94 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 
the poets shut their study doors in his face, draw- 
ing their arm-chairs up to the hearth while they 
ral at November. But the wise woodpecker 
clings to the side of a tree and fluffing his feathers 
about his toes makes the woods reverberate with 
his cheery song, — for it is a song, and bears an 
important part In nature’s orchestra. Its rhyth- 
mical rat tap, tap, tap, tap, not only beats time 
for the chickadees and nuthatches, but is a reveille 
that sets all the brave winter blood tingling in our 
velns. 
There the hardy drummer stands beating on 
the wood with all the enjoyment of a drum major. 
How handsome he looks with the scarlet cap on 
the back of his head, and what a fine show the 
white central stripe makes against the glossy 
black of his back ! 
Who can say how much he has learned from 
the wood spirits? What does he care for rain or 
blinding storm? He can never lose his way. No 
woodsman need tell him how the hemlock branches 
tip, or how to use a lichen compass. 
Do you say the birds are gone, the leaves have 
fallen, the bare branches rattle, rains have black- 
ened the tree trunks? What does he care? All 
this makes him rejoice! The merry chickadee 
hears his shrill call above the moaning of the 
wind and the rattling of the branches, for our 
alchemist is turning to his lichen workshop. 
The sealed book whose pictures are seen only 
