THE CRAZY FLICKER 21 



fell in love with drumming. Nor is he the first 

 male bird I have known thus in love. In the 

 island park at Detroit, Michigan, I knew a red- 

 headed woodpecker to serenade himself long after 

 mating season up, in fact, to September, 

 the time I left the park woods. He would get in- 

 side the zinc ventilator of the clubhouse and make 

 the island ring. 



But let us get back to those rain-pipes. It 

 was several days after his arrival before the peo- 

 ple knew the damage this crazy flicker was doing. 

 At first they had looked upon him as a harmless, 

 ardent lover who preferred to serenade his lady 

 upon a sounding iron chimney rather than to 

 twang a dead limb for his guitar. They were 

 amused. Everybody loves a lover until he be- 

 gins to bore holes into rain-pipes. 



And that is what this lover soon began to do. 

 Instead of a lover the bird was a lunatic, for what 

 was seen one morning but that bird high up under 

 the corner of the roof, clutching a small bracket 

 in the side of the house, and drilling a hole 

 through the rain-pipe! 



He was hammering like a tinsmith, and al- 

 ready, when discovered, had cut a hole half as 

 big as one's fist. He had not tried to drill be- 



