117
Lake Umbagog.
Bottle Brook Pond.
1897
June 4
(No 5)
not really loud. It was very like the rustle of
heavy silk.
  I took my last photograph at 3 P.M. Either
it proved too much for the hitherto exemplary portion
of my subject or the time for his afternoon outing
had arrived for when he started he moved directly
off through the trees & out of sight. A moment later
he drummed several hundred yards [deleteoff[/delete] away and
then further & still further off until, reaching a
station only just barely within our hearing, he
kept up his roll call for half-an-hour apparently
in one place. Soon after he ceased a Woodpecker came
flying past and alighted directly at the hole. I shot
it immediately and found it to be [female] Picoides
which we had not hitherto seen. I then waited half-an-
hour without seeing or hearing anything of the [male]. He finally
returned at about 4.30 and I shot him also. It
was perhaps the hardest task of the kind that I
have ever forced myself to face - the killing of these
beautiful & most interesting birds. But it was
a duty that I could not possibly shirk although
when the [male] flew away I devoutly hoped that I
should never see him again.
[margin]Nest of
Picoides
americanus[/margin]
 Upon sawing off the top of the stub we were surprised
& not a little disappointed to find that the nest
contained only two eggs, both perfectly fresh of course.
The [female], as I found on dissecting her next day, would
have laid but two more. One enclosed in
shell not yet hard & broken by a shot was about
half-way down the oviduct, the other, a circular sack
filled with yolk & of the size of a Chipping Sparrow's