A RED-HEADED FAMILY. 27 



of silence rimmed with receding echoes, and 

 then a trumpet-note, high, full, vigorous, al- 

 most startling, cut the air with a sort of broad- 

 sword sweep. Again the long-roll answered, 

 from a point nearer me, by two or three ham- 

 mer-like raps on the resonant branch of some 

 dead cypress-tree. The king and queen were 

 coming to their palace. I waited patiently, 

 knowing that it was far beyond my power to 

 hurry their movements. It was not long be- 

 fore one of the birds, with a rapid cackling 

 that made the wood rattle, came over my head, 

 and went straight to the stump, where it lit, 

 just below the lower hole, clinging gracefully 

 to the trunk. It was a superb specimen — the 

 female, and I suspected that she had come to 

 leave an egg. I could have killed her easily 

 with the little sixteen-gauge breech-loader at 

 my side, but I would not have done the act 

 for all the stuffed birds in the country. I had 

 come as a visitor to this palace, with the hope 

 of making the acquaintance I had so long de- 

 sired, and not as an assassin. She was quite 

 unaware of me, and so behaved naturally, her 

 large gold-amber eyes glaring with that wild 

 sincerity of expression seen in the eyes of but 

 few savage things. 



After a little while the male came bounding 

 through the air, with that vigorous galloping 

 flight common to all our woodpeckers, and lit 

 on a fragmentary projection at the top of the 

 stump. He showed larger than his mate, and 

 his aspect was more fierce, almost savage. 

 The green-black feathers near his shoulders, 

 the snow-white lines down his neck, and the 

 tall red crest on his head, all shone with great 

 brilliancy, whilst his ivory beak gleamed like a 



