3^4 



The Bird 



with spots of hchen and sunlight, seems to have gendered 

 these baby birds. Yet they were hatched in a dark hole 

 from the whitest of white eggs. Is this and a thousand 

 of other resemblances to be termed accidental ? Then 

 is all Nature one great accident! When the Flicker flies 

 with swift wing-beat from tree to tree, then the white 



Fig. 241. — Laughing Gull on nest. 



rump blazes forth. At such moment no protection is 

 needed; but in these young Flickers upon the tree-trunk^ 

 how exquisitel}' do their spots deceive the eye! They 

 are, we sa}^, perhaps sunlight splashes, — nothing more. 

 Yet others which, like the Brown Creeper, haunt the 

 tree-trunks of the forest, seem veritably to be but stray 

 bits of roughened bark creeping here and there. 



