We marched through the corn without getting sight of a
single redwing, but just as we reached the far side of the field, a
red-headed woodpecker flew up, and the Lawson boys cried: "Shoot him!
Shoot him! he is just as bad as a blackbird. He eats corn!" This
memorable woodpecker alighted in the top of a white oak tree about
fifty feet high. I fired from a position almost immediately beneath
him, and he fell straight down at my feet. When I picked him up and
was admiring his plumage, he moved his legs slightly, and I said,
"Poor bird, he's no deed yet and we'll hae to kill him to put him oot
o' pain,"--sincerely pitying him, after we had taken pleasure in
shooting him. I had seen servant girls wringing chicken necks, so with
desperate humanity I took the limp unfortunate by the head, swung him
around three or four times thinking I was wringing his neck, and then
threw him hard on the ground to quench the last possible spark of life
and make quick death doubly sure. But to our astonishment the moment
he struck the ground he gave a cry of alarm and flew right straight up
like a rejoicing lark into the top of the same tree, and perhaps to
the same branch he had fallen from, and began to adjust his ruffled
feathers, nodding and chirping and looking down at us as if wondering
what in the bird world we had been doing to him.
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