Page:Condor19(2).djvu/21

Mar., 1917 BIRDS OF THE HUMID COAST 47 up till the handsome sulphury white undercoverts sho?ved, 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, crani,?g 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. Bra.cing 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 yeltow-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