ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE BIRD. 941 
lower berths in the pines. If there is any wind at all 
they always perch on the bleak twigs of the locust 
with their heads toward it—true as weather vanes. 
Later in the season they walk the sward with a lordly 
stride and a dignified “chuck,” very different from 
the undignified fluffing up and asthmatic serenade 
that prevailed before pairing. Later still they choose, 
after their young are out, some one else’s yard for a 
roost, and my gratitude goes with them. 
In late summer the sward is a favorite resort 
for the young flickers. They dig into the little ant 
hills. In the spring one of them is sure to find 
that the top of the box where the newsboy leaves 
the paper is an excellent drum on which to sound 
his “alarm to wake the spring up,” as Thoreau 
has it. 
He gets so engrossed at this that the boys have 
crept up by stages and thrown a hat over him. Of 
course with all this racket he can not hear footsteps, 
or see anything but stars, probably. Sometimes, 
too, several assemble in the elm near the fence, and 
go through their silly love antics. After all, this is 
better than fighting, but it has always lessened my re- 
spect for a bird that otherwise showed such dignity 
and common sense. “ Love makes fools of us all,” 
some one says, but no one beneath my window is so 
silly as the flicker. Over the fence is the usual hole 
in a decaying apple tree where a pair nest. 
One April day, just at dusk, I saw a flicker settle 
into a crotch of an elm near the fence. I went out 
ana she was evidently intending to sleep there, but 
