The Southern chickadee, it should be said, is not to be distinguished from its Northern relative--in the bush, I mean--except by its notes. It is slightly smaller, like Southern birds in general, but is practically identical in plumage. Apart from its song, what most impressed me was its scarcity. It was found, sooner or later, wherever 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 wild-looking bird, if ever I saw one.