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In the month of March, the chrysalides burst through the skin, and drop on the ground, when they may be seen crawling in immense numbers along the deer paths as they pass from west to east. The only birds observed in winter are grouse, ptarmigan, a small species of wood-pecker, butcher-bird, and the diminutive tomtit.
The thermometer showed an altitude of 3,350 feet: under the tree's cool shade, the climate reminded me of Southern Italy in winter. I found a butter-cup, and heard a wood-pecker tapping on the hollow trunk, a reminiscence of English glades. The Abban and his men urged an advance in the afternoon.
As for those I speak of, I pluck them as a wild fruit, native to this quarter of the earth, fruit of old trees that have been dying ever since I was a boy and are not yet dead, frequented only by the wood-pecker and the squirrel, deserted now by the owner, who has not faith enough to look under their boughs.
The tom-tits with their black heads made a noise in the thicket of fig-trees like the sound of pebbles moved by water. A wood-pecker rent the azure with its cry, and then flew toward the old, white-flowered apple-trees. It had almost the appearance of a handful of grass torn from the golden meadows with a clover-flower as its head.
You must know that the chameleon is a lumbering lazy animal, who feeds on flies and other swift insects, and who would, therefore, be constantly liable to go without his dinner but that his tongue serves him for a hunting weapon, like those of the wood-pecker and the ant-eater.
"Yes," said Archie B., "an' I also know a fly-ketcher will whip a wood-pecker and take his nes' from him, an' I've come up here to see if it's so with this one." "Oh," said Jud, surprised, "an' what is it?" "Jus' as I said he's whipped the wood-pecker an' tuck his nes'." "What's a fly-ketcher, Mister Know-It-All?" said Jud. Then he grinned derisively.
All nature was alive with gratulation. The quail whistled a greeting from the corn-field; the robin carolled a song of praise from the orchard; the loquacious catbird flew from bush to bush, with restless wing, proclaiming his approach in every variety of note, and anon would whisk about, and perk inquisitively into his face, as if to get a knowledge of his physiognomy; the wood-pecker, also, tapped a tattoo on the hollow apple-tree, and then peered knowingly round the trunk, to see how the great Diedrich relished his salutation; while the ground-squirrel scampered along the fence, and occasionally whisked his tail over his head, by way of a huzza!
Little Billie was playin' near us, for Mitch was makin' him a little onion bed, and Dick was ridin' Little Billie on his shoulder, and he was as gay as a jay-bird and singin'. One of his songs was: Oh, said a wood-pecker settin' on a tree, I once courted a fair ladee. She proved fickle and from me fled, And ever since then my head's been red.
There was no sound but the dull intermittent double knock of the wood-pecker, or the drowsy croak of some early roosting bird; all suggestion of the settlement, with all traces of human contiguity, were left far behind. It was therefore with a strange and nervous sense of being softly hailed by some woodland sprite that he seemed to hear his own name faintly wafted upon the air.
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