SECRETARY'S REPORT. 99 



" 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 in crevices between 

 the bark and the wood, he labors sometimes for half an hour at 

 the same spot before he has succeeded in dislodging and destroy- 

 ing 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 heard distinctly several hundred 

 yards off, and I have known him to be at work for two hours 

 together on the same tree. The eagerness with which he 

 traverses the upper and lower sides of the branches, the cheer- 

 fulness of his cry, the liveliness of his motions while digging 

 into the tree and dislodging the vermin, attest to the fact that 

 the description by Buffon, that his life is but a dull and insipid 

 existence of incessant toil and slavery, is far from the truth. 



In fall and winter he associates with the titmouse, creeper, 

 &c., 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 negli- 

 gence of the proprietor had suffered to accumulate, and probing 

 every crevic6. In fact, the orchard is his favorite resort. 



" 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, &c., 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 some- 

 times far beyond it, the |,whole bark of many apple-trees is 

 perforated in this manner, so as to appear as if made by succes- 

 sive discharges of buckshot ; and our little woodpecker 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 harmless, 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 



