NATURE STUDY. 
158 
Some Rare Visitors. 
BY STEUUA MAY. 
One day in late autumn, as my brother was returning 
at dusk from a long tramp after witch-hazel blossoms, his 
attention was attracted by an unfamiliar bird, circling 
round over a tall, dead stump at the edge of the woods. 
It uttered a peculiar, tree-toad-like call repeatedly, as 
though waiting impatiently for him to go away before set¬ 
tling down for the night into one of the holes with which 
the upper part of the stump was riddled. The bird was 
evidently a woodpecker, though its call was entirely new 
to him, and it had grown too dark to distinguish its color¬ 
ing. His curiosity was greatly aroused, but at other vis¬ 
its to the place, during the daytime, he saw nothing of the 
strange bird. 
Later in the season I learned that a friend had seen a 
red-headed woodpecker within a mile of our Newton home. 
The news seemed almost incredible, on account of the ex¬ 
treme rarity of the species in this section of the country, 
but when, soon after, one was seen in Brookline, and later 
in my own town again, I realized that the unexpected vis¬ 
itor was surely here, and began to keep a sharp lookout 
for him on my walks, but without result. 
Finally, one hot July day, the Evening Transcript came 
with Bradford Torrey’s weekly bird article. Then I 
learned that not one bird, only, was here, but a pair , and 
that they were actually nesting and rearing a brood of 
young birds in the immediate vicinity ! 
This was exciting news indeed, for while the birds them¬ 
selves are rare here, their nests are rarer still, this one be¬ 
ing the very first that has ever been recorded from the 
eastern half of Massachusetts. Mr. Torrey had taken the 
