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 
