In among the hackmatacks and arbor vitæ in the lower land the golden-winged woodpeckers are gathering in numbers in preparation for their fall migration southward. You may hear the vigorous note of the approaching single bird as he stops for a moment on a spruce top. “Kee-yer, kee-yer, kee-yer,” he shouts, with the accent on the yer. It has all the loud nasal twang of the stage Yankee, and the bird is as ludicrously awkward in his ways, sometimes.
If you step softly through the swamp you may find a group of them going through a grotesque dance, seemingly for their own amusement. They spread their tails stiffly, walk along limbs with mincingly awkward gait, and bob and bow to one another, saying, meanwhile, “Wee tew, wee tew, wee tew.” It is an amusing performance, and is apt to be interrupted by your guffaw of laughter, at which, whirls of white, gold, and black, with a dash of red, they fly away to repeat the performance in some undiscovered retreat.
The flicker, which is another of the fifty-seven varieties of alias under which the golden-winged woodpecker sometimes travels, is, I believe, the most brainy of the woodpecker tribe. Having brains he has also humor, and from the time he takes his first flight from the high hole in some woodland stub till pigeon hawk or barred owl cuts short his flickering, he is making a joke of things.
Like the flickers, the crows of northern Maine migrate southward in winter. The deep, long-remaining snows cover their sources of food too deep, and they find the clam flats of the coast a sure refuge and a well-stocked larder. Just now they are waxing fat on grasshoppers, marching in long lines across the open fields, lines from which no careless hopper may escape, and croaking contentment as they go.
They will stay until the snows drive them, however, and even in winter an occasional scout makes a quick flight north just to see how the land lies. It is but a half-day’s trip up and back. I wish I might, too, be able to reach the land of the mother firs as easily when I feel the need of them. However, the aeroplane is in the incubator, and, unless the Wrights go wrong, perhaps next year or the year after I shall.
Our weather here in eastern Massachusetts comes from the southwest. Whirling storms, little or big, move up from the Gulf coast and pass on, headed for Spitzbergen by way of Newfoundland. Knowing the habits of these whirling winds, the watchers of the weather bureau are able to say, as a rule quite accurately, when the storm will reach us, from what direction the winds will blow, and what they will bring with them and after them,--rain, gale, or fair weather.