WOODPECKER AND WIDGEON 295 



accomplishment. I have watched all our three species 

 of woodpeckers in England when drumming scores 

 of times, and even when near and with my binocular 

 on the bird it was hard to see that the head moved 

 at all, it moved with such celerity, rocking from side 

 to side, apparently delivering the blows on the wood 

 with the sides of the beak. If I drum with a vulcanite 

 or metal pencil or pen on a branch as hard and as 

 rapidly as I am able, the sound would not carry 

 twenty yards, whereas I can hear the green wood- 

 pecker drumming with his much smaller pencil and 

 the small power in his neck muscles not less than 

 a quarter of a mile away. He also has the power to 

 modify the sound and use it to express different 

 moods and emotions. It is a call to inform his mate 

 of his whereabouts; it is also a love call; also a 

 challenge to a rival or intruder on his domain; and 

 he also indulges in it at intervals solely for its own 

 sake — for the pleasure the sound gives him — and it 

 is then a sort of instrumental music. 



But almost all bird sounds that are not vocal are 

 made with the wings — chiefly with the hard stiff 

 quills, or flight feathers. Thus, some gallinaceous 

 species trail their hard feathers and produce a 

 scraping sound when performing their dances. In 

 other species there are wing-slappings and clappings. 

 The slapping performance is remarkable in one species 

 I am familiar with — the widgeon of South America. 

 Like its European relation, it is a loquacious bird 

 with a fine voice — whistles and trills. It has the 

 habit of rising in small companies of five or six to a 



