WOOD NOTES WILD. 31 
oftener, longer, and louder, than the cuckoo, using the 
same melodic variety of a minor second, which is the 
least possible. 
The golden-wings are geniuses at a frolic. When two 
or more of them are together they have a brisk chase of it 
round and up the trunks of the great trees and out on the 
big limbs, crying, — 
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Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up. 
We have no true singing-bird so large as this wood- 
pecker. 
The bright hues of the tanager and the oriole may 
attract the eye quicker than his, but no other of our birds 
displays the whole world of color in every conceivable 
combination. These birds are frequenters of meadows 
and pastures; they like to be on the ground and to dig in 
it. When they rise, they swing away through the air in 
great billowy lines of indescribable grace. Wilson takes 
much pains in describing the ingenuity and perseverance 
of these birds in digging out their nests. “I have seen,” 
he says, “where they have dug first five inches straight 
forward, and then downward more than twice that dis- 
tance, through a solid black oak.” He further states that 
they work “till a very late hour in the evening, thumping 
like carpenters;” also that “the male and female work 
alternately.” 
The golden-winged woodpecker has many surprises in 
store for them that do not know him. It will be some- 
