Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1892-09-12
NAMES OF THE wooDPeckER.
xhe Herald OF Spring Is Known by
Many and Varied Cognomens.

~"o eFaio OF spring Is Known by
Many and Varied Cognomens.
The migrant woodpecker whose CHEEKY
cackle assures us of the certainty of spring
Is rich in names that well befit him. If YOU
take to high sounding titles for your hum
bic friends, you will accept Colaptes
auratus as he flies above you, borrowing
more gold of the sunbearns that shine
through his yellow pinions, or will be con-
tent to call him simply golden winged.
When he flashes his wings in straight
away flight before you, or sounds his
sharp, single note of alarm or peers down
at you from the door of his lofty tower, OK
cllngs to its wooden wall, or clinging to q
renee stake displays his notified back, you
recognize the fitness of each name the
country folk have given him-flicker, yell
low hammer, yaIrup, and what Thoreau
often termed him, partridge woodpecker.
IL Is wonder that the Joyous cackle
wherewlth he announces his return from
his winter sojourn in the south has not
gained him another, and that love note so
like the slow whetting of knife upon
steel, still another. Perhaps it is because
they are especially sounds of spring and
seldom if ever heard after the season of
joyful arrival and lovernalking.
During the same season You frequently
hear him attaining his harsh, sharp voice
TO its softest note of endearment, long
drawn and modulated variation of his
cackle.
When household cares begin, the lord
and lady of the wooden tower like too
many greater and wiser two legged folk
give over singing and soft words. At
home and abroad their department is sober
and businesslike, and except for an occa-
sional alarm cry they are mostly silent.
As you wander through the orchard of
an early midsummer day and pause beside
an old apple tree to listen to the cuckoo's
flute admire the airy fabric of the
wood pewee's nest, larger scale of lichen
ON the lichened boughs, you hear a smoth-
cred vibrant murmur close beside you, as
If the heart of the old tree was pulsating
with audible life.
1t is startlingly suggestive of disturbed
| yellow jackets; but when You move around
| the trunk in cautious reconnaissance you
| discover the round portal of a iicker's
| home and the sound resolves itself into
| harmlessness. 1t is only the callow young
| clamoring for food or complaining of their
circumscribed quarters.
Not many days hence they will be out in
| the wide world of air and sunshine, of
which they now know as little as when
| they Clipped the shell. Lusty fellows
| they will be then, withmuch of their par
ents' beauty already displayed in their
bright new plumaSe and capable of an
| outcry that will hold a bird eating cat at
| bay.
| A little later they will be as their
| parents are, helpful allies against the
| borers, the insidious enemies of our apple
| trees. 1t is a warfare which the ground
ing habits of the golden wings make them
| more ready to engage in than any other OF
| the woodpecker clans.
In sultry August weather, when the
| shrill cry of the cicada pierces the hot all
| like a hotter needle of sound, and the dry
| husky beat of his wings emphasizes the
| apparent fact of drought as you walk on the
desiccated slippery heritage of meadow
and pasture, the golden wings with al
their grown up family fly up before you
from their feast on the ant hills and q
flashing and Pickering away like rocket:
| shot aslant, into the green tent of the wild
| cherry trees to their dessert of juicy BLACK
| fruit.
| Early in the drearineSS of Novembel
| they have vanished with all the horde O.
summer residents who have made the sea
son of leaf flower and fruit the brighte,
by their presence.
The desolate, leafless months go by, til
at last comes the promise of spring, anC
| you are aware of q half unconscious listen
Il ing for the golden wings.
| Presently the loud, long. joyous iteration
breaks upon your ear and you hail the full
fillment of the promise and the blithe new
conner, q golden link in the lengthenfns
chain that is encircling tho earth.-Fores
and Stream.