DRAGON'S BLOOD 231 



for some ten minutes not six feet away. For the first 

 time in my life I had seen and heard the smallest 

 and rarest of all the six vireos, the Philadelphia, so 

 named because it is never by any chance found in 

 Philadelphia. Its tininess and the pale yellow upper 

 breast shading into white were noticeable field-marks. 

 To me it seemed a tame, dear, beautiful little bird. 



Just at starlight we reached the camp, and I fell 

 asleep to the weird notes of unknown water-birds 

 passing down the river through the darkness. 

 Followed a week of unalloyed happiness. Each day, 

 from before dawn until long after dark, we met 

 strange birds and found new nests and listened to 

 unknown bird-songs. One morning we heard a loud 

 yap from a dead maple-stub. On its side grew what 

 seemed to be an orange-colored fungus. As we came 

 nearer, it proved to be the head of a male Arctic 

 three-toed woodpecker, who wears an orange patch 

 on his forehead and shares with his undecorated 

 spouse the pains and pleasures of incubation. As we 

 came nearer, he flew out of the nest, showing his jet- 

 black back and white throat, and fed unconcernedly 

 up and down the tree, even when we climbed to where 

 we could look down at the five ivory-white eggs he 

 had been brooding. 



Later on we were to learn how favored above all 

 other ornithologists we had been, in that within one 

 short week we had found such almost unknown nests 

 as those of the Arctic three-toed woodpecker, the 

 yellow palm, the bay-breasted, and the Tennessee 

 warbler. We learned the jingling little song of the 



