118 



THE OOLOGIST. 



holes in several other trees nearby, per- 

 haps for exercise, perhaps as experi- 

 mental prospecting, or possibly as de- 

 coys to distract the attention of nest 

 robbers, though it is barely possible 

 that they might have served as recep- 

 tacles for catching sap. I feel compell- 

 ed to admit that if these birds were as 

 numerous as Spari'ows, which they can 

 never be, they might do some injury to 

 shade trees. I wondered, when I found 

 these nests why a sane bird should 

 build in a damp sappy live tree when 

 there were plenty of dead ones at hand. 



I had often heard men tell about big 

 black Woodpeckers that were once 

 numerous here, and how they used to 

 visit the fields and eat up the seed corn 

 like Crows, but I had never seen any 

 bird that answered that description un- 

 til last year, when I met a pair of them. 

 As you have doiibtless surmised they 

 were the Cophlcnus pileaius, or Black- 

 log-cocks. I could never satistiy myself 

 as to whether they were new arrivals 

 from some other locality or survivers 

 of the last race of natives who had 

 lingered in concealment after their 

 brothers had been extermined 



It was in the middle of the nesting 

 season when I first saw them and they 

 were hard at work. I had the good 

 fortune to be able to visit them occas- 

 ionally while they were bringing up 

 their family of six young. I could 

 never determine what became of these 

 young birds. I saw the old birds now 

 and then throughout the year, but 

 never any others of their species, and 

 this spring they nested again in the 

 neighborhood of their last year's quar- 

 tos, the first egg being laid on the 17th 

 •of May. The excavation that they 

 make is so large that it is ea«y to see 

 ■the large translucent white eggs in the 

 bed of soft fine chips at the bottom. 



Perhaps the noisiest bird in the grove 

 TV9-S the dashing, handsome Red-headed 

 Woodpecker, Melanerpes erythroeeph- 

 <ahis, a big, blustering, quarrelsome 



fellow, but fair to look upon. I have 

 often climbed to their nests and won- 

 dered how such large birds could enter 

 such small cavities. These cavities 

 were almost jug shaped, large at the 

 bottom but small at the entrance. I 

 found that the eggs were usually six in 

 number and were usually pure white, 

 though to my surprise I once found a 

 set all of which were marked with red- 

 dish spots at the larger end. 



Years ago Congress gave Vincennes a 

 piece of land, perhaps twelve acres in 

 extent, for a park. Council at once 

 took possession of the place and began 

 to beautify it by opening a large gravel 

 pit in one end, dumping a number of 

 rusty, unmounted cannon and other 

 old junk in the other, builuing an un- 

 whitewashed tool and wagon shed in 

 the middle and surrounding the whole 

 area with a snaggy looking barb-wire 

 fence of various heights and reclining 

 at various angles. With the exception 

 of the graA^el pit and the spot reserved 

 as a site for the proposed monument to 

 the late Michael McGinty this park was 

 planted with trees. You know the 

 style of arborculture practiced in rural 

 towns where the ward politican who 

 gets the contract plants the wrong tree 

 in the wrong soil at the wrong season, 

 occasionally getting them wrong end 

 up, but you would have been surprised 

 at the delicate irony of the placards 

 warning visitors not to injure trees, 

 shrubbery, etc. The pi'oximity of 

 brewery and saloons made the place 

 popular and the beauty and chivalry of 

 the town repaired thither to lounge 

 among mullen and burdock and insult 

 passers by. 



The habitues of this fashionable and 

 aristocratic resort were startled last 

 spring by the appearance -of a strange 

 bird in their midst. It was a Red- 

 headed Woodpecker and among people 

 who Ixad never seen any bird but a 

 Sparrow it crea,ted as much excitement 

 as if it had been a Dodo.^ Public spirit 



