then most of us are alien to the woods. The 

 Town -dwellers and homestayers know little Awakener 

 or nothing of the secret signals. It is only Woods 

 the obvious that they note, and seldom read 

 in the great Script of Nature anything more 

 than the conventional signature of certain 

 loved and familiar names and tokens. 



It was in the Forest of Fontainebleau I 

 first heard the green woodpecker called by 

 this delightful name, the Awakener of the 

 Woods, le Reveilleur de la Forct, My 

 French friend told me it was not a literary 

 name, as I fancied, but one given by the 

 foresters. And how apt it is. In the first 

 weeks of March — in the first week of April, 

 it may be, as the scene moves northward — 

 there is no more delightful, and certainly no 

 more welcome, sound than the blithe bugle- 

 call of the green woodpecker calling through 

 the woods for love, and, after long expectant 

 pauses, hearing love call back in thrilling 

 response, now a flute-note of gladness, now a 

 challenging clarion-cry. True, whether in the 

 vast forest of Fontainebleau or in our northern 

 woods, the woodpecker is not so readily to be 

 heard in the inward solitudes. He loves the 

 open glades, and commonly the timbered 

 park-land is his favourite resort. Still, save 

 in the deepest and darkest woods, that 



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