CHOCORUA. 217 



marvels of color and design until I had enough 

 for dinner. 



The surroundings of a good trout brook are 

 much more fascinating than the fishing. The 

 woods are lonely as regards mankind, but they 

 are full of wild life and the bustle of that life. 

 The fisherman always realizes the bustle of the 

 mosquitoes and black flies, but he is not so quick 

 to appreciate the gypsy music of the veery, the 

 rich notes of the solitary vireo or the water 

 thrush, or the gorgeous coloring of the Maryland 

 yellowthroat, blackburnian warbler, and Canada 

 flycatching warbler, which, ten chances to one, 

 are his unseen companions during the day. 



In the afternoon I visited my favorite pair of 

 sap-sucking woodpeckers whose beginnings of 

 housekeeping I had noted on May 1st. Their 

 maple tree which had yielded sap all last summer, 

 and again for a time this spring, seemed to be dry. 

 Perhaps in a sunless wet day sap does not flow 

 freely. The holes cut by the birds this season 

 numbered over five hundred, and their location 

 on various parts of the trunk indicated that the 

 birds found difficulty in securing as free a flow 

 of sap as they needed. All told, there are now 

 fully fifteen hundred holes in the bark of that 

 one red maple. As I neared the tree in which 

 the male had been drilling a month ago, I 

 chanced to look at a dead poplar about twenty 



