Birds of Pennsylvania. 127 



kernels of walnuts, shell-barks and other nuts that I have placed in 

 trees were likewise eaten by both the Woodpecker and Nuthatch. 



The following interesting and instructive account of the Downy 

 Woodpecker in apple orchards is given by Wilson: "The principal 

 characteristics of this little bird are diligence, familiarity, perseverance 

 and a strength and energy in the head and muscles of the neck which 

 are truly astonishing. Mounted on the infected branch of an old apple 

 tree, where insects have lodged their corroding and destructive brood 

 m crevices between the bark and wood, he labors sometimes for half 

 an hour incessantly at the same spot before he has succeeded in dis- 

 lodging and destroying them. At these times you may walk up pretty 

 close to the tree, and even stand immediately below it, within five or 

 six feet of the bird, without in the least embarrassing him. The strokes 

 of his bill are distinctly heard several hundred yards off. * * * * 

 He has a single note, chink, which like the former species, he fre- 

 quently repeats; and when he flies off, or alights on another tree, he 

 utters a rather shriller cry, composed of nearly the same kind of note, 

 quickly reiterated. In fall and winter, he associates with the Titmouse' 

 Creeper, etc., both in their wood and orchard excursions, and usually 

 leads the van. Of all our Woodpeckers, none rid the apple. trees of 

 so many vermin as this, digging off the moss which the negligence of 

 the proprietor had suffered to accumulate, and probing every crevice. 

 In fact, the orchard is his favorite resort in all seasons ; and his indus- 

 try IS unequalled and almost incessant, which is more than can be 

 said of any other species we have. In fall he is particularly fond of 

 boring the apple trees for insects, digging a circular hole through the 

 bark, just sufficient to admit his bill; after that, a second, third, etc., 

 in pretty regular horizontal circles round the body of the tree ; these 

 parallel circles of holes are often not more than an inch or an inch 

 and a half apart, and sometimes so close together that I have covered 

 eight or ten of them at once with" a dollar. From nearly the surface 

 of the ground up to the first fork, and sometimes far beyond it, the 

 whole bark of many apple trees is perforated in this manner, so as to 

 appear as if made by successive discharges of buck-shot ; and our little 

 Woodpecker— the subject of the present account— is the principal 

 perpetrator of this supposed mischief; I say supposed, for, so far from 

 these perforations of the bark being ruinous, they are not only harm- 

 less, but, I have good reason to believe, really beneficial to the health 

 and fertility of the tree. I leave it to the philosophical botanist to 

 account for this; but the fact I am confident of. In more than fifty 

 orchards which I have myself carefully examined, those trees which 

 were marked by the Woodpecker (for some trees they never touch 

 peirhaps because not penetrated by insects) were uniformly the most 

 thriving and seemingly the most productive. Many of these 



were 



