CHAPTER XX. 



WOODPECKERS: PHOTOGRAPHICALLY AND PTERYLOGRAPHICALLY 



CONSIDERED. 



(PM.) 



T different times during the last few years I Lave 

 pointed out in the pages of various journals some of 

 the advantages to be gained by making good photo- 

 graphic pictures of living birds, and I believe it is safe 

 to say that, at the present time, these advantages are now hardly 

 questioned by any one. We often see in properly taken photo- 

 graphs of birds characters that are never recorded by any other 

 means. My opportunities to make such pictures of living ani- 

 mals of all kinds have never been better- than they are to-day, 

 and no chance of the kind is allowed to slip by. By .close study 

 of previous failures and experiences, present successes are now 

 of more frequent occurrence, and it is not altogether a rare thing 

 to produce a result worthy of permanent record. 



Recently I have been doing something with the woodpeckers, 

 and have been enabled to secure one or two pretty good things. 

 This was my fortune, upon the 21st of last March (1896) and the 

 day following, when I captured alive an adult male specimen of 

 the Downy woodpecker (Dryobates pubescens), and brought him 

 to my studio in excellent condition. He at once gave evidence 

 of being a gentle and the very best kind of subject. It was too 

 late to do anything with him the first day, so he was confined in 

 a cage until next morning, at which time he drank very freely of 

 water with great apparent relish, and, being placed upon a hori- 

 zontal limb with a shallow, scooped out place on top of it, he rap- 

 idly devoured upward of fifty soft Iarva3 that I put in there be- 

 fore him as his breakfast. His extreme gentleness was remark- 

 able, and he made scarcely any objection to being freely handled, 

 seeming perfectly at home in half an hour after his capture. 

 Owing to his great activity I found it difficult to get a photograph 

 of him upon a horizontal limb, for he betrayed all the restless- 

 ness of his genus the moment he was placed upon it in that posi- 

 tion. Sometimes he seemed to be upon all sides of it at once, 

 so quick were his movements. Every once in a while he would 

 stop and pound away at the bark, diligently searching for the 



