THE WOODPECKERS. 145 
alent notion that the sap of trees, in season, supplies 
them with the bulk of their nourishment. We will 
return to this subject again. The “ Hairy” is the 
larger of these two species, being about nine inches 
in length, while the “ Downy” is but little over six 
inches long. So far as my personal observation goes, 
it is not as abundant anywhere as the “ Downy,” and 
wholly absent from many wide tracts within its gen- 
eral range. It is a bird of timber land and not of 
the open country, and shows little disposition to 
accommodate itself to a new order of things. Cut 
down your trees and they will go to some more (to 
them) hospitable region. Wilson speaks of the hairy 
woodpecker as a lover of orchards, but when Wilson 
wrote it was not so long a journey from an orchard 
to a woodland tract. 
But the little downy woodpecker is everywhere. 
There is not a tree too small for it to consider, and 
when trees fail altogether, it will climb over an old 
grape-arbor and be happy in so artificial a surround- 
ing. They come fearlessly into town and visit every 
shade tree in the streets, and have been seen to peck 
at a fly on the wrong side of a window-pane. 
When the warm weather fairly sets in, a pair of 
these little woodpeckers will hollow out a commodi- 
ous nest in a dead tree and rear a brood that seem 
to be hungrier than most babies, considering the 
amount of food the parent birds carry to them. 
Nuttall says,— 
“These birds have a shrill cackle and a reiterated call, which they 
frequently utter while engaged in quest of their prey. In the au- 
tumn they feed on various kinds of berries as well as insects.” 
G B 13 
