THE DOWNY WOODPECKER. 89 
strikes its object with both feet, and makes no discrimina- 
tion between a horizontal branch or limb and a perpendicular 
one. It commences its building operations quite early, often 
by the 20th of April. The nest is made by excavating in 
old trees in the woods, rarely in orchards: the hole made is 
often as much as eighteen inches in depth, in some cases 
hardly five inches. A post in a fence is sometimes taken 
for a breeding-place, the hole in which the rail is inserted 
furnishing a starting-place for the excavation of the nest. 
The eggs are usually five in number; seldom more, often 
less: they are of a beautiful clear-white color, and the shell 
is very smooth and rather thin; and, before the contents of 
the egg are removed, they impart a rosy tint to it. Speci- 
mens vary in size from .77 to .84 inch in length, by from 
-62 to .68 inch in breadth. 
The nest is never lined with leaves or other soft materials, 
so far as my observation has been; but the eggs are depos- 
ited on a small pile of chips of the rotten wood, which seem 
to be left by the bird designedly for this purpose. 
The food of this species consists principally of the eggs 
and larve of injurious insects that are burrowing in the 
wood of our fruit and forest trees: these he is enabled to 
obtain by chiselling out a small hole with his powerful bill, 
and drawing them from their lurking-places with his long 
barbed tongue. He also eats some small fruits and berries, 
but never, so far as I am aware, the buds or blossoms of 
trees, aS some persons assert. 
PICUS PUBESCENS, — Linneus. 
The Downy Woodpecker. 
Picus pubescens, Linneus. Syst. Nat., I. (1766) 15. Vieill. Ois. Am. (1807) 65. 
“ Picus pubescens,’ Linneus, Wilson. Am. Orn. I. (1808) 158. Aud. Orn. 
Biog. II. (1884). 
DESCRIPTION. 
A miniature of P. villosus. Above black, with a white band down the back; two 
white stripes on the side of the head; the lower of opposite sides always separated, 
the upper sometimes confluent on the nape; two stripes of black on the side of the 
