232 A BIRD QP VERS APRIL. 
who have nothing but the sensibility have, 
after all, the better half of the blessing. 
The golden- winged woodpeckers shouted 
comparatively little before the middle of the 
month, and I heard nothing of their tender 
wick-a-wick until the 22d. After that they were 
noisy enough. With all their power of lungs, 
however, they not only are not singers ; they 
do not aspire to be. They belong to the tribe 
of Jubal. Hearing somebody drumming on 
tin, I peeped over the wall, and saw one of 
these pigeon woodpeckers hammering an old 
tin pan lying in the middle of the pasture. 
Rather small sport, I thought, for so large a 
bird. But that was a matter of opinion, merely, 
and evidently the performer himself had no 
such scruples. He may even have considered 
that his ability to play on this instrument of the 
tinsmith’s went far to put him on an equality 
with some who boast themselves the only tool- 
using animals. True, the pan was battered and 
rusty; but it was resonant, for all that, and 
day after day he pleased himself with beating 
reveille upon it. One morning I found him 
sitting in a tree, screaming lustily in response 
to another bird in an adjacent field. After a_ 
while, waxing ardent, he dropped to the ground, 
and, stationing himself before his drum, pro- 
ceeded to answer each cry of his rival with a 
