And now, perhaps, our friend has flown to another tree, and is some way up it. Where is he gone? Climb up and look, and you will find a small round hole, small outside but not inside, for the woodpecker has hollowed out the soft rotten wood, and within, if it be early summer, the mother is still sitting upon five or seven pure white eggs, out of which the naked little ones will soon creep. He is a clever fellow the woodpecker, but he is by no means the chief or most conspicuous of the climbers, for in this group we have some of the most gaudy and remarkable of birds. The brilliantly-coloured Barbets, the gaudy-headed Toucans, with their clumsy bills and long barbed tongues, and the gorgeously-tinted Parrots and Parroquets, with their soft fleshy tongues so well adapted for speech, are all climbers, with toes divided two and two, and they wander about the trees of South America and the East, feeding on fruits and seeds. Where in any other part of the animal kingdom can we find so many brilliant colours crowded together as in the plumage of birds, and especially in birds of tropical countries? The large land animals cannot afford to wear such bright coats lest they should attract their enemies, nor can even birds often put on gay plumage in our northern climates, where the trees are bare for half the year. But in warm sunny latitudes, where the trees are always green and the foliage thick and heavy, and where brilliant fruits and flowers often peep out among the leaves, the gaily-coloured birds can wander in comparative safety, and even the gaudy parrots are not easily detected as they clamber from bough to bough, using not their _tail_ like the woodpecker, but their _beak_, as a third foot to hold on by as they climb. None of these birds build nests; indeed, they could hardly do so with their clumsy beaks and thick heavy feet; they either, like the ground parrots, put together a few leaves in hollows of the earth or in ants’ nests; or, like the fruit-eating parrots and toucans, they lay their eggs in tree-holes, where the bright-coloured mother is safely hidden till she is set at liberty again. Even the cuckoos which, though they are climbers, have taken much more to the wing than their associates, sometimes avoid the trouble of nest building by laying their eggs in the nests of other birds, as our own spring visitor always does. Some of them, however, in America and elsewhere, have contracted better habits, and build very respectable nests of their own. [Illustration: Fig. 44. The Kingfisher.[104]]