28 BY-WAYVS' AND BIRD-NOTES. 
dagger. He soon settled for me a question 
which had long been in my mind. With two 
or three light preliminary taps on a hard heart- 
pine splinter, he proceeded to beat the regular 
woodpecker drum-call—that long rolling rattle 
made familiar to us all by the common red- 
head (Melanerpes erythrocephalus) and our 
other smaller woodpeckers. This peculiar 
callis not, in my opinion, the result of elasticity 
or springiness in the wood upon which it is 
performed, but is effected by a rapid, spas- 
modic motion of the bird’s head, imparted by a 
voluntary muscular action. I have seen the 
common Red-head make a soundless call on a 
fence-stake where the decaying wood was 
scarcely hard enough to prevent the full en- 
trance of his beak. His head went through 
the same rapid vibration, but no sound accom- 
panied the performance. Still, it is resonance 
in the wood that the bird desires, and it keeps 
trying until a good sounding-board is found. 
It was very satisfying to me when the superb 
King of the Woodpeckers—fie noir a@ bec bianc, 
as the great French naturalist named it—went 
over the call, time after time, with grand effect, 
letting go, between trials, one or two of his 
triumphant trumpet-notes. Hitherto I had 
not seen the Campephilus do this, though I 
had often heard what I supposed to be the call. 
AsI crouched in my hiding-place and furtively 
watched the proceedings, I remember compar- 
ing the birds and their dwelling to some half- 
savage lord and lady and their isolated castle 
of medieval days. A twelfth-century bandit 
nobleman might have gloried in trigging him- 
self in such apparel as my ivory-billed wood- 
pecker wore. What a perfect athlete he ap- 
