THE WOODPECKERS. 143 
CHAPTER VI. 
THE WOODPECKERS. 
Sa class the Woodpeckers live on trees and find 
their food by hunting the insect-life that lurks 
beneath the bark. They can run over an upright 
trunk of a tree with great rapidity, and move, too, in 
a sidewise manner that is as quick as direct upward 
travel. They are not given to clinging, head down- 
ward, to the trees as does the nuthatch, but it is by 
no means an impossible position for them to assume. 
Their beaks are solid, sharp, and so fashioned that 
wood may be readily cut away, and this work so 
frequently indulged in has given rise to the common 
name, woodpecker. They nest in trees, cutting a 
deep hole in living or dead wood as they see fit, and 
without any lining other than a few fine chips in the 
very bottom of the excavation, lay therein a few pure 
white eggs. So fond are they of working in wood 
that they sometimes make elaborate nests in mid- 
winter, and abandon them without so much as once 
resting there overnight. 
As musicians, some of them are excellent drum- 
mers, but as vocalists, not one of our United States 
species is a success. They can call, squeak, squeal, 
and splutter, but I know of no other utterance not 
described by these forbidding terms. But as drum- 
mers they claim our attention. There come in course 
