OF THE UNITED STATES 277 



bird at once disengaged itself, and with an awkward, quivering 

 stagger, arose as best it could, semi-erect, and stretching out its 

 neck to its utmost capacity, gave vent to a grunting, hissing, 

 noisy quaver that, when added to the voices of the other six, 

 could be heard only too distinctly all over the house. At this 

 time all their mouths gaped wide open, and they relished both 

 water dropped into them, as well as a bolus of bird food", big 

 enough in each case for a half-grown chicken. A moment or so 

 after the source of their alarm was withdrawn they gradually 

 settled back into their former huddled mass, and with equal de- 

 liberation lowered their voices to again resume the low snoring 

 sounds above described. It was surprising how little it took to 

 arouse them; one might hold over the group the expanded hand, 

 at the distance of a foot or more away, and then, by an up and 

 down gentle movement, so as to fan the bunch in the very slight- 

 est degree imaginable, they would at once arise en masse, and 

 create the same unearthly disturbance I have already attempted 

 to describe. There is no question but that the least breath from 

 a parent's wing at the nest's entrance would be ample to thus 

 excite this strange crew; and I suppose this has been brought 

 about from the fact that they have nothing else to do but lie there 

 and await being fed, with all their mental armament concen- 

 trated upon listening for the coming of the old bird with the juicy 

 Iarva3. As there seemed to be no end to their appetites, I'll war- 

 rant the old ones are kept busy to supply their hungry maws, and 

 are pretty tired by the time nightfall comes round. 



One thing about these young woodpeckers struck me as very 

 peculiar, and that was the remarkable size of the excrementitious 

 mass any one of them passed at a time, as well as the fact that it 

 seemed to require the action of the whole body to accomplish the 

 feat and no wonder. On every occasion, in nature, this is at 

 once removed from the nest by a parent bird, who carries it out 

 and drops it at some little distance. 



In cutting this nest, I believe the birds had simply very slightly 

 enlarged the hollow heart already destroyed by rot, and carried 

 their work down for about two feet. Below this point for sev- 

 eral feet the tree was likewise hollow, and the strange part of it 

 was, that the bottom of the nest was composed of sawdust not 

 very strongly stuck together, but strong enough to compose a 

 partition a little over an inch thick, that horizontally and com- 

 pletely divided off the nest part from the continued hollow of the 



