y in March in a partly
decayed apple-tree that stands in the edge of a narrow strip of woodland
near me. When the morning was still and mild I would often hear him
through my window before I was up, or by half-past six o'clock, and he
would keep it up pretty briskly till nine or ten o'clock, in this
respect resembling the grouse, which do most of their drumming in the
forenoon. His drum was the stub of a dry limb about the size of one's
wrist. The heart was decayed and gone, but the outer shell was hard and
resonant. The bird would keep his position there for an hour at a time.
Between his drummings he would preen his plumage and listen as if for
the response of the female, or for the drum of some rival. How swiftly
his head would go when he was delivering his blows upon the limb! His
beak wore the surface perceptibly. When he wished to change the key,
which was quite often, he would shift his position an inch or two to a
knot which gave out a higher, shriller note. When I climbed up to
examine his drum, he was much disturbed. I did not know he was in the
vicinity, but it seems he saw me from a near tree, and came in haste to
the neighboring branches, and with spread plumage and a sharp note
demanded plainly enough what my business was with his drum. I was
invading his privacy, desecrating his shrine, and the bird was much put
out. After some weeks the female appeared; he had literally drummed up a
mate; his urgent and oft-repeated advertisement was answered. Still the
drumming did not cease, but was quite as fervent as before. If a mate
could be won by drumming, she could be kept and entertained by more
drumming; courtship should not end with marriage. If the bird felt
musical before, of course he felt much more so now. Besides that, the
gentle deities needed propitiating in behalf of the nest and young as
well as in behalf of the mate. After a time a second female came, when
there was war between the two. I did not see them come to blows, but I
saw one female pursuing the other about the place, and giving her no
rest for several days. She was evidently trying to run her out of the
neighborhood. Now and then, she, too, would drum briefly, as if sending
a triumphant message to her mate.

The woodpeckers do not each have a particular dry limb to which they
resort at all times to drum, like the one I have described. The woods
are full of suitable branches, and they drum more or less here and there
as they are in quest of