Downy Woodpecker. 247 



extensile tongue of the woodpecker is thrust through the 

 aperture and the luckless vicLim is quickly transferred to 

 the gullet of the captor. Then he hops around the trunk 

 or along the branch, peering into every likely crevice. 

 Having finished his examination of the trunk or branch, 

 with gleeful ease he flies in rapid, sweepy undulations to 

 another promising place to continue his investigations. 

 At the beginning of his short flights he utters his call, 

 and often as he drops against his base of operations he 

 expresses his pleasure with his familiar note. The downy 

 woodpecker is not restricted to the trees in his quest for 

 supplies, but can often be seen on the ground about the 

 kitchen door, industriously pecking some frozen morsel 

 thrown from the table. It is chiefly in the winter and 

 early spring that he thus seeks to supplement the fare 

 furnished him by the trees, bushes, and weeds. In these 

 visits to the back-yard he is almost as familiar as the 

 little chipping sparrow. 



Though the downy woodpecker is somewhat of a Bo- 

 hemian in his disposition to roam over the neighborhood, 

 he likes to have a place he can call home. Along in the 

 fall he inspects many inviting sites for a winter habita- 

 tion, and finally picks out a location suitable to his needs. 

 He prefers the underside of an oblique branch slightly 

 decayed, or a medium sized stump somewhat intenerated, 

 and he employs a part of his leisure time in excavating a 

 shelter from the keen blasts of winter. He first breaks 

 open an irregular entrance about an inch and a half in 

 diameter, and then he bores into the wood for two inches 

 or more, through the softer wood between the bark and 

 the heart-wood. He is wise in his method of labor-saving, 

 however, for experience has probably taught him that by 

 directing his course obliquely he can keep working in the 

 softer wood; hence he almost invariably veers to right or 

 left instead of turning directly downward into the harder 

 wood in the center of the branch. Many excavations 

 I have examined were thus formed by following the 

 layers of softer wood just beneath the bark or the sap- 

 wood. He seldom goes more than seven inches deep, 

 gradually enlarging his bedroom as he descends, until it 

 averages less than four inches long by three inches wide. 



