FREAKS OF BACHELORS AND BENEDICTS. 99 
Among some ducks a similar habit prevails, but some 
geese and swans are devoted to mate and young. 
While some birds, as noted, like eagles, etc., pair 
for life, the tender relation is usually ended as soon 
as the nesting season is over, even among our most 
gallant birds. The flocking birds, after the coming 
in of the males, may all stay together, but the others 
usually separate. Burroughs notes that the male of 
our least woodpecker ungallantly drives his mate 
away, and takes the home-nesting hole exclusively as 
his winter roosting place; and the writer once saw a 
female downy woodpecker excavating in November a 
hole in a fallen tree top, and was able to read as he 
ran the reason for this winter work. 
While fishes and some lower creatures paired, per- 
haps, in the long ago, or do now, at least, monogamy 
and gallantry first found their great development in 
the birds; and while some of them have made small 
progress, they seem, upon the whole, to have done 
about as well as some others who have had _ better 
opportunities. 
