BIRDS. 71 



and woll-defined groups with which we are acquainted. 

 Buffon has drawn a melting picture of the miseries of a 

 woodpecker's life. According to the views of the eloquent, 

 but eccentric, and sometimes inconsistent Frenchman, no 

 bird which earns its subsistence by spoil leads a life of 

 such painful labour. Nature appears to have condemned 

 it to incessant toil. While others freely employ their 

 courage or address, and either glide along on fearless 

 and rapid wing, or lurk insidiously in closer ambush, the 

 woodpecker is constrained to drag on a miserable existence, 

 in boring through the scaly bark and the unyielding fibres' 

 of the hardest trees. Necessity suffers no intermission of 

 its labours, nor any interval of sound repose. Even the 

 darkness of the night brings no solace to its sufferings, for 

 the nocturnal hours are spent in the same painful posture 

 as those of day. It never shares in the joyous sports of 

 the other inhabitants of the forests, and so far from joining 

 in their glad responses, it rather deepens the sadness of the 

 woodland glades by its wild and melancholy cries. Its 

 movements are quick, its gestures full of inquietude, and 

 it seems to shun the society even of its own kind. 



Such is a sketch of Buffon's more lengthened picture. 

 Let us console ourselves by an inspection of another and 

 more pleasing portrait. " No sooner," says Mr. Audubon, 

 " has spring called them (the golden-winged woodpeckers) 

 to the pleasant duty of making love, as it is called, than 

 their voice, which by-the-way is not at all disagreeable to 

 the ear of man, is heard from the tops of high decayed 

 trees, proclaiming with delight the opening of the welcome 

 season. Their note at this period is merriment itself, as it 

 imitates a prolonged and jovial laugh, heard at a con- 

 siderable distance. Several males pursue a female, 

 reach her, and to prove the force and truth of their love 

 bow their heads, spread their tails, and move sideways, 

 backwards, and forwards, performing such antics as might 

 induce any one witnessing them, if not of a most morose 

 temper, to join his laugh to theirs. The female flies to 

 another tree, where she is closely followed by one, two, or 

 even half a dozen of these gay suitors, and where again 

 the same ceremonies are gone through. No fightings occur, 

 no jealousies exist among these beaux, until a marked 

 preference is shown to some individual, when the rejected 



