WILD LIFE OF ORCHARD AND FIELD 



of a blackbird as is skating from running. I should 

 not wonder if this were the easier, as certainly it is 

 the more graceful way of the two. 



woodpeckers* notes the resemblance of the crescent on the 

 breast to that of the meadow-lark (Sturnella magna). Tap- 

 ing-bird (Massachusetts) refers to its intermittent flight, as 

 if measuring ofif spaces. "Ant-bird" (Minnesota) refers to 

 its fondness for ants. 



The nesting-habits of the bird give us the widely prevalent 

 highhole and highholder, woodwall, wild -hen, and hittuck. 

 "Woodwall" is also a British name for the green wood- 

 pecker. "Wild-hen^' is due to the fact that the bird will 

 continue to lay eggs indefinitely after her nest has been 

 robbed, like a domestic hen. " Hittuck, y' or "hittock," though 

 now a Canadian term, appears to have been handed down 

 from the Delaware Indians (unless, indeed, it is an imitation 

 of the note), since Heckewelder says that hittuck was the 

 Lenni-Lenape word for tree, and also that the Swedes, who 

 colonized the lower Delaware valley in the seventeenth cen- 

 tury, gave the name free-peckers to this whole race of birds. 



Among terms of miscellaneous origin are fiddler (Cape 

 Cod), English woodpecker (N. E. coast), and shad spirit. 

 The explanation of the last is found in a half-superstitious 

 idea of the New England fishermen of former days, that 

 this bird came up from the South and ascended the rivers 

 just ahead of the vernal migration of shad, in order to inform 

 the people of the approach of the fish ; it is the noting of a 

 coincidence, in other words. 



I first called attention to this great diversity of vernacular 

 names in The Auk for 1883 > ^"^ ^^^ subject has been more 

 extensively treated by F. L. Burns, in The Wilson Bulletin, 

 No. 31, 1900. 



318 



