One October day, as Kaweah and I traveled by ourselves over a lonely
foothill trail, I came to consider myself the friend of woodpeckers.
With rather more reserve as regards the bluejay, let me admit great
interest in his worldly wisdom. As an instance of co-operative living
the partnership of these two birds is rather more hopeful than most
mundane experiments. For many autumn and winter months such food as
their dainty taste chooses is so rare throughout the Sierras that in
default of any climatic temptation to migrate the birds get in harvests
with annual regularity and surprising labor. Oak and pine mingle in open
growth. Acorns from the one are their grain; the soft pine bark is
granary; and this the process:
Armies of woodpeckers drill small, round holes in the bark of standing
pine-trees, sometimes perforating it thickly up to twenty or thirty and
even forty feet above the ground; then about equal numbers of
woodpeckers and jays gather acorns, rejecting always the little cup, and
insert the gland tightly in the pine bark with its tender base outward
and exposed to the air.
A woodpecker, having drilled a hole, has its exact measure in mind, and
after examining a number of acorns makes his selection, and never fails
of a perfect fit. Not so the jolly, careless jay, who picks up any sound
acorn he finds, and, if it is too large for a hole, drops it in the most
off-hand way as if it were an affair of no consequence; utters one of
his dry, chuckling squawks, and either tries another or loafs about,
lazily watching the hard-working woodpeckers.
Thus they live, amicably harvesting, and with this sequel: those acorns
in which grubs form become the sole property of woodpeckers, while all
sound ones fall to the jays. Ordinarily chances are in favor of
woodpeckers, and when there are absolutely no sound nuts the jays sell
short, so to speak, and go over to Nevada and speculate in
juniper-berries.
The monotony of hill and glade failing to interest me, and in default of
other diversion, I all day long watched the birds, recalling how many
gay and successful jays I knew who lived, as these, on the wit and
industry of less ostentatious woodpeckers; thinking, too, what naïvely
dogmatic and richly worded political economy Mr. Ruskin would phrase
from my feathered friends. Thus I came to Ruskin, wishing I might see
the work of his idol, and after that longing for some equal artist who
should arise and choose to paint our Sierras as they are with all their
color-glory, power of innumerable pine and countless pinnacle, gloom of
tempest, or splendor, where rushing light shatters itself upon granite
crag, or burns in dying rose upon far fields of snow.
Had I rubbed Aladdin's lamp? A turn in the trail brought suddenly into
view a man who sat under shadow of oaks, painting upon a large canvas.
As I approached, the artist turned half round upon his stool, rested
palette and brushes upon one knee, and in familiar tone said, "Dern'd if
you ain't just naturally ketched me at it! Get off and set down. You
ain't going for no doctor, I know."
My artist was of short, good-natured, butcher-boy make-up, dressed in
what had formerly been black broadcloth, with an enlivening show of red
flannel shirt about the throat, wrists, and a considerable display of
the same where his waistcoat might once have overlapped a strained but
as yet coherent waistband. The cut of these garments, by length of
coat-tail and voluminous leg, proudly asserted a "Bay" origin. His small
feet were squeezed into tight, short boots, with high, raking heels.
A round face, with small, full mouth, non-committal nose, and black,
protruding eyes, showed no more sign of the ideal temperament than did
the broad daub upon his square yard of canvas.
"Going to Copples's?" inquired my friend.