34 



The Bird 



with spots of lichen and sunlight, seems to have gendered 

 these baby birds. Yet they were hatched in a dark hole 

 from the whitest of white eggs. Is this and a thousand 

 of other resemblances to be termed accidental? Then 

 is all Nature one great accident! When the Flicker flies 

 with swift wing-beat from tree to tree, then the white 



FIG. 241. Laughing Gull on nest. 



rump blazes forth. At such moment no protection is 

 needed; but in these young Flickers upon the tree-trunk, 

 how exquisitely do their spots deceive the eye! They 

 are, we say, perhaps sunlight splashes, nothing more- 

 Yet others which, like the Brown Creeper, haunt the 

 tree-trunks of the forest, seem veritably to be but stray 

 bits of roughened bark creeping here and there. 



