48 BIRDS THROWGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 
aT. 
YELLOW HAMMER; FLICKER. 
WHEN people attempt to give their children 
descriptive names they generally meet with the 
success of the colored woman who christened her 
little girl “ Lillie White” only to see her grow 
to be the darkest of her ebony family. But local 
bird names are more like nicknames; they usually 
touch facts, not hopes, and hint the most striking 
features of coloring, song, flight, and habit. As 
you have discovered, this is true of the bluebird, 
chimney swift, catbird, keel-tailed blackbird, hum- 
ming - bird, and meadow -lark ; and looking over 
the yellow hammer’s thirty-six common names 
given by Mr. Colburn in the Audubon Magazine 
for June, 1887, you will get a fair description of 
the bird. As he flies over your head in the field 
your first impression is of a large yellow bird — 
he is of the size of the crow blackbird — and 
on the list you find “ yellow hammer,” “ yellow 
jay, and “ pique-bois jaune”; but as the yellow 
light comes mainly from his bright yellow shafts 
and the gold of the underside of his wings 
and tail, you have also ‘“ yellow-shafted wood- 
pecker,” and “ golden-winged woodpecker.” His 
dark back and the large white spot at the base of 
his tail, though conspicuous in flight, are not dig- 
nified by a name; but when he lights on the side 
