population runs in alarm, some to the right, others to the left, toward the opposite side of the tree trunk; but the woodpecker, knowing well enough what is going on, reaches the other side in time to nab the fugitives.”Three-toed Woodpecker of JavaThree-toed Woodpecker of Java“Now,” said Jules, “I understand what Jacques was saying. The woodpecker doesn’t run around the tree to see whether or not it has bored through to the other side, but to gobble up the insects that are trying to get away. I thought the woodpecker must be very silly to think it could drill right through the trunk of a tree with one peck of its beak; but now that I know the real reason of what it does, I see that it’s a wonderfully clever bird.”“I assure you once more that animals have more intelligence than they are given credit for. Let us[175]beware of seeing an evil meaning in habits and aptitudes that we do not understand. Is it not said of the buzzard that it is a stupid bird, just because it shows such patience in watching and waiting, perfectly motionless, for the field-mouse it suspects to be lurking under the ground? And here we have the woodpecker accused of being so foolish as to think it can pierce a tree trunk with one blow of its beak, merely because it runs around to capture the insects fleeing to the other side! Bear this in mind: there is in animals no foolishness except what we ascribe to them from our own point of view. Whenever we are able to discover the real motive, we always find their actions perfectly logical. And that is only what might have been expected, for an animal has no choice in its acts, but is made to perform them according to its mode of life as determined from the beginning by Divine Wisdom. Man alone is free: by a sublime privilege he is left to choose between good and evil, between sound reason and blind passion. He seeks and chooses, at his own risk and peril, the true or the false, the just or the unjust, the beautiful or the ugly. But animals, having no spiritual battles to fight as we have, are now what they have always been and always will be; they do to-day what they did yesterday and will do to-morrow; for centuries and centuries they go on doing the same thing without improvement or deterioration, and with an unfailing sense given them by God.“Woodpeckers spend their lives running around[176]tree trunks from top to bottom in order to start the old bark that shelters insects, and exploring all fissures with their long, pointed tongue, which is pushed down into every hole where worms may possibly be hiding. These birds are placed in our forests as keepers. They inspect sickly trees in particular, trees honeycombed by vermin, and they examine carefully the diseased parts. Occasionally they may chance to attack a healthy part, especially in making their nests, and they may thus injure the tree by drilling into the live wood. But this damage is more than atoned for in the long run, and so I do not hesitate to bestow upon our woodpeckers the title of forest-preservers, a title earned by their assiduous warfare on insects injurious to wood. Seldom do they leave their timber-yard—the trunk and the main branches of the tree—and descend to the ground, except when they chance to find an ant-hill, the inmates of which they devour with delight. They place their nests at a considerable height from the ground, deep down in a round hole bored with the beak in the heart of some tree trunk. The bedding consists of moss and wool, and the eggs, four to six in number, are in every instance white, smooth, and as lustrous as ivory.”[177]
[Contents]CHAPTER XXIIWOODPECKERSGreater Spotted WoodpeckerGreater Spotted WoodpeckerIn front of Uncle Paul’s house there is a grove of beeches several centuries old, its branches interlacing at a great height and forming a continuous canopy supported by hundreds of tree trunks as smooth and white as stone columns. In the autumn that is where Emile and Jules go and hunt in the moss for mushrooms of all colors to show to their uncle, who tells the boys how to distinguish the edible from the poisonous kinds. There, too, they hunt for beetles: the stag-beetle, whose large fat head bears enormous branching nippers; great black capricorn-beetles that may be seen at sunset running along the dead branches and clinging to them, as they go, with their jointed antennæ, which are longer than the insect’s body; and long-horn beetles, likewise furnished with antennæ of unusual length, and also remarkable for their wing sheaths richly colored with blue or yellow or red, with spots and stripes of black velvet.[169]A multitude of birds of many kinds make this grove their abode. There the quarrelsome jay fights with one of its own species for the possession of a beechnut; there the magpie chatters on a high branch and then flies down and alights in a neighboring field, jerking up its tail and looking around with an air of defiance; crows have their evening rendezvous there; and there the woodpecker hammers away at old bark to make the insects come out so that it may snap them up with its viscous tongue. Listen to the bird at its work:toc, toc, toc!If it is interrupted in its task it flies away with a cry ofteo, teo, teo, repeated thirty or forty times in quick succession and resembling a noisy burst of laughter.“What bird is it that seems to be making fun of us with such loud laughter as it flies off?” Emile and Jules asked each other one day when they were watching from their window the woodpeckers and the jays at play in the branches of the old beech-trees.Jacques, their uncle’s gardener, heard them as he was watering the cabbage bed. After finishing a series of little trenches to carry the water to all parts of the bed, he came up to the window for a talk with the boys.“That bird you see there,” said he, “with green plumage and a red head, is a woodpecker. It has several different cries. If it is going to rain it saysplieu, plieu, in a long-drawn and plaintive tone. When at work, in order to keep up its spirits it every now and then gives a harsh cry,tiackackan,[170]tiackackan, so that the whole forest echoes with it. In the nesting season it gives a quickteo, teo, teo, just like what you heard a moment ago.”“Then it has its nest now in the beech grove?” asked Jules.PiculetPiculet(A small soft-tailed woodpecker)“It is at work on it, for all the morning I’ve heard it hammering away with all its might. You see, it makes its nest in a hole that it hollows out by pecking the trunk of a tree with its beak. It’s a fine beak it has, too, so hard and pointed that the bird is always afraid of going too deep into the wood. So after two or three good hard pecks it skips round to the other side of the trunk to see if it hasn’t bored clear through.”“Bah! you’re only in fun,” returned Jules.“Not at all,” protested Jacques; “it’s what I’ve heard said, and I’ve often seen the woodpecker hurry round to look at the other side of the trunk.”“But the bird must have some other reason than just to see whether or not the tree is bored through. I’m going to ask Uncle.”“Ask him, too, if he knows the ironweed that the woodpecker rubs its beak on to make it harder than steel.”[171]“Your ironweed sounds to me like a fairy tale.”“Well, I’m only telling you what I’ve heard. I don’t know anything about it, myself; but they say it’s a very rare weed and that the woodpecker goes to look for it in the mountains so that it may harden and whet its beak on it. And anything you touch to that weed becomes as hard as the best steel. What a find that would be for my scythe and my hedging-bill, my sickle and grafting-knife! I know many a man that would give a bag of gold for the woodpecker’s secret.”The young cabbage plants had by this time received enough water, and it was now the lettuce’s turn. Jacques went back to his work and left the boys to puzzle over the question whether or not there was any truth in this story of the woodpecker’s fear lest it might bore through the tree trunk with each peck of its beak. They brought the matter up that evening in their talk with their uncle.“There is both truth and falsehood in what my good Jacques told you,” he said. “The true is what he saw with his own eyes, the false what he repeats from hearsay among the country folk. He told you correctly about the woodpecker’s different cries, which he knows so well from having heard them over and over again; and he was right about the bird’s way of running around to the other side of the trunk that it has just struck several times with its beak. All the rest is false, or, rather, an amusing legend with a basis of fact which we will now examine.[172]“Woodpeckers live solely on insects and larvæ, especially those species of insects and larvæ that are found in wood. The large grubs of capricorn-beetles, stag-beetles, long-horn beetles, and others are their favorite dish. To get at them they have to clear away the dead bark and bore into the worm-eaten wood beneath. The instrument used in this rough work is the bird’s beak, which is straight and wedge-shaped, square at the base, fluted lengthwise, and shaped at the point like a carpenter’s chisel. It is so hard and durable that, in order to account for a tool of such perfection, some simple-minded wood-cutter made up the story that has been repeated ever since, the childish story of the ironweed. Need I tell you that there is nothing in the world that by its mere touch can give to objects the hardness of iron or steel?”“I had my doubts,” Jules declared, “when Jacques was telling us about it; I couldn’t believe in his wonderful weed.”“The woodpecker has no need to rub its beak against anything to give it the hardness necessary for the work to be done; it is born with a good strong beak, to begin with, and keeps it to the end, and that beak never has to be retempered. It is the continuation of a very thick skull which can withstand rather violent shocks, and it is operated by a short, strong neck which can keep up its hammering without fatigue even should the bird wish to bore into the very heart of a tree trunk. After it has drilled its hole the woodpecker darts into it an exceedingly[173]long tongue, worm-shaped and viscous—that is, coated with a sort of mucilage made by the saliva—and armed with a hard barbed point with which it transfixes the larvæ that have been uncovered.“To climb the trunk of the tree to be operated upon and, for hours at a time if need be, to stay there where larvæ seem to be lurking, the woodpecker has short, muscular legs which end in stout claws, each foot having four talons or toes, two pointing forward and two backward, armed with curved nails of great strength. The bird’s way of standing on the vertical surface of a tree trunk is made possible not only by the division of its talons as I have described them, with their strong nails clinging to rough bark, but also by a third support furnished by the tail. The large tail feathers are stiff, slightly bent downward, worn at the tip, and supplied with rough barbs. When the woodpecker starts in on what promises to be a long job, it plants itself firmly on the tripod of its tail and two feet and holds itself steady even in positions that would seem to be highly uncomfortable. Without fatigue and without pause it can strip an entire tree trunk of its dried-up bark.“The objects of its persevering search are the insects hidden under this bark. It can tell by the sound made when it strikes the tree with its beak whether or not the wood is decayed and full of insects, a hollow sound being of good omen to the bird. If the wood does not give out this hollow sound, the woodpecker[174]knows that further drilling at that point would be but so much labor wasted. In the first case it strips off the bark, makes the wood beneath fly this way and that in a shower of little chips, clears off the worm-hole dust, and finally reaches the plump grub in its snug retreat. In the second case it strikes two or three well-directed blows to start the dry bark and frighten any insects that may be lurking underneath. Immediately this insect population runs in alarm, some to the right, others to the left, toward the opposite side of the tree trunk; but the woodpecker, knowing well enough what is going on, reaches the other side in time to nab the fugitives.”Three-toed Woodpecker of JavaThree-toed Woodpecker of Java“Now,” said Jules, “I understand what Jacques was saying. The woodpecker doesn’t run around the tree to see whether or not it has bored through to the other side, but to gobble up the insects that are trying to get away. I thought the woodpecker must be very silly to think it could drill right through the trunk of a tree with one peck of its beak; but now that I know the real reason of what it does, I see that it’s a wonderfully clever bird.”“I assure you once more that animals have more intelligence than they are given credit for. Let us[175]beware of seeing an evil meaning in habits and aptitudes that we do not understand. Is it not said of the buzzard that it is a stupid bird, just because it shows such patience in watching and waiting, perfectly motionless, for the field-mouse it suspects to be lurking under the ground? And here we have the woodpecker accused of being so foolish as to think it can pierce a tree trunk with one blow of its beak, merely because it runs around to capture the insects fleeing to the other side! Bear this in mind: there is in animals no foolishness except what we ascribe to them from our own point of view. Whenever we are able to discover the real motive, we always find their actions perfectly logical. And that is only what might have been expected, for an animal has no choice in its acts, but is made to perform them according to its mode of life as determined from the beginning by Divine Wisdom. Man alone is free: by a sublime privilege he is left to choose between good and evil, between sound reason and blind passion. He seeks and chooses, at his own risk and peril, the true or the false, the just or the unjust, the beautiful or the ugly. But animals, having no spiritual battles to fight as we have, are now what they have always been and always will be; they do to-day what they did yesterday and will do to-morrow; for centuries and centuries they go on doing the same thing without improvement or deterioration, and with an unfailing sense given them by God.“Woodpeckers spend their lives running around[176]tree trunks from top to bottom in order to start the old bark that shelters insects, and exploring all fissures with their long, pointed tongue, which is pushed down into every hole where worms may possibly be hiding. These birds are placed in our forests as keepers. They inspect sickly trees in particular, trees honeycombed by vermin, and they examine carefully the diseased parts. Occasionally they may chance to attack a healthy part, especially in making their nests, and they may thus injure the tree by drilling into the live wood. But this damage is more than atoned for in the long run, and so I do not hesitate to bestow upon our woodpeckers the title of forest-preservers, a title earned by their assiduous warfare on insects injurious to wood. Seldom do they leave their timber-yard—the trunk and the main branches of the tree—and descend to the ground, except when they chance to find an ant-hill, the inmates of which they devour with delight. They place their nests at a considerable height from the ground, deep down in a round hole bored with the beak in the heart of some tree trunk. The bedding consists of moss and wool, and the eggs, four to six in number, are in every instance white, smooth, and as lustrous as ivory.”[177]
CHAPTER XXIIWOODPECKERS
Greater Spotted WoodpeckerGreater Spotted WoodpeckerIn front of Uncle Paul’s house there is a grove of beeches several centuries old, its branches interlacing at a great height and forming a continuous canopy supported by hundreds of tree trunks as smooth and white as stone columns. In the autumn that is where Emile and Jules go and hunt in the moss for mushrooms of all colors to show to their uncle, who tells the boys how to distinguish the edible from the poisonous kinds. There, too, they hunt for beetles: the stag-beetle, whose large fat head bears enormous branching nippers; great black capricorn-beetles that may be seen at sunset running along the dead branches and clinging to them, as they go, with their jointed antennæ, which are longer than the insect’s body; and long-horn beetles, likewise furnished with antennæ of unusual length, and also remarkable for their wing sheaths richly colored with blue or yellow or red, with spots and stripes of black velvet.[169]A multitude of birds of many kinds make this grove their abode. There the quarrelsome jay fights with one of its own species for the possession of a beechnut; there the magpie chatters on a high branch and then flies down and alights in a neighboring field, jerking up its tail and looking around with an air of defiance; crows have their evening rendezvous there; and there the woodpecker hammers away at old bark to make the insects come out so that it may snap them up with its viscous tongue. Listen to the bird at its work:toc, toc, toc!If it is interrupted in its task it flies away with a cry ofteo, teo, teo, repeated thirty or forty times in quick succession and resembling a noisy burst of laughter.“What bird is it that seems to be making fun of us with such loud laughter as it flies off?” Emile and Jules asked each other one day when they were watching from their window the woodpeckers and the jays at play in the branches of the old beech-trees.Jacques, their uncle’s gardener, heard them as he was watering the cabbage bed. After finishing a series of little trenches to carry the water to all parts of the bed, he came up to the window for a talk with the boys.“That bird you see there,” said he, “with green plumage and a red head, is a woodpecker. It has several different cries. If it is going to rain it saysplieu, plieu, in a long-drawn and plaintive tone. When at work, in order to keep up its spirits it every now and then gives a harsh cry,tiackackan,[170]tiackackan, so that the whole forest echoes with it. In the nesting season it gives a quickteo, teo, teo, just like what you heard a moment ago.”“Then it has its nest now in the beech grove?” asked Jules.PiculetPiculet(A small soft-tailed woodpecker)“It is at work on it, for all the morning I’ve heard it hammering away with all its might. You see, it makes its nest in a hole that it hollows out by pecking the trunk of a tree with its beak. It’s a fine beak it has, too, so hard and pointed that the bird is always afraid of going too deep into the wood. So after two or three good hard pecks it skips round to the other side of the trunk to see if it hasn’t bored clear through.”“Bah! you’re only in fun,” returned Jules.“Not at all,” protested Jacques; “it’s what I’ve heard said, and I’ve often seen the woodpecker hurry round to look at the other side of the trunk.”“But the bird must have some other reason than just to see whether or not the tree is bored through. I’m going to ask Uncle.”“Ask him, too, if he knows the ironweed that the woodpecker rubs its beak on to make it harder than steel.”[171]“Your ironweed sounds to me like a fairy tale.”“Well, I’m only telling you what I’ve heard. I don’t know anything about it, myself; but they say it’s a very rare weed and that the woodpecker goes to look for it in the mountains so that it may harden and whet its beak on it. And anything you touch to that weed becomes as hard as the best steel. What a find that would be for my scythe and my hedging-bill, my sickle and grafting-knife! I know many a man that would give a bag of gold for the woodpecker’s secret.”The young cabbage plants had by this time received enough water, and it was now the lettuce’s turn. Jacques went back to his work and left the boys to puzzle over the question whether or not there was any truth in this story of the woodpecker’s fear lest it might bore through the tree trunk with each peck of its beak. They brought the matter up that evening in their talk with their uncle.“There is both truth and falsehood in what my good Jacques told you,” he said. “The true is what he saw with his own eyes, the false what he repeats from hearsay among the country folk. He told you correctly about the woodpecker’s different cries, which he knows so well from having heard them over and over again; and he was right about the bird’s way of running around to the other side of the trunk that it has just struck several times with its beak. All the rest is false, or, rather, an amusing legend with a basis of fact which we will now examine.[172]“Woodpeckers live solely on insects and larvæ, especially those species of insects and larvæ that are found in wood. The large grubs of capricorn-beetles, stag-beetles, long-horn beetles, and others are their favorite dish. To get at them they have to clear away the dead bark and bore into the worm-eaten wood beneath. The instrument used in this rough work is the bird’s beak, which is straight and wedge-shaped, square at the base, fluted lengthwise, and shaped at the point like a carpenter’s chisel. It is so hard and durable that, in order to account for a tool of such perfection, some simple-minded wood-cutter made up the story that has been repeated ever since, the childish story of the ironweed. Need I tell you that there is nothing in the world that by its mere touch can give to objects the hardness of iron or steel?”“I had my doubts,” Jules declared, “when Jacques was telling us about it; I couldn’t believe in his wonderful weed.”“The woodpecker has no need to rub its beak against anything to give it the hardness necessary for the work to be done; it is born with a good strong beak, to begin with, and keeps it to the end, and that beak never has to be retempered. It is the continuation of a very thick skull which can withstand rather violent shocks, and it is operated by a short, strong neck which can keep up its hammering without fatigue even should the bird wish to bore into the very heart of a tree trunk. After it has drilled its hole the woodpecker darts into it an exceedingly[173]long tongue, worm-shaped and viscous—that is, coated with a sort of mucilage made by the saliva—and armed with a hard barbed point with which it transfixes the larvæ that have been uncovered.“To climb the trunk of the tree to be operated upon and, for hours at a time if need be, to stay there where larvæ seem to be lurking, the woodpecker has short, muscular legs which end in stout claws, each foot having four talons or toes, two pointing forward and two backward, armed with curved nails of great strength. The bird’s way of standing on the vertical surface of a tree trunk is made possible not only by the division of its talons as I have described them, with their strong nails clinging to rough bark, but also by a third support furnished by the tail. The large tail feathers are stiff, slightly bent downward, worn at the tip, and supplied with rough barbs. When the woodpecker starts in on what promises to be a long job, it plants itself firmly on the tripod of its tail and two feet and holds itself steady even in positions that would seem to be highly uncomfortable. Without fatigue and without pause it can strip an entire tree trunk of its dried-up bark.“The objects of its persevering search are the insects hidden under this bark. It can tell by the sound made when it strikes the tree with its beak whether or not the wood is decayed and full of insects, a hollow sound being of good omen to the bird. If the wood does not give out this hollow sound, the woodpecker[174]knows that further drilling at that point would be but so much labor wasted. In the first case it strips off the bark, makes the wood beneath fly this way and that in a shower of little chips, clears off the worm-hole dust, and finally reaches the plump grub in its snug retreat. In the second case it strikes two or three well-directed blows to start the dry bark and frighten any insects that may be lurking underneath. Immediately this insect population runs in alarm, some to the right, others to the left, toward the opposite side of the tree trunk; but the woodpecker, knowing well enough what is going on, reaches the other side in time to nab the fugitives.”Three-toed Woodpecker of JavaThree-toed Woodpecker of Java“Now,” said Jules, “I understand what Jacques was saying. The woodpecker doesn’t run around the tree to see whether or not it has bored through to the other side, but to gobble up the insects that are trying to get away. I thought the woodpecker must be very silly to think it could drill right through the trunk of a tree with one peck of its beak; but now that I know the real reason of what it does, I see that it’s a wonderfully clever bird.”“I assure you once more that animals have more intelligence than they are given credit for. Let us[175]beware of seeing an evil meaning in habits and aptitudes that we do not understand. Is it not said of the buzzard that it is a stupid bird, just because it shows such patience in watching and waiting, perfectly motionless, for the field-mouse it suspects to be lurking under the ground? And here we have the woodpecker accused of being so foolish as to think it can pierce a tree trunk with one blow of its beak, merely because it runs around to capture the insects fleeing to the other side! Bear this in mind: there is in animals no foolishness except what we ascribe to them from our own point of view. Whenever we are able to discover the real motive, we always find their actions perfectly logical. And that is only what might have been expected, for an animal has no choice in its acts, but is made to perform them according to its mode of life as determined from the beginning by Divine Wisdom. Man alone is free: by a sublime privilege he is left to choose between good and evil, between sound reason and blind passion. He seeks and chooses, at his own risk and peril, the true or the false, the just or the unjust, the beautiful or the ugly. But animals, having no spiritual battles to fight as we have, are now what they have always been and always will be; they do to-day what they did yesterday and will do to-morrow; for centuries and centuries they go on doing the same thing without improvement or deterioration, and with an unfailing sense given them by God.“Woodpeckers spend their lives running around[176]tree trunks from top to bottom in order to start the old bark that shelters insects, and exploring all fissures with their long, pointed tongue, which is pushed down into every hole where worms may possibly be hiding. These birds are placed in our forests as keepers. They inspect sickly trees in particular, trees honeycombed by vermin, and they examine carefully the diseased parts. Occasionally they may chance to attack a healthy part, especially in making their nests, and they may thus injure the tree by drilling into the live wood. But this damage is more than atoned for in the long run, and so I do not hesitate to bestow upon our woodpeckers the title of forest-preservers, a title earned by their assiduous warfare on insects injurious to wood. Seldom do they leave their timber-yard—the trunk and the main branches of the tree—and descend to the ground, except when they chance to find an ant-hill, the inmates of which they devour with delight. They place their nests at a considerable height from the ground, deep down in a round hole bored with the beak in the heart of some tree trunk. The bedding consists of moss and wool, and the eggs, four to six in number, are in every instance white, smooth, and as lustrous as ivory.”[177]
Greater Spotted WoodpeckerGreater Spotted Woodpecker
Greater Spotted Woodpecker
In front of Uncle Paul’s house there is a grove of beeches several centuries old, its branches interlacing at a great height and forming a continuous canopy supported by hundreds of tree trunks as smooth and white as stone columns. In the autumn that is where Emile and Jules go and hunt in the moss for mushrooms of all colors to show to their uncle, who tells the boys how to distinguish the edible from the poisonous kinds. There, too, they hunt for beetles: the stag-beetle, whose large fat head bears enormous branching nippers; great black capricorn-beetles that may be seen at sunset running along the dead branches and clinging to them, as they go, with their jointed antennæ, which are longer than the insect’s body; and long-horn beetles, likewise furnished with antennæ of unusual length, and also remarkable for their wing sheaths richly colored with blue or yellow or red, with spots and stripes of black velvet.[169]
A multitude of birds of many kinds make this grove their abode. There the quarrelsome jay fights with one of its own species for the possession of a beechnut; there the magpie chatters on a high branch and then flies down and alights in a neighboring field, jerking up its tail and looking around with an air of defiance; crows have their evening rendezvous there; and there the woodpecker hammers away at old bark to make the insects come out so that it may snap them up with its viscous tongue. Listen to the bird at its work:toc, toc, toc!If it is interrupted in its task it flies away with a cry ofteo, teo, teo, repeated thirty or forty times in quick succession and resembling a noisy burst of laughter.
“What bird is it that seems to be making fun of us with such loud laughter as it flies off?” Emile and Jules asked each other one day when they were watching from their window the woodpeckers and the jays at play in the branches of the old beech-trees.
Jacques, their uncle’s gardener, heard them as he was watering the cabbage bed. After finishing a series of little trenches to carry the water to all parts of the bed, he came up to the window for a talk with the boys.
“That bird you see there,” said he, “with green plumage and a red head, is a woodpecker. It has several different cries. If it is going to rain it saysplieu, plieu, in a long-drawn and plaintive tone. When at work, in order to keep up its spirits it every now and then gives a harsh cry,tiackackan,[170]tiackackan, so that the whole forest echoes with it. In the nesting season it gives a quickteo, teo, teo, just like what you heard a moment ago.”
“Then it has its nest now in the beech grove?” asked Jules.
PiculetPiculet(A small soft-tailed woodpecker)
Piculet
(A small soft-tailed woodpecker)
“It is at work on it, for all the morning I’ve heard it hammering away with all its might. You see, it makes its nest in a hole that it hollows out by pecking the trunk of a tree with its beak. It’s a fine beak it has, too, so hard and pointed that the bird is always afraid of going too deep into the wood. So after two or three good hard pecks it skips round to the other side of the trunk to see if it hasn’t bored clear through.”
“Bah! you’re only in fun,” returned Jules.
“Not at all,” protested Jacques; “it’s what I’ve heard said, and I’ve often seen the woodpecker hurry round to look at the other side of the trunk.”
“But the bird must have some other reason than just to see whether or not the tree is bored through. I’m going to ask Uncle.”
“Ask him, too, if he knows the ironweed that the woodpecker rubs its beak on to make it harder than steel.”[171]
“Your ironweed sounds to me like a fairy tale.”
“Well, I’m only telling you what I’ve heard. I don’t know anything about it, myself; but they say it’s a very rare weed and that the woodpecker goes to look for it in the mountains so that it may harden and whet its beak on it. And anything you touch to that weed becomes as hard as the best steel. What a find that would be for my scythe and my hedging-bill, my sickle and grafting-knife! I know many a man that would give a bag of gold for the woodpecker’s secret.”
The young cabbage plants had by this time received enough water, and it was now the lettuce’s turn. Jacques went back to his work and left the boys to puzzle over the question whether or not there was any truth in this story of the woodpecker’s fear lest it might bore through the tree trunk with each peck of its beak. They brought the matter up that evening in their talk with their uncle.
“There is both truth and falsehood in what my good Jacques told you,” he said. “The true is what he saw with his own eyes, the false what he repeats from hearsay among the country folk. He told you correctly about the woodpecker’s different cries, which he knows so well from having heard them over and over again; and he was right about the bird’s way of running around to the other side of the trunk that it has just struck several times with its beak. All the rest is false, or, rather, an amusing legend with a basis of fact which we will now examine.[172]
“Woodpeckers live solely on insects and larvæ, especially those species of insects and larvæ that are found in wood. The large grubs of capricorn-beetles, stag-beetles, long-horn beetles, and others are their favorite dish. To get at them they have to clear away the dead bark and bore into the worm-eaten wood beneath. The instrument used in this rough work is the bird’s beak, which is straight and wedge-shaped, square at the base, fluted lengthwise, and shaped at the point like a carpenter’s chisel. It is so hard and durable that, in order to account for a tool of such perfection, some simple-minded wood-cutter made up the story that has been repeated ever since, the childish story of the ironweed. Need I tell you that there is nothing in the world that by its mere touch can give to objects the hardness of iron or steel?”
“I had my doubts,” Jules declared, “when Jacques was telling us about it; I couldn’t believe in his wonderful weed.”
“The woodpecker has no need to rub its beak against anything to give it the hardness necessary for the work to be done; it is born with a good strong beak, to begin with, and keeps it to the end, and that beak never has to be retempered. It is the continuation of a very thick skull which can withstand rather violent shocks, and it is operated by a short, strong neck which can keep up its hammering without fatigue even should the bird wish to bore into the very heart of a tree trunk. After it has drilled its hole the woodpecker darts into it an exceedingly[173]long tongue, worm-shaped and viscous—that is, coated with a sort of mucilage made by the saliva—and armed with a hard barbed point with which it transfixes the larvæ that have been uncovered.
“To climb the trunk of the tree to be operated upon and, for hours at a time if need be, to stay there where larvæ seem to be lurking, the woodpecker has short, muscular legs which end in stout claws, each foot having four talons or toes, two pointing forward and two backward, armed with curved nails of great strength. The bird’s way of standing on the vertical surface of a tree trunk is made possible not only by the division of its talons as I have described them, with their strong nails clinging to rough bark, but also by a third support furnished by the tail. The large tail feathers are stiff, slightly bent downward, worn at the tip, and supplied with rough barbs. When the woodpecker starts in on what promises to be a long job, it plants itself firmly on the tripod of its tail and two feet and holds itself steady even in positions that would seem to be highly uncomfortable. Without fatigue and without pause it can strip an entire tree trunk of its dried-up bark.
“The objects of its persevering search are the insects hidden under this bark. It can tell by the sound made when it strikes the tree with its beak whether or not the wood is decayed and full of insects, a hollow sound being of good omen to the bird. If the wood does not give out this hollow sound, the woodpecker[174]knows that further drilling at that point would be but so much labor wasted. In the first case it strips off the bark, makes the wood beneath fly this way and that in a shower of little chips, clears off the worm-hole dust, and finally reaches the plump grub in its snug retreat. In the second case it strikes two or three well-directed blows to start the dry bark and frighten any insects that may be lurking underneath. Immediately this insect population runs in alarm, some to the right, others to the left, toward the opposite side of the tree trunk; but the woodpecker, knowing well enough what is going on, reaches the other side in time to nab the fugitives.”
Three-toed Woodpecker of JavaThree-toed Woodpecker of Java
Three-toed Woodpecker of Java
“Now,” said Jules, “I understand what Jacques was saying. The woodpecker doesn’t run around the tree to see whether or not it has bored through to the other side, but to gobble up the insects that are trying to get away. I thought the woodpecker must be very silly to think it could drill right through the trunk of a tree with one peck of its beak; but now that I know the real reason of what it does, I see that it’s a wonderfully clever bird.”
“I assure you once more that animals have more intelligence than they are given credit for. Let us[175]beware of seeing an evil meaning in habits and aptitudes that we do not understand. Is it not said of the buzzard that it is a stupid bird, just because it shows such patience in watching and waiting, perfectly motionless, for the field-mouse it suspects to be lurking under the ground? And here we have the woodpecker accused of being so foolish as to think it can pierce a tree trunk with one blow of its beak, merely because it runs around to capture the insects fleeing to the other side! Bear this in mind: there is in animals no foolishness except what we ascribe to them from our own point of view. Whenever we are able to discover the real motive, we always find their actions perfectly logical. And that is only what might have been expected, for an animal has no choice in its acts, but is made to perform them according to its mode of life as determined from the beginning by Divine Wisdom. Man alone is free: by a sublime privilege he is left to choose between good and evil, between sound reason and blind passion. He seeks and chooses, at his own risk and peril, the true or the false, the just or the unjust, the beautiful or the ugly. But animals, having no spiritual battles to fight as we have, are now what they have always been and always will be; they do to-day what they did yesterday and will do to-morrow; for centuries and centuries they go on doing the same thing without improvement or deterioration, and with an unfailing sense given them by God.
“Woodpeckers spend their lives running around[176]tree trunks from top to bottom in order to start the old bark that shelters insects, and exploring all fissures with their long, pointed tongue, which is pushed down into every hole where worms may possibly be hiding. These birds are placed in our forests as keepers. They inspect sickly trees in particular, trees honeycombed by vermin, and they examine carefully the diseased parts. Occasionally they may chance to attack a healthy part, especially in making their nests, and they may thus injure the tree by drilling into the live wood. But this damage is more than atoned for in the long run, and so I do not hesitate to bestow upon our woodpeckers the title of forest-preservers, a title earned by their assiduous warfare on insects injurious to wood. Seldom do they leave their timber-yard—the trunk and the main branches of the tree—and descend to the ground, except when they chance to find an ant-hill, the inmates of which they devour with delight. They place their nests at a considerable height from the ground, deep down in a round hole bored with the beak in the heart of some tree trunk. The bedding consists of moss and wool, and the eggs, four to six in number, are in every instance white, smooth, and as lustrous as ivory.”[177]