A GLIMPSE OF THE BIRDS OF BERKELEY 



fine thread of water has formed a pool, there to bathe an in- 

 stant zind then, with a Hghtsome toss of spray flirted from its 

 wings, to resume its quest among the bay leaves. It is a waif 

 of gold with a crown of jet, and its song, a sweet, sudden burst 

 of woodland music, is quite in keeping with the singer. 



Let me picture my canon in the autumn-time, when the 

 open hill slopes are covered with tar-weed and dead grass, 

 and the country roads are deep in dust. There is a quiet, al- 

 most sacred feeling about the place, shut in by steep hill slopes, 

 crowded with bay trees through which the sun filters in scat- 

 tered beams, and carpeted with ferns and fallen leaves. 

 Scouring-rushes, with their long, graceful filaments encircling 

 their jointed stems, spring from the tangle of shrubbery, and 

 the broad, soft leaves of the thimbleberry, now beginning to 

 turn brown, fill in the recesses with foliage. Great slimy, 

 yellowish green slugs cling to the moist rocks, and water- 

 dogs sprawl stupidly in the pools. 



A loud, ringing call sounds above as a flicker comes our 

 way and announces his presence with an emphatic \je up! He 

 is with us all the year through, and an interesting fellow I have 

 found him. Not wholly a woodpecker, and yet too closely 

 related to that family to be widely parted, he is an anomaly in 

 the bird world. Sometimes he alights upon the ground and 

 grubs for food like a meadow-lark, while again he hops in true 

 woodpecker fashion upon the tree-trunk, pecking holes in the 

 bark. He has the proud distinction of being the only Califor- 

 nia bird which habitually intermarries with an eastern repre- 

 sentative of the genus — the golden-shafted flicker of the 

 Atlantic States and the red-shafted flicker of the Pacific 

 region intermingling in a most bewildering way, so that hybrids 



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