28 BY-WAYS- AND BIRD-NO TES. 



dagger. He soon settled for me a question 

 which had long been in my mind. With two 

 or three light preliminary taps on a hard heart- 

 pine splinter, he proceeded to beat the regular 

 woodpecker drum-call — that long rolling rattle 

 made familiar to us all by the common red- 

 head {Melanerpes erythrocephalus) and our 

 other smaller woodpeckers. This peculiar 

 call is not, in my opinion, the result of elasticity 

 or springiness in the wood upon which it is 

 performed, but is effected by a rapid, spas- 

 modic motion of the bird's head, imparted by a 

 voluntary muscular action. I have seen the 

 common Red-head make a soundless call on a 

 fence-stake where the decaying wood was 

 scarcely hard enough to prevent the full en- 

 trance of his beak. His head went through 

 the same rapid vibration, but no sound accom- 

 panied the performance. Still, it is resonance 

 in the wood that the bird desires, and it keeps 

 trying until a good sounding-board is found. 



It was very satisfying to me when the superb 

 King of the Woodpeckers— pic noir d bee blanc, 

 as the great French naturalist named it — went 

 over the call, time after time, with grand effect, 

 letting go, between trials, one or two of his 

 triumphant trumpet-notes. Hitherto I had 

 not seen the Campephilus do this, though I 

 had often heard what I supposed to be the call. 

 As I crouched in my hiding-place and furtively 

 watched the proceedings, I remember compar- 

 ing the birds and their dwelling to some half- 

 savage lord and lady and their isolated castle 

 of medieval days. A twelfth-century bandit 

 nobleman might have gloried in trigging him- 

 self in such apparel as my ivory-billed wood- 

 pecker wore. What a perfect athlete he ap- 



