ether he stumbled upon the feast or went with malice
aforethought, he was not slow to appreciate the charms of his position.
It may have been the nectar from the tree, or the minute victims of its
attractions, I could not tell which, but something pleased him, for he
devoted himself to the task of exploring the tiny cups his industrious
relative had carved, driving away one of the younger members of the
family already in possession. The young bird could not refuse to go
before the big beak and determined manner of the stranger, but he did
refuse to stay away; and every time he was ousted he returned to the
tree, though he settled on a different place. Before the red-head had
shown any signs of exhausting his find, the sapsucker himself appeared,
and at once fell upon his bigger cousin with savage cries. Disturbed so
rudely from his pleasing occupation, the intruder retired before the
attack, though he protested vigorously; and so great was the fascination
of the spot, that he returned again and again, every time to go through
the same process of being driven away.

The raspberry hedge before my windows was the decoy that gave me my best
chance to study the red-headed woodpecker. Day after day, as the berries
ripened, I watched the dwellers of wood and meadow drawn to the rich
feast, and at last, one morning, to my great joy, I saw the interesting
drummer alight on a post overlooking the loaded vines. He plainly felt
himself a stranger, and not certain of his reception by the residents of
the neighborhood, for he crouched close to the fence, and looked warily
about on every side. He had been there but a few moments when a robin,
self-constituted dictator of that particular corner of the premises,
came down a few feet from him, as if to inquire his business. The
woodpecker acknowledged the courtesy by drawing himself up very straight
and bowing. The bow impressed, not to say awed, the native bird. He
stood staring blankly, till the new-comer proclaimed his errand by
dropping into the bushes, helping himself to a berry, and returning to
the fence to dispose of his plunder. This was too much; the outraged
redbreast dashed suddenly over the head of the impertinent visitor,
almost touching it as he passed. The woodpecker kept his ground in spite
of this demonstration, and I learned how a bird accustomed to rest, and
even to work, hanging to the trunk of a tree, would manage to pluck and
eat fruit from a bush. He first sidled a