184 DOWNY WOODPECKER. 



dent tenant of a new house ought to do, and at length takes complete 

 possession. The eggs are generally six, pure white, and laid on the 

 smooth bottom of the cavity. The male occasionally supplies the 

 female 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 dexterity. 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 excavating such an apartment for himself, allows 

 the Woodpeckers to go on, till he thinks it will answer his purpose, then 

 attacks him with violence and generally succeeds in driving them off. 

 I saw, some weeks ago, a striking example of this, where the Wood- 

 peckers we are now describing, after commencing 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, famil- 

 iarity, 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 the crevices between the bark and wood, he 

 labors, sometimes for half an hour, incessantly at the same spot, before ■ 

 he has succeeded in dislodging 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 embar- 

 rassing him ; the strokes of his bill are distinctly 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 toil and slavery," — 

 their attitude, " a painful posture," — and their life, " a dull and 

 insipid existence;" expressions improper, because untrue; and absurd, 

 because contradictory. The posture is that for which the whole 

 organization of his frame is particularly adapted ; and though to a 

 Wren, or a Humming-bird, the labor would be both toil and slavery, 

 yet to him it is, I am 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 cry, and the 

 liveliness 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 cry, composed 



