THE DOWNY WOODPECKER. 23 
with food while she is sitting; and, about the last week in June, the young 
are perceived making their way up the tree, climbing with considerable dex- 
terity. All this goes on with great regularity where no interruption is met 
with; but the House Wren, who also builds in the hollow of a tree, but 
who is neither furnished with the necessary tools, nor strength for excavat- 
-ing such an apartment for himself, allows the Woodpeckers to go on till he 
thinks it will answer his purpose, then attacks them with violence, and gen- 
erally succeeds in driving them off. I saw, some weeks ago, a striking 
example of this, where the Woodpeckers we are now describing, after com- 
mencing in a cherry tree, within a few yards of the house, and, having made 
considerable progress, were turned out by the Wren. The former began 
again on a pear tree in the garden, fifteen or twenty yards off, whence, after 
digging out a most complete apartment, and one egg being laid, they were 
once more assaulted by the same impertinent intruder, and finally forced to 
abandon the place. 
“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 wood, he labors sometimes for half an hour 
incessantly at the same spot, before he has succeeded in disloging and 
destroying 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 dis- 
tinctly heard several hundred yards off; and I have known him to be at 
work for two hours together on the same tree. Buffon calls this “incessant 
and their life, ‘a dull 
? 
toil and slavery ;’ their attitude, ‘a painful posture ; 
and insipid existence,’ — expressions improper because untrue, and absurd 
because contradictory. The posture is that for which the whole organiza- 
tion is particularly adapted; and though to a Wren or Humming Bird the 
labor would be both toil and slavery, yet to him it is, Iam convinced, as 
pleasant and as amusing as the sports of the chase to the hunter, or the 
sucking of flowers to the Humming Bird. The eagerness with which he 
traverses the upper and lower sides of the branches, the cheerfulness of his 
motions while digging into the tree and dislodging the vermin, justify this 
belief. He has a single note or chink, which, like the former species, he 
frequently repeats ; and when he flies off, or alights on another tree, he utters 
a rather shriller ery, composed of nearly the same kind of note, quickly 
reiterated. In fall and winter he associates with the Titmouse, Creeper, 
&e., 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 negligence of the proprietor had suf- 
