WOODPECKERS
In front of Uncle Paul’s house there is a grove of beeches several
centuries old, its branches interlacing at a great height and forming a
continuous canopy supported by hundreds of tree trunks as smooth and
white as stone columns. In the autumn that is where Emile and Jules go
and hunt in the moss for mushrooms of all colors to show to their
uncle, who tells the boys how to distinguish the edible from the
poisonous kinds. There, too, they hunt for beetles: the stag-beetle,
whose large fat head bears enormous branching nippers; great black
capricorn-beetles that may be seen at sunset running along the dead
branches and clinging to them, as they go, with their jointed antennæ,
which are longer than the insect’s body; and long-horn beetles,
likewise furnished with antennæ of unusual length, and also remarkable
for their wing sheaths richly colored with blue or yellow or red, with
spots and stripes of black velvet.
A multitude of birds of many kinds make this grove their abode. There
the quarrelsome jay fights with one of its own species for the
possession of a beechnut; there the magpie chatters on a high branch
and then flies down and alights in a neighboring field, jerking up its
tail and looking around with an air of defiance; crows have their
evening rendezvous there; and there the woodpecker hammers away at old
bark to make the insects come out so that it may snap them up with its
viscous tongue. Listen to the bird at its work: toc, toc, toc! If it is
interrupted in its task it flies away with a cry of teo, teo, teo,
repeated thirty or forty times in quick succession and resembling a
noisy burst of laughter.
“What bird is it that seems to be making fun of us with such loud
laughter as it flies off?” Emile and Jules asked each other one day
when they were watching from their window the woodpeckers and the jays
at play in the branches of the old beech-trees.
Jacques, their uncle’s gardener, heard them as he was watering the
cabbage bed. After finishing a series of little trenches to carry the
water to all parts of the bed, he came up to the window for a talk with
the boys.
“That bird you see there,” said he, “with green plumage and a red head,
is a woodpecker. It has several different cries. If it is going to rain
it says plieu, plieu, in a long-drawn and plaintive tone. When at work,
in order to keep up its spirits it every now and then gives a harsh
cry, tiackackan, tiackackan, so that the whole forest echoes with it.
In the nesting season it gives a quick teo, teo, teo, just like what
you heard a moment ago.”
“Then it has its nest now in the beech grove?” asked Jules.
“It is at work on it, for all the morning I’ve heard it hammering away
with all its might. You see, it makes its nest in a hole that it
hollows out by pecking the trunk of a tree with its beak. It’s a fine
beak it has, too, so hard and pointed that the bird is always afraid of
going too deep into the wood. So after two or three good hard pecks it
skips round to the other side of the trunk to see if it hasn’t bored
clear through.”
“Bah! you’re only in fun,” returned Jules.
“Not at all,” protested Jacques; “it’s what I’ve heard said, and I’ve
often seen the woodpecker hurry round to look at the other side of the
trunk.”
“But the bird must have some other reason than just to see whether or
not the tree is bored through. I’m going to ask Uncle.”
“Ask him, too, if he knows the ironweed that the woodpecker rubs its
beak on to make it harder than steel.”
“Your ironweed sounds to me like a fairy tale.”
“Well, I’m only telling you what I’ve heard. I don’t know anything
about it, myself; but they say it’s a very rare weed and that the
woodpecker goes to look for it in the mountains so that it may harden
and whet its beak on it. And anything you touch to that weed becomes as
hard as the best steel. What a find that would be for my scythe and my
hedging-bill, my sickle and grafting-knife! I know many a man that
would give a bag of gold for the woodpecker’s secret.”
The young cabbage plants had by this time received enough water, and it
was now the lettuce’s turn. Jacques went back to his work and left the
boys to puzzle over the question whether or not there was any truth in
this story of the woodpecker’s fear lest it might bore through the tree
trunk with each peck of its beak. They brought the matter up that
evening in their talk with their uncle.
“There is both truth and falsehood in what my good Jacques told you,”
he said. “The true is what he saw with his own eyes, the false what he
repeats from hearsay among the country folk. He told you correctly
about the woodpecker’s different cries, which he knows so well from
having heard them over and over again; and he was right about the
bird’s way of running around to the other side of the trunk that it has
just struck several times with its beak. All the rest is false, or,
rather, an amusing legend with a basis of fact which we will now
examine.
“Woodpeckers live solely on insects and larvæ, especially those species
of insects and larvæ that are found in wood. The large grubs of
capricorn-beetles, stag-beetles, long-horn beetles, and others are
their favorite dish. To get at them they have to clear away the dead
bark and bore into the worm-eaten wood beneath. The instrument used in
this rough work is the bird’s beak, which is straight and wedge-shaped,
square at the base, fluted lengthwise, and shaped at the point like a
carpenter’s chisel. It is so hard and durable that, in order to account
for a tool of such perfection, some simple-minded wood-cutter made up
the story that has been repeated ever since, the childish story of the
ironweed. Need I tell you that there is nothing in the world that by
its mere touch can give to objects the hardness of iron or steel?”
“I had my doubts,” Jules declared, “when Jacques was telling us about
it; I couldn’t believe in his wonderful weed.”
“The woodpecker has no need to rub its beak against anything to give it
the hardness necessary for the work to be done; it is born with a good
strong beak, to begin with, and keeps it to the end, and that beak
never has to be retempered. It is the continuation of a very thick
skull which can withstand rather violent shocks, and it is operated by
a short, strong neck which can keep up its hammering without fatigue
even should the bird wish to bore into the very heart of a tree trunk.
After it has drilled its hole the woodpecker darts into it an
exceedingly long tongue, worm-shaped and viscous—that is, coated with a
sort of mucilage made by the saliva—and armed with a hard barbed point
with which it transfixes the larvæ that have been uncovered.
“To climb the trunk of the tree to be operated upon and, for hours at a
time if need be, to stay there where larvæ seem to be lurking, the
woodpecker has short, muscular legs which end in stout claws, each foot
having four talons or toes, two pointing forward and two backward,
armed with curved nails of great strength. The bird’s way of standing
on the vertical surface of a tree trunk is made possible not only by
the division of its talons as I have described them, with their strong
nails clinging to rough bark, but also by a third support furnished by
the tail. The large tail feathers are stiff, slightly bent downward,
worn at the tip, and supplied with rough barbs. When the woodpecker
starts in on what promises to be a long job, it plants itself firmly on
the tripod of its tail and two feet and holds itself steady even in
positions that would seem to be highly uncomfortable. Without fatigue
and without pause it can strip an entire tree trunk of its dried-up
bark.
“The objects of its persevering search are the insects hidden under
this bark. It can tell by the sound made when it strikes the tree with
its beak whether or not the wood is decayed and full of insects, a
hollow sound being of good omen to the bird. If the wood does not give
out this hollow sound, the woodpecker knows that further drilling at
that point would be but so much labor wasted. In the first case it
strips off the bark, makes the wood beneath fly this way and that in a
shower of little chips, clears off the worm-hole dust, and finally
reaches the plump grub in its snug retreat. In the second case it
strikes two or three well-directed blows to start the dry bark and
frighten any insects that may be lurking underneath. Immediately this
insect population runs in alarm, some to the right, others to the left,
toward the opposite side of the tree trunk; but the woodpecker, knowing
well enough what is going on, reaches the other side in time to nab the
fugitives.”
“Now,” said Jules, “I understand what Jacques was saying. The
woodpecker doesn’t run around the tree to see whether or not it has
bored through to the other side, but to gobble up the insects that are
trying to get away. I thought the woodpecker must be very silly to
think it could drill right through the trunk of a tree with one peck of
its beak; but now that I know the real reason of what it does, I see
that it’s a wonderfully clever bird.”
“I assure you once more that animals have more intelligence than they
are given credit for. Let us beware of seeing an evil meaning in habits
and aptitudes that we do not understand. Is it not said of the buzzard
that it is a stupid bird, just because it shows such patience in
watching and waiting, perfectly motionless, for the field-mouse it
suspects to be lurking under the ground? And here we have the
woodpecker accused of being so foolish as to think it can pierce a tree
trunk with one blow of its beak, merely because it runs around to
capture the insects fleeing to the other side! Bear this in mind: there
is in animals no foolishness except what we ascribe to them from our
own point of view. Whenever we are able to discover the real motive, we
always find their actions perfectly logical. And that is only what
might have been expected, for an animal has no choice in its acts, but
is made to perform them according to its mode of life as determined
from the beginning by Divine Wisdom. Man alone is free: by a sublime
privilege he is left to choose between good and evil, between sound
reason and blind passion. He seeks and chooses, at his own risk and
peril, the true or the false, the just or the unjust, the beautiful or
the ugly. But animals, having no spiritual battles to fight as we have,
are now what they have always been and always will be; they do to-day
what they did yesterday and will do to-morrow; for centuries and
centuries they go on doing the same thing without improvement or
deterioration, and with an unfailing sense given them by God.
“Woodpeckers spend their lives running around tree trunks from top to
bottom in order to start the old bark that shelters insects, and
exploring all fissures with their long, pointed tongue, which is pushed
down into every hole where worms may possibly be hiding. These birds
are placed in our forests as keepers. They inspect sickly trees in
particular, trees honeycombed by vermin, and they examine carefully the
diseased parts. Occasionally they may chance to attack a healthy part,
especially in making their nests, and they may thus injure the tree by
drilling into the live wood. But this damage is more than atoned for in
the long run, and so I do not hesitate to bestow upon our woodpeckers
the title of forest-preservers, a title earned by their assiduous
warfare on insects injurious to wood. Seldom do they leave their
timber-yard—the trunk and the main branches of the tree—and descend to
the ground, except when they chance to find an ant-hill, the inmates of
which they devour with delight. They place their nests at a
considerable height from the ground, deep down in a round hole bored
with the beak in the heart of some tree trunk. The bedding consists of
moss and wool, and the eggs, four to six in number, are in every
instance white, smooth, and as lustrous as ivory.”