214. WALKS ABOUT TALLAHASSEE. 
birds of his species almost daily, but always 
in hard wood trees, and silent. Henceforth, 
as long as I remained in Florida, they were 
invariably in pines,— their summer quar- 
ters, — and in free song. Their plumage is 
of the neatest and most exquisite; few, even 
among warblers, surpass them in that re- 
gard: black and white (reminding one of 
the black-and-white creeper, which they 
resemble also in their feeding habits), with 
a splendid yellow gorget. Myrtle warblers 
(yellow-rumps) were still here (the penin- 
sula is alive with them in the winter), and a 
ruby-crowned kinglet mingled its lovely 
voice with the simple trills of pine warblers, 
while out of a dense low treetop some invis- 
ible singer was pouring a stream of fine-spun 
melody. It should have been a house wren, 
I thought (another was singing close by), 
only its tune was several times too long. 
At least four of my longer excursions into 
the surrounding country (long, not intrinsi- 
eally, but by reason of the heat) were made 
with a view to possible ivory-billed wood- 
peckers. Just out of the town northward, 
beyond what appeared to be the court end of 
Marion Street, the principal business street 
