BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 211 



io8. Dryobates pubescens medianus (Swains.). 

 Downy Woodpecker. 



Common permanent resident. 



NESTING DATES. 



May 22 — June 3. 



Although the Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers are so similar in general 

 appearance as to be distinguishable in life only by size (or by voice), they differ 

 widely in character and tastes. The Hairy is a restless, suspicious creature, 

 prone to take alarm if closely approached, and apparently never quite happy 

 or at ease when far from its favorite woodlands. The Downy, on the other 

 hand, is one of the most contented, trustful and familiar of birds. Like a true 

 philosopher it accepts conditions as it finds them, and, when they change, quickly 

 adapts itself to the new order of things. By virtue of these admirable traits 

 it has maintained itself in practically undiminished numbers throughout the 

 Cambridge Region, despite the cutting down of woods, the rapid increase of 

 houses, and the multiplication and dispersion of the English Sparrows. From 

 November to April it still appears regularly and, for a Woodpecker, really 

 numerously, in many of the older settled parts of Cambridge, and several birds 

 are accustomed to visit our garden almost daily to feed on the suet which we 

 put out for them and for the Chickadees. 



But while the Downy Woodpeckers make themselves quite at home in our 

 city during the winter months, they invariably desert it at the approach of sum- 

 mer. Some perhaps go further north to breed, for the species is probably migra- 

 tory to a certain extent ; others retire to the wilder parts of Arlington, Belmont, 

 Lexington and Waltham, where I have often found their nests in decayed trunks 

 or branches of apple trees in old, neglected orchards, and in poplar, birch and 

 maple stubs in the woods. It is unusual for them to breed in any locality much 

 frequented by man and I have never known a nest to be found within the corpo- 

 rate limits of Cambridge, even in the earlier days of my field experience when so 

 much of the region lying in the direction of Fresh Pond and Mount Auburn was 

 essentially a farming country, well supplied with old apple orchards and not with- 

 out scattered pieces of woods. From these facts we may infer that the Downy's 

 trust in man is not altogether so profound as might at first appear. 



