olden-brown mottled with black, with yellow feather-shafts and a
brilliant scarlet head-band, must be conspicuous. But so perfectly did
the soft colors harmonize with the rough, sun-touched bark, so
misleading were the shadows of the leaves moving in the breeze, and so
motionless was the bird flattened against the trunk, that one might look
directly at it and not see it.

For a few days the woodpeckers were so timid that I was unable to
secure a good look at them. The marked difference of manner, however,
convinced me that both parents were engaged in attending upon the young
family; and as they grew less vigilant and I learned to distinguish
them, I discovered that it was so. The only dissimilarity in dress
between the lord and lady of the golden-wing family is a small black
patch descending from the beak of the male, answering very well to the
mustache of bigger "lords of creation." In coming to the nest, one of
the pair flew swiftly, just touched for an instant the threshold, and
disappeared within; this I found to be the head of the household. The
other, the mother, as it proved, being more cautious, alighted at the
door, paused, thrust her head in, withdrew it, as if undecided whether
to venture in the presence of a stranger, and, after two or three such
movements, darted in. Always in one minute the bird reappeared, flew at
once out of the wood, at about the height of the nest, and did not come
down till it reached, on one side, an old garden run to waste, or, on
the other, far over the water, a cultivated field. At that tender age,
the young flickers received their rations about twice in an hour.

Although the golden-wings were silent, the wood around them was lively
from morning till night. Blackbirds and cuckoos flew over; orioles,
both orchard and Baltimore, sang and foraged among the trees;
song-sparrows and chippies trilled from the fence at one side: bluebird
and thrasher searched the ground, and paid in music for the privilege;
pewees and kingbirds made war upon insects; and from afar came the notes
of redwing and meadow-lark. Others there were, casual visitors, and of
course it did not escape the squawks and squabbles of the English
sparrow,--

"Irritant, iterant, maddening bird."

The robins, who one sometimes wishes, with Lanier's owl, "had more to
think and less to say," were not so self-assertive as they usually are;
in fact, they were quite subdued. They came and went freely, but they
never que