Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 7 · column 6 of 6 · from the scan, no model involved
shrubs and trees. Large clutches of white eggs are laid by female woodpeckers that have no need for protective coloration because they are deep within a nest cavity. The only nest is the soft wood chips at the bottom of the goardshaped nest. Females incubate during the day, males at night when the female is resting in her own sleeping cavity.
On hatching, nestling woodpeckers are little more than blind embryos, devoid of feathers. These young are fed on a steady diet of partially digested insects by the attentive parents that pump food into the mouths of hungry young. The nestlings grow and develop rapidly. They are a noisy, aggressive lot and are ready to leave the secure protection of the nest cavity in 28 to 30 days. Young woodpeckers spend a long time getting ready for life in the outside world. For this reason they raise only one brood a season and produce a large clutch of eggs that are — in a sense — all in one basket.
Once I was walking in the June woods when I heard what I assumed was the hum of a hive of bees. My curiosity overcame my fear of multiple stings and I discovered the humming noise was coming from a nest full of hungry Flickers. It occurred to me that few predators — a snake, raccoon, jay or hungry crow — would brave a swarm of angry bees. What a remarkable illusion to prevent predation!
90.3%