How does he know where to dig his hole,
The woodpecker there, on the elm tree bole?
How does he know what kind of a limb
To use for a drum, or to burrow in?
How does he find where the young grubs grow--
I'd like to know?
The woodpecker flew to a maple limb,
And drummed a tattoo that was fun for him.
"No breakfast here! It's too hard for that,"
He said, as down on his tail he sat.
Just listen to this: rrrrr rat-tat-tat.
Away to the pear tree out of sight,
With a cheery call and a jumping flight!
He hopped around till he found a stub,
Ah, here's the place to look for a grub!
'Tis moist and dead rrrrr rub-dub-dub.
To a branch of the apple tree Downy hied,
And hung by his toes on the under side.
'Twill be sunny here in this hollow trunk,
It's dry and soft, with a heart of punk,
Just the place for a nest!--rrrr runk-tunk-tunk.
"I see," said the boy, "just a tap or two,
Then listen, as any bright boy might do.
You can tell ripe melons and garden stuff
In the very same way--it's easy enough."
--_Youth's Companion._
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| Transcriber's Note: |
| |
| Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. |
| |
| Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant |
| form was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed. |
| |
| Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained. |
| |
| Mid-paragraph illustrations have been moved between paragraphs |
| and some illustrations have been moved closer to the text that |
| references them. |
| |
| Italicized words are surrounded by underline characters, |
| _like this_, bolded words by equal signs, =like this=. |
| |
| The Contents table was added by the transcriber. |
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