this class he described accurately the downy woodpecker, and its larger brother, 

 the hairy. The red-head, he said, was also sometimes a winter woodpecker. 

 The bird on the tree, he informed me, did not come every winter, or if it did 

 come, he did not always see it. The Indian had no definite name for the 

 bird but he knew its habits thoroughly. The books contain nothing better nor 

 truer than this Pottawattomie's descendant's account of the "winter and sum- 

 mer woodpeckers." 



The birds which were making a breakfast table of the beech tree were 

 arctic three-toed woodpeckers, an orange-pated northern visitor which is not 

 uncommon in hard winters along the eastern shore of southern Lake Michigan. 

 Before we parted company with the Indians, a downy woodpecker came to the 

 beech and began chasing the arctic visitors around the bole. It seemed to be 

 on the part of the downy more of a frolic than a fight, and I did not feel 

 called upon to interfere. The downy woodpecker, while he is the smallest of 

 his tribe, is far from being the least in interest. I know no more cheerful and 

 companionable bird than this little black and white fellow with the red feather 

 in his cap. Cold cannot chill his optimism nor heat abate one jot of his industry 



Our course toward Pokagon's home took us northwest. The roads in 

 many places were unbroken, but our strong, willing horses took us through 

 the drifts with scarce an effort. At times we left the road altogether and drove 

 across lots and through the open woods. At the edge of a small timber patch 

 we passed a spring with a thread of a stream running away from its boiling 

 pot. It was the first spring that I had seen for years for they are practically 

 unknown in the prairie country. The little stream was tumbling over a bed 

 of pebbles and Jack Frost had been unable to fetter it. Some lisping notes fell 

 from a maple whose boughs overhung the water. In the tree I found four 

 golden-crowned kinglets. The kinglet is a winter bird in northern Illinois, I 

 am told, but with all my searching I had never been able to fine one after 

 Thanksgiving Day. The bird is the smallest of the feathered kingdom barring 

 only the ruby-throated hummer. 



There is an interest that attaches to the kinglet aside from its beauty and 

 its cheerful habit of life. Aristotle knew and named this bird more than three 

 centuries before Christ. The Greek philosopher was probably the first bird 

 student. He certainly was the first whose books have come to us. Aristotle 

 made all sorts of curious mistakes, but we must honor him as a pioneer. He 

 met the little kinglet with its golden crown and named it Tyrannos, the tyrant. 

 He so named it from its golden crown of royalty which then as today was 

 too often synonymous with tyranny. The bird retains the name in the form 

 of kinglet, as it retains the golden crown until this way. The most interesting 

 study of Aristotle's treatise on birds has been given us by W. Warde Fowler, 

 m his "Summer Studies of Birds and Books." The Michigan kinglets were 

 "t-zeeing, t-zeeing," energetically all the while that they were picking grubs 

 out of the bark. I don't think that I ever ran across a silent golden-crowned 

 kinglet. Their utterance is not loud but it is constant, and as they are always 



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