JF: Speaking of echoes, I hope I'm allowed to post two pictures I took today near the Santa Fe Ski Basin (New Mexico) without a thought of Nabokov in my mind. The first shows two immature Red-naped Sapsuckers. The second shows a butterfly drinking sap from a hole in the bark of a willow; the sapsuckers may have made the hole and anyway they had presumably been drinking from it and eating insects attracted to it. I believe the butterfly is a Red Admiral, not a common species around here. Apparently they like sap. (No doubt it makes a nice change from dead rabbit.)

For another Nabokovian connection, there's a Sapsucker Woods at Cornell. The University has used it, under that name, for bird and other nature studies since at least 1957.

(The sapsucker found near Cornell is the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, which the Red-naped has been considered conspecific with.)

Incidentally, considering both the ecological connection and the bold red and white markings, I wonder whether a thought of the Red Admiral flitted through Nabokov's mind when he put a sapsucker in Ada.