A WANDERING ROOSTER. 115 



down, undulating movement, the last impulse of 

 which lands him, head upward, six feet higher 

 on the trunk of snag or tree, than the level at 

 which the impulse began. The motion is much 

 more graceful than if the journey were made 

 on the same level from start to finish. It is 

 thus that all our woodpeckers make progression. 

 I ain fearful that this boulder nook is being 

 encroached upon by civilization. Hitherto I 

 have esteemed it mainly because I thought it 

 far out in the wild where man and his domestic 

 animals seldom came. The nearest house is al- 

 most half a mile distant, yet I am suddenly 

 startled by the cuck-r-o-o, or alarm note of a 

 rooster, close at hand, and turning my head, see 

 a gray grizzled plymouth rock, not twenty feet 

 away. On rounding the hill he has come sud- 

 denly within sight of me and is apparently as 

 much surprised as I. After uttering his ex- 

 clamatory note, he stands and stares at me for a 

 minute or more, then renews his industrious 

 pecking at the grass seeds in a wide half circle 

 about me. Strange to say, he is not the center 

 of a following harem, but is alone, wandering 



