risoners from the tower!

When we had taken them into the house the woodpeckers called out, and
the cats looked up so savagely that I asked the boy to take the birds
home to his sister to keep till they were able to care for themselves.
On examining them I understood what the difference in their voices had
meant. One of them poked his head out of the opening in my jacket where
he was riding, while the other kept hidden away in the dark; and when
they were put into my cap for the boy to carry home, the one with the
weak voice disclosed a whitish bill--a bad sign with a bird--and its
feeble head bent under it so weakly that I was afraid it would die.

Three days later, when I went up to the lad's house, it was to be
greeted by loud cries from the little birds. Though they were in a box
with a towel over it, they heard all that was going on. Their voices
were as sharp as their ears, and they screamed at me so imperatively
that I hurried out to the kitchen and rummaged through the cupboards
till I found some food for them. They opened their bills and gulped it
down as if starving, although their guardian told me afterwards that she
had fed them two or three hours before.

When held up where the air could blow on them, they grew excited; and
one of them flew down to the floor and hid away in a dark closet,
sitting there as contentedly as if it reminded him of his tree trunk
home.

I took the two brothers out into the sitting-room and kept them on my
lap for some time, watching their interesting ways. The weak one I
dubbed Jacob, which is the name the people of the valley had given the
woodpeckers from the sound of their cries; the stronger bird I called
Bairdi, as 'short' for _Melanerpes formicivorus bairdi_--the name the
ornithologists had given them.

Jacob and Bairdi each had ways of his own. When offered a palm, Bairdi,
who was quite like 'folks,' was content to sit in it; but Jacob hung
with his claws clasping a little finger as a true woodpecker should; he
took the same pose when he sat for his picture. Bairdi often perched in
my hand, with his bill pointing to the ceiling, probably from his old
habit of looking up at the door of his nest. Sometimes when Bairdi sat
in my hand, Jacob would swing himself up from my little finger, coming
bill to bill with his brother, when the small bird would open his mouth
as he used to for his mother to feed him. Poor little orphans, they
could not get used to their changed condit