hat this
sound proceeds from the same tree or trees about his camp with great
regularity. A woodpecker in my vicinity has drummed for two seasons on
a telegraph pole, and he makes the wires and glass insulators ring.
Another drums on a thin board on the end of a long grape-arbor, and on
still mornings can be heard a long distance.

A friend of mine in a Southern city tells me of a red-headed
woodpecker that drums upon a lightning-rod on his neighbor's house.
Nearly every clear, still morning at certain seasons, he says, this
musical rapping may be heard. "He alternates his tapping with his
stridulous call, and the effect on a cool, autumn-like morning is very
pleasing."

The high-hole appears to drum more promiscuously than does downy. He
utters his long, loud spring call, _whick--whick--whick--whick_, and
then begins to rap with his beak upon his perch before the last note
has reached your ear. I have seen him drum sitting upon the ridge of
the barn. The log-cock, or pileated woodpecker, the largest and
wildest of our Northern species, I have never heard drum. His blows
should wake the echoes.

When the woodpecker is searching for food, or laying siege to some
hidden grub, the sound of his hammer is dead or muffled, and is heard
but a few yards. It is only upon dry, seasoned timber, freed of its
bark, that he beats his reveille to spring and wooes his mate.

Wilson was evidently familiar with this vernal drumming of the
woodpeckers, but quite misinterprets it. Speaking of the red-bellied
species, he says: "It rattles like the rest of the tribe on the dead
limbs, and with such violence as to be heard in still weather more
than half a mile off; and listens to hear the insect it has alarmed."
He listens rather to hear the drum of his rival, or the brief and coy
response of the female; for there are no insects in these dry limbs.

On one occasion I saw downy at his drum when a female flew quickly
through the tree and alighted a few yards beyond him. He paused
instantly, and kept his place apparently without moving a muscle. The
female, I took it, had answered his advertisement. She flitted about
from limb to limb (the female may be known by the absence of the
crimson spot on the back of the head), apparently full of business of
her own, and now and then would drum in a shy, tentative manner. The
male watched her a few moments, and, convinced perhaps that she meant
business, struck up his liveliest tune, then listened