260 Birds of Buzzard's Roost 



stool. The bill is long, straight and wedge-shaped, with flat- 

 tened and truncated tip and sides more or less ridged and is ad- 

 mirably adapted to making such excavations, and pecking holes 

 in the bark and boles of the trees in search of insects and larvae 

 which are there concealed. And it is wonderful how he uses 

 his tail when doing these things. The tail feathers are short, 

 stiff and spinelike at the ends. He has four toes two in front 

 and two behind. With these he takes hold of the bole of the 

 tree with a vice-like grip, and then throws himself back on his 

 tail, which he uses as a fulcrum for support, and then he is 

 ready for work with his ivory-billed chisel. 



I have purposely used the masculine pronoun in describ- 

 ing the building of the nest. The books, as far as I have ex- 

 amined them, say that both the male and female take part in 

 building the nest. In the January number, 1902, of Birds and 

 Nature, is a carefully prepared article by William Harrison 

 Lewis in which he says, "For five years, with each returning 

 spring, a pair of red-headed woodpeckers has come, to make 

 their nest and rear their young near my cabin door. It was on 

 a cold drizzly day the last of April, when I observed my neigh- 

 k or * * * j-j e proved to be no stickler for time, working 

 early and late with short intermissions, when he would dart 

 out into the air and stop some passing insect that was quickly 

 disposed of. At the end of two weeks the nest had been com- 

 pleted on the same day the female arrived. Was it a coin- 

 cidence? It would seem so, for each succeeding year the male 

 preceded his mate by a fortnight, in which time the place was 

 selected and the new home made ready. * * * It was 

 about the tenth of May of the following spring when my red- 

 headed neighbor returned from his southern trip. * * * 

 After several days' work in the new nest, he came in contact 

 with the hard resinous heart of a knot that he was unable to 

 remove. To get by this obstruction and still be able to utilize 

 the work done, he changed the entrance from a circle to an 

 ellipse by extending it downward. This bit of strategy worked 

 well in getting by the difficulty, but it proved to be only tem- 

 porary. The nest was completed in the allotted two weeks 

 and the female came on time. After a very warm greeting she 

 was shown the nest for her approval ; but on sight of the new- 



