80 CHICKAMAUGA. 



again that ridiculous makeshift of a bird- 

 song. Field ornithology has this for one 

 of its distinguishing advantages, that every 

 excursion leaves something for another to 

 verify or finish. 



This time I went straight to Snodgrass 

 Hill through the woods, and was barely on 

 the steps of the tower before I heard the 

 blue-wing. As well as I could judge, the 

 voice came from the same oak that the bird 

 had occupied two days before. I was in 

 luck, I thought; but the miserly fellow 

 vouchsafed not another note, and I could 

 not spend the forenoon hours in waiting for 

 him. Two red-cockaded woodpeckers were 

 playing among the trees, where, like the blue- 

 wing and the yellow-throats, they were doubt- 

 less established in summer quarters. " Sap- 

 suckers," one of the workmen called them. 

 They were common, he said, but likely 

 enough he failed to discriminate between 

 them and their two black-and-white relatives. 

 Red-headed woodpeckers were not common 

 here (I had seen a single bird, displaying its 

 colors from a lofty dead pine), but were 

 abundant and very destructive, so my 

 informant declared, on Lookout Mountain. 



