hrough 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 swift 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 food; yet I am convinced each one has
its favorite spot, like the grouse, to which it resorts especially in
the morning. The sugar-maker in the maple-woods may notice t