CARPENTERS IN FEATHERS 165 



blessedness with no thought now for the comfort of his 

 mate, who, happily, is quite as good a carpenter as he, and 

 as able to care for herself. She may make a winter home 

 or keep the nursery. 



Very early in the spring you will hear the downy, like the 

 other woodpeckers, beating a rolling tattoo on some reso- 

 nant limb, and if you can creep dose enough you will see his 

 strong head hammering so fast that there is only a blur 

 above his shoulders. This drumming is his love song. 

 The grouse is even a more wonderful performer, for he 

 drums without a drum, which no woodpecker can do. The 

 woodpecker drums not only to win a mate, however, but to 

 tell where a tree is decayed and likely to be an easy spot 

 to chisel, and also to startle borers beneath the bark, that 

 he may know just where to tunnel for them, when they 

 move with a faint noise, which his sharp ears instantly de- 

 tect. 



This master workman, who is scarcely larger than an 

 English sparrow, occasionally pauses in his hammering 

 long enough to utter a short, sharp jieek, peek, often con- 

 tinued into a rattling cry that ends as abruptly as it began. 

 You may know him from his larger and louder-voiced 

 cousin, the hairy woodpecker, not only by this call-note, 

 but by the markings of the outer tail feathers, which, in the 

 downy, are white barred with black; and in the hairy, are 

 white without the black bars. Both birds are much 

 striped and barred with black and white and the novice 

 could confuse them only with the black and white creeping 

 warbler. 



When the weather grows cold, hang a bone with a little 

 meat on it, cooked or raw, or a lump of suet in some tree 

 beyond the reach of cats; then watch for the downy wood- 



