236 BIRCH BROWSINGS. 



The birds were unusually plentiful and 

 noisy about the head of this lake ; robins, 

 blue-jays, and woodpeckers greeted me with 

 their familiar notes. The blue -jays found 

 an owl or some wild animal a short distance 

 above me, and, as is their custom on such 

 occasions, proclaimed it at the top of their 

 voices, and kept on till the darkness began 

 to gather in the woods. 



I also heard here, as I had at two or three 

 other points in the course of the day, the 

 peculiar, resonant hammering of some spe- 

 cies of woodpecker upon the hard, dry limbs. 

 It was unlike any sound of the kind I had 

 ever before heard, and, repeated at intervals 

 through the silent woods, was a very marked 

 and characteristic feature. Its peculiarity 

 was the ordered succession of the raps, which 

 gave it the character of a premeditated per- 

 formance. There were first three strokes 

 following each other rapidly, then two much 

 louder ones with longer intervals between ' 

 them. I heard the drumming here, and the 

 next day at sunset at Furlow Lake, the source 

 of Dry Brook, and in no instance was the 

 order varied. There was melody in it, such 

 as a woodpecker knows how to evoke from a 

 smooth, dry branch. It suggested something 



