104 DOWNY WOODPECKER. 
DOWNY WOODPECKER.—PICUS PUBESCENS — Fic. 38. 
Picus pubescens, Linn. Syst. i. 175, 15.— Gmel. Syst. i. 435, — Petit pic varié de 
Virginie, Buffon, vii. 76.— Smallest Woodpecker, Catesb. i. 21.— Arct. Zool. 
ii, No. 963. — Little Woodpecker, Lath. Synop. ii. 573, 19. Id. Sup. 106.— 
Peale’s Museum, No. 1986. 
DENDROCOPUS PUBESCENS. —Swatnson. 
Picus pubescens, Bonap. Synop. p. 46.— Wagl. Syst. Av. Picus, No. 23.— Den- 
i t drocopus pubescens, North, Zool. ii. p. 307. : 
Tus is the smallest of our Woodpeckers,* and so exactly resembles 
the former in its tints and markings, and in almost every thing except 
its diminutive size, that 1 wonder how it passed through the Count de 
Buffon’s hands without being branded as a “spurious race, degenerated 
by the influence of food, climate, or some unknown cause.” But, 
though it has escaped this infamy, charges of a much more heinous 
nature have been brought against it, not only by the writer above 
mentioned, but by the whole venerable body of zoologists in Europe, 
who have treated of its history, viz., that it is almost constantly boring 
and digging into apple-trees, and that it isthe most destructive of its 
whole genus to the orchards. The first part of this charge I shall not 
pretend to deny ; how far the other is founded in truth will appear in 
the sequel. Like the two former species, it remains with us the whole 
year. About the middle of May, the male and female look out for a 
suitable place for the reception of their eggs and young. An apple, 
pear, or cherry-tree, often in the near neighborhood of the farm-house, 
is generally fixed upon for this purpose. The tree is minutely recon- 
noitred for several days previous to the operation, and the work is 
first begun by the male, who cuts out a hole in the solid wood as cir- 
cular as if described with a pair of compasses. He is occasionally 
relieved by the female, both parties working with the most indefatigable 
diligence. The direction of the hole, if made in the body of the tree, 
is generally downwards, by an angle of thirty or forty degrees, for the 
distance of six or eight inches, and then straight down for ten or 
twelve more ; within, roomy, capacious, and as smooth as if polished by 
the cabinet-maker ; but the entrance is judiciously left just so large as 
* This species, as Wilson observes, is the smallest of the American Woodpeckers, 
and it will fill the place in that country which is occupied in Europe and Great Brit- 
ain by the Picus minor, or Least Woodpecker ; unlike the latter, however, it is both 
abundant, and is familiar in its manners, 
Mr. Swainson, in a note to the Northern Zoology, thinks that several American 
species are confounded under this. “ We have no doubt,” he says, “ that two, if 
not three, species of these little Woodpeckers, from different parts of North America, 
have been confounded under the common ,name of pubescens.” He proposes to 
distinguish them by the names of Dendrocopus medianus, inhabiting the middle 
parts of North America, chiefly different from D. pubescens in the greater portion 
of red on the hind head, relative length of the quills, and shape of the tail-feathers ; 
and Dendrocopus meridionalis, inhabiting Georgia, fess than D. pubescens, and with 
the under plumage hair brown. — Ep. 
