Mar., 1917 BIRDS OF THE HUMID COAST 47 



up till the handsome sulphury white undercoverts showed, pecked at the bark, 

 gave a low rapid chuck, chuck-ah, chuck, and then climbed up to peck at another 

 section of the gray trunk spotted with round holes till, though I made no sound, 

 craning its neck far out sideways as if I had been discovered, it flew off. An- 

 other day the loud rapping came from an adjoining stub and I found a Pileated 

 working in earnest. Bracing with its tail and hooking its strong left foot into 

 the bark in front or to one side of it, the Cock-of-the-Woods would crack off a 

 slab masterfully with a single blow, but it would also probe carefully and turn 

 its head and place its chisel with delicacy and skill. Once, after drilling a sliv- 

 er of bark loose, it put its head under it to explore and then, having located its 

 quarry tore off the bark and went to excavating. When tired of work it 

 climbed to the top of the stub where it stood silhouetted against the gray sky, 

 then again stretching its wing and preening its feathers. When the dogs 

 barked it only turned its head, but when a Flicker passed over, raised its wings 

 and flew away. 



The Pileated did not call at the house again, and our next visitor — no big 

 black Woodpecker but a tiny fluff of greenish feathers this time — a young Gold- 

 en-crowned Kinglet, actually flew in at the open door. Back and forth the 

 poor frightened little creature flew above the level of the open doors and win- 

 dows lighting now on the boarded ceiling, now on the clothes-line stretched 

 across the room, where it showed its green body, wing bars and short but deep- 

 ly notched tail. At last it flew against a window with such a shock that on re- 

 bounding it lit on a sock on the line, clinging to it half stunned, with bill open. 

 By going up softly and talking to it gently, I slowly closed my hand over it. 

 Yes, there were not only the characteristic Kinglet wing bars and yellow-pen- 

 cilled wing edgings, but the wide white superciliary and the suggested crown 

 markings of the young golden. As it squirmed in my hand I caught the dark 

 brown of its iris. While I was studying it, poor little Goldilocks, used to trage- 

 dies, and also to practical cash valuations, had been excitedly running about 

 the room exclaiming — "I wouldn't kill it, I wouldn't kill it, for, for five dol- 

 lars ! — it 's so sweet, ' ' and when I took it to the open door and she saw it dart 

 away across the garden and vanish in a little spruce, her sensitive face broke 

 into smiles and she danced about joyfully, ready once more to go singing about 

 the house like a happy bird. 



Many of the birds whose voices came in through the open windows could be 

 seen without going farther afield than the front porch. Western Robins were as 

 much at home as are their eastern brothers about lawns and gardens. One 

 would sit in the top of a tall hemlock or Sitka spruce and sing the song heard 

 from the dooryard lilac in the east ; but wandering thoughts of home were sud- 

 denly dissipated by sight of a Rufous Hummingbird flashing its gorget in an 

 adjoining tree. The Robins' songs began to decrease the second week in June, 

 when the birds were often seen flying swiftly across the garden with salmon- 

 berries in their bills, and the last week in June they were found feeding spotted 

 young on the board walk, a very convenient place for parents to see the brood 

 they were trying to feed. 



While the Robins picked the wild salmonberries growing along the edges 

 of the woods, the Rufous Hummingbirds buzzed around the logan-berry blos- 

 soms in the garden and a green-backed female or young was also seen whirling 

 its wings before a fuchsia. While the Hummingbirds went and came, darting 

 into the garden, buzzing about the flowers for a few moments and darting off 



