THE SPRING BIRD PROCESSION 



was laid, and after the young had hatched, I used to 

 see and hear, as I passed by, one of the parent birds 

 pecking on the sides of the cavity, evidently to 

 loosen material to supply this deficiency. 



The high-hole is our most abundant species of 

 woodpecker, and as he gets most of his living from 

 the ground instead of from the trees, he is a mi- 

 grant in the Northern States. Our other members 

 of the family are mostly black, white, and red, but 

 the high-hole is colored very much like the meadow- 

 lark, in mottled browns and whites and yellows, 

 with a dash of red on the nape of his neck. To his 

 enemies in the air he is not a conspicuous object on 

 the ground, as the other species would be. 



IV 



The waves of bird migrants roll on through the 

 States into Canada and beyond, breaking like waves 

 on the shore, and spreading their contents over 

 large areas. The warbler wave spends itself largely 

 in the forests and mountains of the northern tier of 

 States and of Canada; its utmost range, in the shape 

 of the pileolated warbler (the Western form of 

 Wilson's black-cap) and a few others, reaching 

 beyond the Arctic Circle, while its content of 

 ground warblers, in the shape of the Maryland 

 yellow-throat and the Kentucky and the hooded 

 warblers, begins to drop out south of the Potomac 

 and in Ohio. 



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