144 Tue Birps Axsout Us. 
of time late autumn days when the leafless woods are 
silent. There is the warm sunshine on the forest 
floor, there is the lingering green of holly and cedar, 
but the day is dead. Not even the brilliant scarlet 
and golden berries of the bitter-sweet tempts any bird. 
It is all the bitterness of loneliness,—nothing of the 
sweet of company. The beauty of the Indian sum- 
mer has led you out into a deserted world, and every 
thought is tinged with melancholy. You are ready 
almost at the outset to return, when suddenly, afar 
off, there is a rapid drumming. A low but resonant 
note fills the woods. The life you hoped to see and 
hear is returning. Listen! The loud chirps of hid- 
den sparrows are a response. The woodpecker again 
and more violently beats his drum, and now a sleepy 
cardinal awakes and sounds a few clear fife-like 
notes in reply. When this has been your experience, 
as it has so often been mine, you will learn to love 
the music of even a woodpecker. 
The largest and most superb of all the tribe is the 
rare Ivory-billed Woodpecker, that is now found only 
in “restricted localities in the Gulf States (including 
Florida) and lower Mississippi Valley.” The prob- 
abilities are that it will soon be extinct, so far as the 
United States is concerned. It is too handsome not 
to tempt every collector, taxidermist, and millinery 
establishment in the country, and he who protests 
will be laughed at for his trouble. 
In the Middle States and northward we have, all 
the year round, two little woodpeckers known as the 
“Hairy” and “Downy,” and more usually in the 
country they are called “ Sapsuckers,” from the prev- 
