MORRIS ALGONQUIN DAYS 



37 



lously clean and after dining would always wash its face and 

 smooth its fur with tongue and paws. It was curious to see the 

 beaver traits coming out in it; it would crawl about the floor of 

 the boathouse and when it came to anything resembling a stump 

 (my foot, for instance) it would raise itself up onto its hind legs 

 and balancing with paddle tail below and forepaws above, stand 

 there resting like a pigmy kangaroo. 



Last season we had almost daily visits from a hen partridge and 

 four of her chicks. We first heard these visitors soon after dawn, 

 when our newly awakened senses became aware of a gentle clucking 

 outside the tent. They usually paid a morning visit, occasionally 

 early afternoon, wandering slowly across our lot, foraging among 

 the brackens and brush; the mother would always motmt on a 

 perch — a stump or a log — and begin clucking softly, & kind of 

 crooning lullaby of "all's well" to her chicks; keeping within 

 hail of this call from the outlook in the crow's nest, the chicks 

 would feed about at the boathouse steps or under the dining 

 table with all the assurance of barnyard fowls; once as I was 

 shaving at my boudoir stand of a clump of silver birch trees, the 

 mother mounted a log just behind me and purred away in so soft 

 and soothing a key that sometimes, like Homer, she nodded 

 drowsily in her song and almost fell from the perch, while her 

 chicks fed in and out between my feet. 



Twice in the middle of last August we had a visit from a pair 

 of Pileated Woodpeckers (the black Cock o' the Woods). On 

 their second visit the birds discovered an old pine stimip just 

 west of our clearing and spent the better part of an hour digging 

 into the heart of it. They allowed one of us — camouflaged in 

 khaki — to get within a few feet of them and sit on a log watching 

 their operations. They uttered cries like those of a Flicker, and 

 it was worth a great deal to watch them at work. The smaller of 

 the two birds seemed the more aggressive and drove the other 

 away from its special preserves in the punky heart of the sttunp. 

 They threw their heads well back, making full use of the long 

 somewhat scrawny neck in hammering. Often they would tear 

 great flakes of rotten wood out with the bill and fling them back- 

 wards over the head. When they knocked off work we came 

 forward to inspect the scene of excavation. Almost a bucketful 

 of rotten wood lay on the ground, and on three sides the stump 



