----
Well, here I am, one of those "three-toed fellows," as the Red-bellied
Woodpecker called me in the February number of BIRDS. It is remarkable how
impolite some folks can be, and how anxious they are to talk about their
neighbors.
I don't deny I have only three toes, but why he should crow over the fact
of having four mystifies me. I can run up a tree, zig-zag fashion, just as
fast as he can, and play hide-and-seek around the trunk and among the
branches, too. Another toe wouldn't do me a bit of good. In fact it would
be in my way; a superfluity, so to speak.
In the eyes of those people who like red caps, and red clothes, I may not
be as handsome as some other Woodpeckers whose pictures you have seen, but
to my eye, the black coat I wear, and the white vest, and square,
saffron-yellow cap are just as handsome. The Ivory-billed Woodpeckers, who
sent their pictures to BIRDS in the March number, were funny looking
creatures, _I_ think, though they were dressed in such gay colors. The
feathers sticking out at the back of the heads made them look very comical,
just like a boy who had forgotten to comb his hair. Still they were spoken
of as "magnificent" birds. Dear, dear, there is no accounting for tastes.
Can I beat the drum with my bill, as the four-toed Woodpeckers do? Of
course I can. Some time if you little folks are in a school building in the
northern part of the United States, near a pine woods among the mountains,
a building with a nice tin water-pipe descending from the roof, you may
hear me give such a rattling roll on the pipe that any sleepy scholar, or
teacher, for that matter, will wake right up. Woodpeckers are not always
drumming for worms, let me tell you. Once in awhile we think a little music
would be very agreeable, so with our chisel-like bills for drum-sticks we
pound away on anything which we think will make a nice noise.
[Illustration: AMERICAN THREE-TOED WOODPECKER.]