noise, crazier and crazier over galvanized iron, 

 until he went to boring holes into the rain-pipe. 



At the first it was love, doubtless, that ailed 

 him ; he was drumming up a bride. But that 

 his tender passion soon changed to an insane 

 delight in his own wonderful self is very evident. 

 He grew enamoured of his drumming. If or is he 

 the first male bird I have known thus in love. 

 In the island park at Detroit, Michigan, I knew 

 a red-headed woodpecker to serenade himself 

 long after the mating season — up, in fact, to 

 September, the time I left the park woods. He 

 would get inside the zinc ventilator of the club- 

 house and make the island ring. 



It was several days after his arrival before this 

 second crazy flicker attacked the rain-pipes. TJp 

 to that time the observers in the neighborhood 

 had looked upon him as a harmless, ardent lover 

 who could not express half his feeling upon an 

 ordinary rotten stub, and so had taken to the 

 hollow-sounding chimneys. They were amused. 



Suddenly that all changed. They had wakened 



to the fact that the bird was a raving maniac ; 



for what did they see one morning but the 



flicker high up under the corner of the roof, 



[184] 



