54 BULLETIN 17 4, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



"All this time a fourth bird had been drumming on a tree not far 

 away. I went up to the place and timed the drum calls, finding 

 each roll to last about two seconds. I could not count the taps, but 

 thought they numbered eight or ten to each roll. While I watched this 

 bird, another downy came along, sounding the flickerlike call, but 

 rather faintly, and the drummer flew to join her. They flew off to- 

 gether. I believe it is only the male that drums, and I think it prob- 

 able that the bird that answered the drummer was the one that had 

 taken part in the dance before described, for that bird when she left 

 her partner had flown off in this direction. 



"April 8, 1917. West Koxbury. Watched a pair courting this 

 morning for several minutes. Both sexes had a curious 'weaving' 

 action, moving the head and whole body from side to side on the 

 tip of the tail as a pivot with the neck stretched out and bill pointed 

 on a line with the body, and the whole body elongated. They did 

 this both when clinging to the side of a trunk and when on a hori- 

 zontal or slanting branch. They were silent but very active, flitting 

 one after the other from branch to branch and tree to tree, but making 

 only short flights. The waving, or 'weaving,' motion of the head was 

 rather rapid, perhaps two waves, that is from left to right and back 

 again, in about a second — but this is stated from general impressions 

 and memory only. These birds did not spread the wings and tail as 

 did the courting pair observed on April 10, 1904, and, as stated, they 

 uttered no note." 



My notes refer to a bit of courtship observed during the actual 

 breeding season. May 11, 1911, in a Avooded swamp in Lexington, 

 Mass., where the species used to nest every year. The female bird 

 was perched motionless along a horizontal limb of a tree, and the 

 male was poised in the air just behind and a little above her. He 

 was hovering. His wings were more than half spread, I should say, 

 and waving slowly up and down, a maneuver which displayed finely 

 the rows of white spots on the flight feathers and coverts. 



William Brewster (1936), in his Concord journal under date of 

 May 5, 1905, notes another form of courtship. He says : "At 8 A. M. 

 saw a pair of Downy Woodpeckers in young oaks behind Ball's Hill, 

 behaving very strangely. They kept flying from tree to tree, flapping 

 their vvings slowly and feebly like butterflies, sometimes moving on 

 a level plane, sometimes in long loops, occasionally sailing from tree 

 to tree in a long deep loop. Their wings had a strange fin-like appear- 

 ance due, probably, to the way they were held or flexed. They both 

 uttered a low, harsh, chattering cry, almost incessantly. No doubt 

 this was a love performance, but they were male and female and both 

 'showed off' in the same way." 



