Long ago in Greece, the legend runs, a terrible monster called the Sphinx used to waylay travelers to ask them riddles: whoever could not answer these she killed, but the man who did answer them killed her and made an end of her riddling. To-day there is no Sphinx to fear, yet the world is full of unguessed riddles. No thoughtful man can go far afield but some bird or flower or stone bars his way with a question demanding an answer; and though many men have been diligently spelling out the answe

The woodpecker is the easiest of all birds to recognize. Even if entirely new to you, you may readily decide whether a bird is a woodpecker or not. The woodpecker is always striking and is often gay in color. He is usually noisy, and his note is clear and characteristic. His shape and habits are peculiar, so that whenever you see a bird clinging to the side of a tree “as if he had been thrown at it and stuck,” you may safely call him a woodpecker. Not that all birds which cling to the bark of tr

Did you ever see a hairy woodpecker strolling about a tree for what he could pick up? There is a whur-r-rp of gay black and white wings and the flash of a scarlet topknot as, with a sharp cry, he dashes past you, strikes the limb solidly with both feet, and instantly sidles behind it, from which safe retreat he keeps a sharp black eye fixed upon your motions. If you make friends with him by keeping quiet, he will presently forgive you for being there and hop to your side of the limb, pursuing hi

Other birds woo their mates with songs, but the woodpecker has no voice for singing. He cannot pour out his soul in melody and tell his love his devotion in music. How do songless birds express their emotions? Some by grotesque actions and oglings, as the horned owl, and some by frantic dances, as the sharp-tailed grouse, woo and win their mates; but the amorous woodpecker, not excepting the flickers, which also woo by gestures, whacks a piece of seasoned timber, and rattles off interminable mes

All woodpeckers make their houses in the wood of trees, either the trunk or one of the branches. Almost the only exceptions to this rule are those that live in the treeless countries of the West. In the torrid deserts of Arizona and the Southwest, some species are obliged to build in the thorny branches of giant cacti, which there grow to an enormous size. In the treeless plains to the northward, a few individuals, for lack of anything so suitable as the cactus, dig holes in clay banks, or even

[1] Based upon the observations of Mr. William Brewster. As the house of the woodpecker has no windows and the old bird very nearly fills the doorway when she comes home, it is hard to find out just how she feeds her little ones. But one of our best naturalists has had the opportunity to observe it, and has told what he saw. A flicker had built a nest in the trunk of a rather small dead tree which, after the eggs were hatched, was accidentally broken off just at the entrance hole. This left the

No better little bird comes to our orchards than our friend the downy woodpecker. He is the smallest and one of the most sociable of our woodpeckers,—a little, spotted, black-and-white fellow, precisely like his larger cousin the hairy, except in having the outer tail-feathers barred instead of plain. Nearly everything that can be said of one is equally true of the other on a smaller scale. They look alike, they act alike, and their nests and eggs are alike in everything but size. Downy is the m

We shall not attempt to deny that Downy has an unprincipled relative. While it is no discredit, it is a great misfortune to Downy, who is often murdered merely because he looks a little, a very little, like this disreputable cousin of his. The real offender is the sapsucker, that musical genius of whom we have already spoken. The popular belief is that every woodpecker is a sapsucker, and that every hole he digs in a tree is an injury to the tree. We have seen that every hole Downy digs is a ben

In California and along the southwestern boundary of the United States lives a woodpecker known among the Mexicans as El Carpintero, the Carpenter. Carpentering is both his profession and his pastime, and he seems really to enjoy the work. When there is nothing more pressing to be done, he spends his time tinkering around, fitting acorns into holes in such great numbers and in so workmanlike a fashion that we do not know which is more remarkable, his patience or his skill. Every acorn is fitted

Besides his half-brothers, the narrow-fronted and ant-eating woodpeckers, the Carpenter has a numerous family of cousins,—the red-headed, the red-bellied, the golden-fronted, the Gila, [1] and the Lewis’s woodpeckers. These all belong to one genus, and are much alike in structure, though totally different in color. Most of them are Western or Southwestern birds, but one is found in nearly all parts of the United States lying between the Hudson River and the Rocky Mountains, and is the most abund

Something interesting yet remains to be discovered of the hoarding habit of the red-head. How strange that so familiar a bird should have a habit so easily detected, and yet that no one in all these years should speak of it! Who does not know how mice and chipmunks hide their food? Who has not watched the blue jay skulking off to hide an acorn where he will be sure to forget it? Who does not remember the articles his pet Jim Crow stole and lost to him forever? The hoarding habit has long been ob

There is an old saying, “You may know a carpenter by his chips;” but, though chips are seldom long absent when a woodpecker is about, can we call the woodpecker a carpenter? Is he not both in his works and ways of working—with the one exception of the Californian woodpecker—more of a miner? For the carpenter takes pieces of wood, bit by bit, and joins them together till at last he has built a lofty skeleton or framework for his dwelling, which last of all he covers over and closes in; and the to

We have studied the woodpecker’s bill and have found that it is a very serviceable tool. We shall find that his feet are equally well adapted to their work. Here is the foot of a woodpecker. Observe how it differs from a chicken’s foot, or a sparrow’s foot. What is it that especially fits it for climbing? Perhaps you will notice that the tarsus is short, and you may be able to explain why it would be a disadvantage for a climbing bird to have long legs, as well as why it is a help for him to hav

If we study the woodpecker’s anatomy and observe his broad, strong, highly-arched hip-bones and the heavy, triangular “ploughshare” bone in which the tail feathers are planted, as well as the stiffness and strength of the tail itself, we must conclude that it is not by accident that he uses his tail as a prop. The whole structure shows that the bird was intended “to lean on his tail.” What we wish to discover is how good a tail it is to lean on. Our first impression is that the woodpecker’s tail

We have seen how the woodpecker spears his grubs: now we will study his spear. There are many interesting points about a woodpecker’s tongue, and they are not hard to understand. If a woodpecker would kindly let us take hold of his tongue and pull it out to its full extent we should be afraid we were “spoiling his machinery,” for the tongue can be drawn out almost incredibly—between two and three inches in a hairy woodpecker and more in a flicker. A strange-looking object it is, much resembling

We have studied the woodpeckers at some length: first, what all of them do; next, what some that are peculiar in their ways do; lastly, how each is fitted for a particular kind of life. At first we were inclined to think they were all alike; but now we begin to see that there are very real differences between them,—in tails, feet, bills, and tongues, and at the same time in their food and habits. The flicker’s tail is less sharply curved than that of any other woodpecker,—a sign that he is proba

But if the birds are making themselves into new species, where is the place for God in the universe? Did not God make all kinds of creatures in the beginning? How can they go on being made without God? These are questions every one ought to ask, but—did God leave his world after He had made it and go a long way off? Did He wind it up like a watch to go till it should run down? Is the world a machine, or is it alive? Long ago the wise and good man Socrates argued that if you did not know there wa