79, THE STORY OF THE BIRDS. 
low, with the shafts of the quills golden. From the 
corner of the mouth on each side runs backward two 
black lines like a mustache. Out West this line may 
be red, and other slight changes prevail. 
When he wishes to charm his sweetheart he mounts 
a very small twig near her, so that his fore parts shall 
not be hidden as he sits upright in regular wood- 
pecker attitude, and he lifts his wings, spreads his 
tail, and begins to nod right and left as he exhibits 
his mustache to his charmer, and sets his jet locket 
first on one side of the twig and then the other. He 
may even go so far as to turn his head half around to 
show her the pretty spot on his “back hair.” In 
doing all this he performs the most ludicrous antics, 
and has the silliest of expressions of face and voice as 
if in losing his heart, as some one phrases it, he had lost 
his head also. or days after she has evidently said 
yes, he keeps it up to assure her of his devotion, and, 
while sitting crosswise on a limb, a sudden movement 
of hers, or even a noise made by one passing, will set 
him to nodding from side to side. To all this she 
usually responds in kind. 
-This movement of hers has also some significance. 
Excepting the mustache, she also is ornamented as 
he, and she plays back at him in a similar peek-a-boo 
fashion. 
The author once found two female flickers assid- 
uously courting the same male, and they were out- 
Heroding Herod in their importunities. Numerous 
other examples of this sort could be given. 
The song flight of such birds as the European lark 
