“He, also, when the trees are ice-plated, will come gladly to the lunch-counter, I know, for as a girl, long before I left home, this Creeper used to feed upon the scraps that I put upon my window-ledge; for, though people here have been feeding birds in winter this long while, it has only been since the Wise Men have told us of the particular needs of each bird family that we have been able to do it intelligently, and to the best advantage.
“There are some verses in my scrap-book about this tree-trunk bird, also, and it seems as if our poets were very fond of these songless birds who inspire them as much by their friendliness as the others do by melody. I hope that a couple of you will learn this to recite at Christmas. As there are four verses, each can learn two, and then alternate in repeating them.
“Although I’m a bird, I give you my word That seldom you’ll know me to fly; For I have a notion about locomotion, The little Brown Creeper am I, Dear little Brown Creeper am I.
“Beginning below, I search as I go The trunk and the limbs of a tree, For a fly or a slug, a beetle or bug; They’re better than candy for me, Far better than candy for me.
“When people are nigh I’m apt to be shy, And say to myself, ‘I will hide,’ Continue my creeping, but carefully keeping Away on the opposite side, Well around on the opposite side.
“Yet sometimes I peek while I play hide-and-seek If you’re nice I shall wish to see you; I’ll make a faint sound and come quite around And creep like a mouse in full view, Very much like a mouse to your view.”
“I guess I know what the other tree-trunk birds are, Gray Lady; they’re Woodpeckers,” said little Bobby, who seemed to have grown taller and broader ever since the day that Jacob had put a jack-knife in his hand and taught him to carve a wooden spoon, and he felt himself to be a full-fledged boy.
“Some Woodpeckers are pretty bad, though, ’cause grandpa caught a whole bunch of ’em early last spring sucking the juice out of the apple trees in the young orchard, and Uncle Bill, over the mountain, said they did the same to his sugar-maples. I saw what they did, myself, and you can see, too, if you stop up at our house some time when you are passing, for the marks are there,—little round holes, all in rows so as they make squares like the peppery holey plasters grandma wears for a lame back. They were awfully pretty birds, too—all red on the head and neck, and black and white speckled on top, and yellow underneath, and black across the front. I had a good chance to see it, ’cause grandpop was hoppin’ mad and tried to shoot them, and he did get one of the prettiest of them all. Some of them that were on the apple tree didn’t have so many colours in their feathers.”