25 BY-WAYS AND BIRD-NOTES. 
should have to wait and watch; but first I sat- 
isfied myself by a simple method that my 
watching would probably not be in vain. A 
little examination of the ground at the base of 
the stump showed me a quantity of fresh wood- 
fragments, not unlike very coarse saw-dust 
scattered over the surface.. This assured me 
that one of the excavations above was a new 
one, and that a nest was either building or had 
been finished but a short while. So I hastily 
hid myself on a log in a clump of bushes, dis- 
tant from the stump about fifty feet, whence I 
could plainly see the holes. 
One who has never been out alone in a 
Southern swamp can have no fair understand- 
ing of its loneliness, solemnity and funereal 
sadness of effect. Even in the first gush of 
Spring—it was now about the sixth of April— 
I felt the weight of something like eternity in 
the air—not the eternity of the future but the 
eternity of the past. Everything around me 
appeared old, sleepy, and musty, despite the 
fresh buds, tassels, and flower-spikes. What 
can express dreariness so effectually as the 
long moss of those damp woods? I imagined 
that the few little birds I saw flitting here and 
there inthe tree tops were not so noisy and 
joyous as they would be when, a month later, 
their northward migration should bring them 
into our greening northern woods. As the 
sun mounted, however, a cheerful twitter ran 
with the gentle breeze through the bay thickets 
and magnolia clumps, and I recognized a 
number of familiar voices; then suddenly the 
gavel of Campephilus sounded sharp and 
strong a quarter-mile away. A few measured 
raps, followed by a rattling drum-call, a space 
