ever I went, I believe,
but always in surprisingly small numbers, and I saw only one nest. That
was built in a roadside china-tree in Tallahassee, and contained young
ones (April 17), as was clear from the conduct of its owners.

It must not be supposed that I left St. Augustine without another search
for my unknown "warbler." The very next morning found me again at the
swamp, where for at least an hour I sat and listened. I heard no
_tee-koi, tee-koo_, but was rewarded twice over for my walk. In the
first place, before reaching the swamp, I found the third of my
flat-wood novelties, the red-cockaded woodpecker. As had happened with
the nuthatch and the sparrow, I heard him before seeing him: first some
notes, which by themselves would hardly have suggested a woodpecker
origin, and then a noise of hammering. Taken together, the two sounds,
left little doubt as to their author; and presently I saw him,--or
rather them, for there were two birds. I learned nothing about them,
either then or afterwards (I saw perhaps eight individuals during my ten
weeks' visit), but it was worth something barely to see and hear them.
Henceforth _Dryobates borealis_ is a bird, and not merely a name. This,
as I have said, was among the pines, before reaching the swamp. In the
swamp itself, there suddenly appeared from somewhere, as if by magic (a
dramatic entrance is not without its value, even out-of-doors), a less
novel but far more impressive figure, a pileated woodpecker; a truly
splendid fellow, with the scarlet cheek-patches. When I caught sight of
him, he stood on one of the upper branches of a tall pine, looking
wonderfully alert and wide-awake; now stretching out his scrawny neck,
and now drawing it in again, his long crest all the while erect and
flaming. After a little he dropped into the underbrush, out of which
came at intervals a succession of raps. I would have given something to
have had him under my glass just then, for I had long felt curious to
see him in the act of chiseling out those big, oblong, clean-cut,
sharp-angled "peck-holes" which, close to the base of the tree, make so
common and notable a feature of Vermont and New Hampshire forests; but,
though I did my best, I could not find him, till all at once he came up
again and took to a tall pine,--the tallest in the wood,--where he
pranced about for a while, striking sundry picturesque but seemingly
aimless attitudes, and then made off for good. All in all, he was a
w