THE WOODPECKERS. 143 



CHAPTER VI. 



THE WOODPECKERS. 



AS a class the Woodpeckers live on trees and find 

 their food by hunting the insect-life that lurks 

 beneath the bark. They can run over an upright 

 trunk of a tree with great rapidity, and move, too, in 

 a sidewise manner that is as quick as direct upward 

 travel. They are not given to clinging, head down- 

 ward, to the trees as does the nuthatch, but it is by 

 no means an impossible position for them to assume. 

 Their beaks are solid, sharp, and so fashioned that 

 wood may be readily cut away, and this work so 

 frequently indulged in has given rise to the common 

 name, woodpecker. They nest in trees, cutting a 

 deep hole in living or dead wood as they see fit, and 

 without any lining other than a few fine chips in the 

 very bottom of the excavation, lay therein a few pure 

 white eggs. So fond are they of working in wood 

 that they sometimes make elaborate nests in mid- 

 winter, and abandon them without so much as once 

 resting there overnight. 



As musicians, some of them are excellent drum- 

 mers, but as vocalists, not one of our United States 

 species is a success. They can call, squeak, squeal, 

 and splutter, but I know of no other utterance not 

 described by these forbidding terms. But as drum- 

 mers they claim our attention. There come in course 



