File:Bird legend and life (1908) (14755377585).jpg

Identifier: birdlegendlife00walk (find matches)
Title: Bird legend and life
Year: 1908 (1900s)
Authors: Walker, Margaret Coulson
Subjects: Birds
Publisher: New York, The Baker & Taylor Company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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er and thirst from her door, she, through her selfishness, began to grow small In punishment for her deed, so small that a human habitation was no longer suitable for her. Up through the chimney she flew, as a woodpecker, blackening her back on the sooty walls. The white apron she wore and the scarlet mutchon her head remained just as they were. As a further punishment, she was compelled to seek her food in most difficult places. If she could not find it in the trees between bark and bole, she must dig for it in the hard, dry wood. And she was allowed no drink save the raindrops. 187 BIRD LEGEND AND LIFE In scarlet hood and soot-stained gown she is seen today laboriously digging her tiny home in the solid wood, or flying about among the trees hiding the food she will not eat, or hacking and tapping at the bark for food, and whistling for the rain to come, for she is ever a hunger and ever a thirst, and craving for a drop to cool her tongue. —Known in Norse mythology as the Gertrude Story 188
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Photograph by Francis H. Herrick FLICKER BEARING FOOD TO HIS YOUNG WOODPECKER LIFE ON the thirteenth of July a red-mutched descendant of the unfortunate Gertrude knocked on the strickenbough of a lofty elm to crave of the Dryad within hospitality for a season. Yes, her wish would be granted, but only on condition that she would dig out a shelter for herself there in the hard, dry wood, in fulfilment of the ancient curse. What had gone wrong in the woodpecker family that she was in need of shelter this late in the year? Earlier in the summer she and her mate had burrowed out a comfortable home in a great oak tree not two hundred yards away. Then they were on the best of terms and had relieved each other at the task of digging out their dwelling place. Twenty ort wenty-five minutes at a time was thought long enough for either of them to devote to so laborious a task in the springtime; then the other spent an equal time at the work, while the one off duty hurried away to partake of refreshments orto

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