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When startled by a bird flying over or alighting near him, he sprang back instantly, slipped over behind the fence or post, and hung on by his claws, leaving only his head in sight. He was a true woodpecker in his manners; bowing to strangers who appeared, driving away one of his sapsucker cousins who came about, and keeping up a low cry of "kr-r-r" almost exactly like his parents.
They did not welcome our visit, nor our perhaps rather rude way of gazing at them; for one flew away, and the other perched on the topmost dead branch of a tree a little farther off, and proceeded to express his mind by a scolding "kr-r-r," accompanied by violent bows toward us.
She was always greeted by a low-whispered "kr-r-r," and the husky-toned conversation between the two was kept up so long as both were there. Now, too, as the male began to feel at home, I saw more of his odd ways. His attitudes were especially comical.
The next performance with which this bird entertained me was poaching upon his cousin's preserves. Sitting one evening on the veranda, looking over the meadow, I heard his low "kr-r-r," and saw him alight upon the sapsucker's elm. Whether he stumbled upon the feast or went with malice aforethought, he was not slow to appreciate the charms of his position.
There was a still more musical clause that I cannot put into syllables, then a rattle exactly like castanets, and lastly a sort of "Kr-r-r! kr-r-r!" in the tone of a great-crested flycatcher. While this will not express to one who has not heard it the marvelous charm of it all, it will at least indicate the variety.
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