26 BIRD STORIES FROM BURROUGHS 



■with a series of .bowings and scrapings that are 

 truly comical. He spreads his tail, he puffs 

 out his breast, he throws back his head and 

 then bends his body to the right and to the 

 left, uttering all the while a curious musical 

 hiccough. The female confronts him unmoved, 

 but whether her attitude is critical or defen- 

 sive, I cannot tell. Presently she flies away, fol- 

 lowed by her suitor or suitors, and the little 

 comedy is enacted on another stump or tree. 

 Among all the woodpeckers the drum plays an 

 important part in the matchmaking. The male 

 takes up his stand on a dry, resonant limb, or 

 on the ridgeboard of a building, and beats the 

 loudest call he is capable of. A favorite drum of 

 the high-holes about me is a hollow wooden tube, 

 a section of a pump, which stands as a bird-box 

 upon my summer-house. It is a good instrument; 

 its tone is sharp and clear. A high-hole alights 

 upon it, and sends forth a rattle that can be 

 heard a long way off. Then he lifts up his head 

 and utters that long April call, Wick, wick, loick, 

 wick. Then he drums again. If the female does 

 not find him, it is not because he does not make 

 noise enough. But his sounds are all welcome to 

 the ear. They are simple and primitive, and voice 

 well a certain sentiment of the April days. As I 

 write these lines I hear through the half-open 



