But these things, taken together, did no doubt prepare me to look upon
it as a happy coincidence when, one morning, I heard the familiar cry of
the red-headed woodpecker, for the first time in Florida, and looked up
to see him flying the national colors from the ridgepole of the State
House. I did not break out with "Three cheers for the red, white, and
blue!" I am naturally undemonstrative; but I said to myself that
_Melanerpes erythrocephalus_ was a very handsome bird.
ORNITHOLOGY ON A COTTON PLANTATION.
On one of my first jaunts into the suburbs of Tallahassee I noticed not
far from the road a bit of swamp,--shallow pools with muddy borders and
flats. It was a likely spot for "waders," and would be worth a visit. To
reach it, indeed, I must cross a planted field surrounded by a lofty
barbed-wire fence and placarded against trespassers; but there was no
one in sight, or no one who looked at all like a land-owner; and,
besides, it could hardly be accounted a trespass--defined by Blackstone
as an "_unwarranted_ entry on another's soil"--to step carefully over
the cotton rows on so legitimate an errand. Ordinarily I call myself a
simple bird-gazer, an amateur, a field naturalist, if you will; but on
occasions like the present I assume--with myself, that is--all the
rights and titles of an ornithologist proper, a man of science strictly
so called. In the interest of science, then, I climbed the fence and
picked my way across the field.
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