" More Noise than Music." 



183 



I wonder how often the tapping of a flicker has 

 given rise to ghost stories that have never been 

 unravelled. 



The true sapsuckers, or yellow-bellied wood- 

 peckers, in the days of great orchards and big 



Yellow-bellied Woodpecker. 



cider-mills and the distillery, — that is, fifty years or 

 more ago, — were resident as well as migratory birds, 

 and even now they are occasionally seen during the 

 summer months ; but it is in the fall, when the 

 apples are being gathered, that we most frequently 

 observe them. They run about the trees like the 



