work
excavating a lodge in a small yellow birch. The orifice was about
fifteen feet from the ground, and appeared as round as if struck with
a compass. It was on the east side of the tree, so as to avoid the
prevailing west and northwest winds. As it was nearly two inches in
diameter, it could not have been the work of the downy, but must have
been that of the hairy, or else the yellow-bellied woodpecker. His
home had probably been wrecked by some violent wind, and he was thus
providing himself another. In digging out these retreats the
woodpeckers prefer a dry, brittle trunk, not too soft. They go in
horizontally to the centre and then turn downward, enlarging the
tunnel as they go, till when finished it is the shape of a long, deep
pear.

Another trait our woodpeckers have that endears them to me, and that
has never been pointedly noticed by our ornithologists, is their habit
of drumming in the spring. They are songless birds, and yet all are
musicians; they make the dry limbs eloquent of the coming change. Did
you think that loud, sonorous hammering which proceeded from the
orchard or from the near woods on that still March or April morning
was only some bird getting its breakfast? It is downy, but he is not
rapping at the door of a grub; he is rapping at the door of spring,
and the dry limb thrills beneath the ardor of his blows. Or, later in
the season, in the dense forest or by some remote mountain lake, does
that measured rhythmic beat that breaks upon the silence, first three
strokes following each other rapidly, succeeded by two louder ones
with longer intervals between them, and that has an effect upon the
alert ear as if the solitude itself had at last found a voice,--does
that suggest anything less than a deliberate musical performance? In
fact, our woodpeckers are just as characteristically drummers as is
the ruffed grouse, and they have their particular limbs and stubs to
which they resort for that purpose. Their need of expression is
apparently just as great as that of the song-birds, and it is not
surprising that they should have found out that there is music in a
dry, seasoned limb which can be evoked beneath their beaks.

A few seasons ago, a downy woodpecker, probably the individual one who
is now my winter neighbor, began to drum early 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 t