3 86 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE. 



THE FLICKER. 

 "The woodpeckers are adepts at this sort of music 

 making." 



notes will be given. Just after such a 

 series of notes, if your eye is fixed upon 

 the bird, you may see it curve its wings 

 beneath its body and shoot downward 

 through the air like a meteor. The 

 course of this Might is usually in the 

 direction of another nighthawk dying 

 at a much lower level. Down, down it 

 goes, passing the other bird, and, when 

 you have about made up your mind 

 that it is coming to earth to be crushed 

 by the impact due to its terrific speed 

 it begins to describe a beautiful curve 

 and to again mount upward. Just as it 

 turns in its course there resounds from 

 the bird a bugle-like drum-roll that to 

 my mind is one of the most weirdly 

 musical notes in nature. The sound is 



said to be made by the flutter of the 

 wing feathers as the air passes through 

 them. Usually it is not heard many 

 times during an evening, even under 

 the most favorable conditions for the 

 birds are somewhat chary in displaying 

 this talent. 



The male Wilson's snipe is also 

 something of a drummer in his way 

 but it seems to me that the most re- 

 sourceful and perhaps the most inter- 

 esting of all this class of musicians are 

 the birds and other animals that beat a 

 tattoo by striking upon some solid sub- 

 stance foreign to their bodies. This 

 method of drumming is practiced by 

 several species of birds, mammals, rep- 

 tiles and insects and the sound may be 

 made, either as a love call, a warning, a 

 challenge to an enemy or an expression 

 of fear. 



The woodpeckers are adepts at this 

 sort of music making. There are sev- 

 eral species that during the mating 

 season will select a resonant dead limb 

 or the hollow shell of a tree and make 

 the welkin ring with the long-drawn 

 rolls which they beat with their beaks. 

 Last spring a pair of flickers nested in 

 the decaying limb of a tree growing on 

 the campus of the university at Mor- 

 gantown. On the roof of one of the 

 school buildings nearby is a piece of or- 

 namental sheet metal which was 

 selected by the male as his favorite 

 drumming place. Nearly every morn- 

 ing when the weather was fair he 

 would take his perch on this piece of 

 metal and entertain the public with a 

 concert of tinny-sounding rolls inter- 

 spersed with nasal "kee-yers" from his 

 own vocal organs. 



We have at least one proficient 

 drummer among the mammals. This 

 is the little white-footed mouse, or 

 "deer mouse," or "woods mouse" as it 

 is variously called. I first heard its 

 drum in the summer of 1904 while 

 camping in the Allegheny mountains 

 We had some boxes of provisions piled 

 in one corner of our camp which the 

 white-footed mice soon found and be- 

 gan to visit nightly. It happened that 

 in sleeping my head rested against one 

 of these boxes and every night I 

 could hear the mice running about, 

 squealing and making other sounds 



