BIRDS' -NES TS. 129 



dally an artistic work, requiring strength 

 rather than skill, yet the eggs and the 

 young of few other birds are so completely 

 housed from the elements, or protected from 

 their natural enemies the jays, crows, 

 hawks, and owls. A tree with a natural cav- 

 ity is never selected, but one which has been 

 dead just long enough to have become soft 

 and brittle throughout. The bird goes in 

 horizontally for a few inches, making a hole 

 perfectly round and smooth and adapted to 

 his size ; then turns downward, gradually en- 

 larging the hole, as he proceeds, to the depth 

 of ten, fifteen, twenty inches, according to 

 the softness of the tree and the urgency of 

 the mother bird to deposit her eggs. While 

 excavating, male and female work alter- 

 nately. After one has been engaged fifteen 

 or twenty minutes, drilling and carrying out 

 chips, it ascends to an upper limb, utters a 

 loud call or two, when its mate soon appears, 

 and, alighting near it on the branch, the 

 pair chatter and caress a moment ; then the 

 fresh one enters the cavity and the other 

 flies away. 



A few days since, I climbed up to the nest 

 of the downy woodpecker, in the decayed 

 top of a sugar-maple. For better protection 



