A RED-HEADED FAMILY. 27 
of silence rimmed with receding echoes, and 
then a trumpet-note, high, full, vigorous, al- 
most startling, cut the air with a sort of broad- 
sword sweep. Again the long-roll answered, 
from a point nearer me, by two or three ham- 
mer-like raps on the resonant branch of some 
dead cypress-tree. The king and queen were 
coming to their palace. I waited patiently, 
knowing that it was far beyond my power to 
hurry their movements. It was not long be- 
fore one of the birds, with a rapid cackling 
that made the wood rattle, came over my head, 
and went straight to the stump, where it lit, 
just below the lower hole, clinging gracefully 
to the trunk. It was a superb specimen—the 
female, and I suspected that she had come to 
leave an egg. I could have killed her easily 
with the little sixteen-gauge breech-loader at 
my side, but I would not have done the act 
for all the stuffed birds in the country. I had 
come as a visitor to this palace, with the hope 
of making the acquaintance I had so long de- 
sired, and not as an assassin. She was quite 
unaware of me, and so behaved naturally, her 
large gold-amber eyes glaring with that wild 
sincerity of expression seen in the eyes of but 
few savage things. 
After a little while the male came bounding 
through the air, with that vigorous galloping 
flight common to all our woodpeckers, and lit 
on a fragmentary projection at the top of the 
stump. He showed larger than his mate, and 
his aspect was more fierce, almost savage. 
The green-black feathers near his shoulders, 
the snow-white lines down his neck, and the 
tall red crest on his head, all shone with great 
brilliancy, whilst his ivory beak gleamed like a 
