The Spring of the Year

by Dallas Lore Sharp

III

There are some birds that cannot sing: the belted kingfisher, for instance; he can only rattle. You must hear him rattle. You can do as well yourself if you will shake a “pair of bones” or heave an anchor and let the chain run fast through the hawse-hole. You then must hear the downy woodpecker doing his rattling rat-ta-tat-tat-tat-tat (across the page and back again), as fast as rat-ta-tat can tat. How he makes the old dead limb or fence-post rattle as he drums upon it with his chisel bill. He can be heard half a mile around.

Then high-hole, the flicker (or golden-winged woodpecker), you must hear him yell, Up-up-up-up-up up-up-up-up-up-up,—a ringing, rolling, rapid kind of yodel that echoes over the spring fields.