NORTHERN DOWNY WOODPECKER 67 



is noticeably larger than the other, but neither one has a red occipital 

 patch. They keep near each other, one following the other by short, 

 quick flights. They perch perfectly motionless for a moment a foot 

 or two apart; then both together sway their heads, swinging them 

 quickly down and up to one side, down and up to the other side. 

 The swing is very rapid, like the wink of an eye. They flit their 

 wings upward and outward, also with the speed of a wink, over and 

 over — all this without a sound. They fly behind a branch sometimes 

 but keep mostly in sight of each other, and, although neither attacks, 

 each seems wary of attack and dodges away when approached. They 

 sometimes alight on very slender branches, and once a bird goes to 

 the ground where it stands with its head held high up. They move 

 very actively and lightly, with never the slightest blundering, flitting 

 silently and easily from branch to branch." 



The following astonishing story, taken from William Brewster's 

 Concord journal (1937), tells of a case in which antagonism of un- 

 known cause leads to the killing with brutal violence of a female 

 downy by a male : 



March 20, 1911. We were in the dining-room, consulting about the day's 

 work, when we heard the tchick note of the Downy AVoodpecker repeated 

 almost incessantly and very rapidly just outside. For a moment or more we 

 paid no attention to it. But something unusual in its quality and its in- 

 sistence soon led me to look out and this was what I saw : 



On the snow, among the outermost stems of the lilacs on one side of the 

 dense thicket that they form was a female Downy with extended and quiv- 

 ering wings. About her hopped or rather danced a handsome male, showing 

 the red on his occiput very conspicuously. He kept striking at her head with 

 his bill and occasionally he held on for a few seconds, when the two birds 

 fluttered about together and perhaps rolled over once or twice, closely united. 

 At first I thought it an amatory encounter and I am still almost certain that 

 the male attempted to secure sexual contact with the female once or twice. 

 But if so it could not have been his primary or at least sole object. For he 

 continued to peck her head even when she was lying almost motionless on 

 the snow. For a time she seemed to be trying to escape and for fully two 

 minutes her cries were piteous and incessant. At length he left her and 

 flew up into an elm where he clung for a moment or two, making w4iat 

 seemed to me a very unusual display of the red on his occiput. Then of a 

 sudden he swooped down on the female, who had meanwhile been cowering in 

 the middle of a cluster of lilac stems, on the snow. Dragging her forth from 

 this slight shelter into an open space, he attacked her again, this time with 

 obvious fury, fairly raining a shower of blows on the back of her head. She 

 seemed too weak to make any further attempt to escape and her cries, although 

 continued, were so faint that we could only just hear them. I now realized 

 for the first time that he was inspired by the lust of killing and not by sexual 

 ardor. It was very hard to refrain from rushing out and driving him away 

 but I restrained the impulse, not being willing to interrupt a tragedy of such 

 extraordinary, if repulsive, interest. It would have made no difference any- 

 way, for this final onslaught lasted only a very few seconds. During its 

 continuance the male Downy seemed literally beside himself with rage. No 



