eae) MInueise ON mbes La loa bek IN 
obvious on May weekends. | like the warblers with 
easily indentifiable calls! Gone too is the Northern Water- 
thrush from the tiny fern dell he’s been resting in. One 
is always so bereft when the migration flood has passed 
on north. 
The Wood Pewee wails plaintively and often, but 
emerges only momentarily. Last weekend I had the Olive- 
sided Flycatcher and a little Traill’s calling ‘‘fitz~-bew’’ at 
this spot, but they too have flown on. An American Gold- 
finch roller coasters along and calls me to watch him dance 
over the swamp. A far-off Baltimore Oriole pipes his rich 
notes. For several years an Indigo Bunting nested at this 
‘Teale Road corner, but today there’s only a Song Sparrow 
perched in a Buttonbush and a Brown Trasher industri- 
ously bathing in a pothole in the road. His mate “‘chacks’’ 
back in the woods. A Green Heron utters his hoarse 
“‘ske-ow’’ as he slowly wings overhead. A friendly Chick- 
adee drops ino a Red Osier Dogwood an arm’s length from 
me, finds a tasty morsel, all green and wiggly, and 
carries it off. Is he feeding frau or kinder? 
Well out in the deeper water a dead tree stub rises. 
All the branches are broken off, but in the main truck 
two squarish holes about 18” apart have been carved out 
by industrious chisel beaks. A Flicker flies into the lower 
hole and I settle down hoping for a glimpse of Flicker 
domesticity. A head appears at the hole and I can just 
make out a male whisker mark. He takes the air for ten 
more minutes, there is no further activity. During that 
time one huge bumble bee moves slowly and methodically 
over each of the full-blown Pussy Willow catkins on a 
large bush. Such persistence! 
A Downy Woodpecker slowly hitches his way up an 
old Mullein stalk, pausing only momentarily to eat. In 
Europe they call Mullein, “‘King’s Candle’, a much more 
poetic name for this regal weed. Iwo Flickers race by 
and a Red-headed Woodpecker drums on a dead trunk. 
There are three holes right below him. I watch expectantly, 
but he flies off too. In Heinz Seelmann’s amazing book 
on German woodpeckers (Window in the Woods), he 
writes that woodpeckers hit the wood 20 times a second 
when drumming and that they will drum 500-600 times 
a day. 
‘Two male Red-bellied Woodpeckers scuffle vigorously 
on a dead stub. They seem small—are young of the year 
in such good plumage already? One jabs viciously under 
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