24 



THE OOLOGIST. 



turned to go. 



"No; supper, " I responded. 

 "Well, tek cy are ev yerself , " and off he 

 \\ent into the thickest part of the cypress. 

 I waited awhile for the solitude to regain 

 its equilibrium, after the slashing tread of 

 my friend had passed out of hearing; then I 

 stole softly to the stump and tapped on it 

 with the handle of my knife. Ihis I re. 

 peated several times. Campephilus was 

 not at home, for if he had been I shoiild 

 have seen a long, strong, ivory-white beak 

 thrust oiit of the hole up there, followed by 

 a great red-crested head turried sidewise so 

 as to let fall on me the glint of an iris une- 

 qualled by that of any other bird in the 

 world. He had gone out early. I should 

 have to wait and watch; but first I satisfied 

 myself by a simple method that my watch- 

 ing would probably not be in vain. A little 

 examination of the ground at the base of 

 the stump showed me a quantity of fresh 

 wood-fragments, not unlike very coarse saw- 

 dust, scattered over the surface. This 

 assured me that one of the excavations 

 above was a new one, and that a nest was 

 either building or had been finished but a 

 short while. So I hastily hid myself on a 

 log in a clump of bushes, distant from the 

 stump about fifty feet, whence I could 

 plainly see the holes. 



One who has never been out alone in a 

 Southern swamp can have no fair under- 

 standing of it lonluiess, solemnity and 

 funereal sadness of effect. Even in the 

 first gush of Spring (it was now about the 

 sixth of April) I felt the weight of some- 

 thing like eternity in the air, not the 

 eternity of the future, bat the eternity of 

 the past. Everything around me appeared 

 old, sleepy and musty, despite the fresh 

 buds, tassels and flower-spikes. What can 

 express dreariness so effectually as the long 

 moss of those damp wooils? I imagined 

 that the few little birds I saw flitting here 

 and there in the tree tops were not. so noisy 

 and joyous as they would be when, a month 

 later, their northward migration should 

 bring them into our greening Northern 

 woods. As the sun mounted, however, a 

 cheerful twitter ran with the gentle breeze 



through the bay thickets and magnolia 

 clumps, and I recognized a number of fa- 

 miliar voices; then suddenly the gavel of 

 Campephilus sounded s-harp ami strong a 

 quarter-mile away. A few measured rjjps. 

 followed by a rattling drum call, a space of 

 silence rimmed with recedieg echoes, and 

 then a trumpet-note, high, full, vigorous, 

 almost startling, cut the air with a sort of 

 broadsword sweep. Again the long-roll 

 answered, from a point nearer me, by two 

 or three hammer-like raps on the resonant 

 branch of some dead cypress-tree. The 

 king and queen were coming to their palace. 

 I M'aited patiently, knowing that it was far 

 bej'ondmy power to hurry their naovements. 

 It was not long before one of the birds, 

 with a rapid cackling that made the wood 

 rattle, came over my head, and went 

 straight to the stump, where it lit, just be- 

 low the lower hole, clinging gracefully to 

 the trunk. It was a superb specimen, the 

 female, and I suspected that she had come 

 to leave an egg. I could have killed her 

 easily with the little sixteen-gauge breech- 

 loader at my side, but I would not have 

 done the act for all the stuffed birds in the 

 country. I had come as a visitor to this joal- 

 ace, with the hope of making the acquain- 

 tance I had so long desired, and not as an 

 assassin. She was quite unaware of me, 

 and so behaved naturally, her large gold- 

 amber eyes glaring with that wild sincerity 

 of expression seen in the eyes of but few 

 savage things. 



After a little while the male came bound- 

 ing through the air, with that vigorous 

 galloping flight common to all our wood- 

 peckers, and lit on a fragmentary projection 

 at the top of the stump. He showed larger 

 than his mate, and his aspect was more 

 fierce, almost savage. , The green-black 

 feathers near his shoulders, the snow-white 

 lines down his neck, and the tall red crest 

 on his head, all shone with great brilliancy, 

 whilst his ivory beak gleamed hke a dagger. 

 He soon settled for me a cpiestion which had 

 long been in niy mind. "With two or three 

 light ijreliaiinary taps on a hard heart-phi e 

 splint ei, he proceeded to beat the regular 

 woodpecker drum call, that long rolling 



