THE WOODPECKERS. 145 



alent notion that the sap of trees, in season, supplies 

 them with the bulk of their nourishment. We will 

 return to this subject again. The " Hairy" is the 

 larger of these two species, being about nine inches 

 in length, while the " Downy" is but little over six 

 inches long. So far as my personal observation goes, 

 it is not as abundant anywhere as the " Downy," and 

 wholly absent from many wide tracts within its gen- 

 eral range. It is a bird of timber land and not of 

 the open country, and shows little disposition to 

 accommodate itself to a new order of things. Cut 

 down your trees and they will go to some more (to 

 them) hospitable region. Wilson speaks of the hairy 

 woodpecker as a lover of orchards, but when Wilson 

 wrote it was not so long a journey from an orchard 

 to a woodland tract. 



But the little downy woodpecker is everywhere. 

 There is not a tree too small for it to consider, and 

 when trees fail altogether, it will climb over an old 

 grape-arbor and be happy in so artificial a surround- 

 ing. They come fearlessly into town and visit every 

 shade tree in the streets, and have been seen to peck 

 at a fly on the wrong side of a window-pane. 



When the warm weather fairly sets in, a pair of 

 these little woodpeckers will hollow out a commodi- 

 ous nest in a dead tree and rear a brood that seem 

 to be hungrier than most babies, considering the 

 amount of food the parent birds carry to them. 



Nuttall says, 



" These birds have a shrill cackle and a reiterated call, which they 

 frequently utter while engaged in quest of their prey. In the au- 

 tumn they feed on various kinds of berries as well as insects." 

 G k 13 



