232 A BIRD-LOVER'S 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 



