WINTER NEIGHBORS. TT 
are just as characteristically drummers as is the ruffed 
grouse, and they have their particular limbs and stubs 
to which they resort for that purpose. Their need of 
expression is apparently just as great as that of the 
song-birds, and it is not surprising that they should 
have found out that there is music in a dry, seasoned 
limb which can be evoked beneath their beaks. 
A few seasons ago a downy woodpecker, probably 
the individual one who is now my winter neighbor, 
began to drum early in March in a partly decayed 
apple-tree that stands in the edge of a narrow strip of 
woodland near me. When the morning was still and 
mild I would often hear him through my window be- 
fore I was up, or by half-past six o’clock, and he 
would keep it up pretty briskly till nine or ten o’clock, 
in this respect resembling the grouse, which do most 
of their drumming in the forenoon. His drum was 
the stub of a dry Tit about the size of one’s wrist. 
The heart was decayed and gone, but the outer shell 
was hard and resonant. The bird would keep his po- 
sition there for an hour at a time. Between his drum- 
mings he would - preen his plumage and listen as if for 
the response of the female, or for the drum of some 
rival. How swift his head would go when he was 
delivering his blows upon the limb! His beak wore 
the surface perceptibly. When he wished to change 
the key, which was quite often, he would shift his 
position an inch or two to a knot which gave out a 
higher, shriller note. When I climbed up to examine 
his drum he was much disturbed. I did not know he 
was in the vicinity, but it seems he saw me from a 
near tree, and came in haste to the neighboring 
branches, and with spread plumage and a sharp note 
demanded plainly enough what my business was with 
