AUTUMN 21 



we all seen a bird dart into a bit of cover, 

 and never come out ! If we are watchful 

 and clever, we are not the only ones. 



Luck has no little to do with a bird-lover's 

 success or failure in any particular walk. 

 If we go and go, patience will have its 

 wages ; but if we can go but once or twice, 

 we must take what Fortune sends, be it little 

 or much. So it had been with me and the 

 three-toed woodpeckers, that morning. I 

 had chanced to arrive at that precise point 

 in the path just at the moment when they 

 chanced to alight upon that dead spruce, — 

 one tree among a million. What had been 

 there ten minutes before, and what came ten 

 minutes after, I shall never know. So it 

 was again on the descent, which I protracted 

 as much as possible, for love of the woods 

 and for the hope of what I might find in 

 them. I was perhaps halfway down when I 

 heard thrush calls near by : the whistle of 

 an olive-back and the chuck of a hermit, 

 both strongly characteristic, slight as they 

 seem. I halted, of course, and on the in- 

 stant some large bird flew past me and 

 perched in fuU sight, only a few rods away. 



