202 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



this is one of the season sounds, calling the roll of birds 

 and insects, the reveille. 



May 10, 1853. How far the woodpecker's tapping is 

 heard ! And no wonder, for he taps very hard as well as 

 fast, to make a hole, and the dead, dry wood is very re- 

 sounding withal. Now he taps on one part of the tree, and 

 it yields one note ; then on that side, a few inches distant, 

 and it yields another key ; propped on its tail the while. 



Jan. 6, 1855. I see where a woodpecker has drilled 

 a hole about two inches over in a decayed white maple ; 

 quite recently, for the chippings are strewn over the ice 

 beneath and were the first sign that betrayed it. The 

 tree was hollow. Is it for a nest next season ? * There 

 was an old hole higher up. 



March 8, 1859. I see there a dead white pine, some 

 twenty-five feet high, which has been almost entirely 

 stripped of its bark by the woodpeckers. Where any 

 bark is left, the space between it and the wood is 

 commonly closely packed with the gnawings of worms, 

 which appear to have consumed the inner bark. But 

 where the bark is gone, the wood also is eaten to some 

 depth, and there are numerous holes penetrating deep 

 into the wood. Over all this portion, which is almost all 

 the tree, the woodpeckers have knocked off the bark 

 and enlarged the holes in pursuit of the worms. 



March 11, 1859. But methinks the sound of the 

 woodpecker tapping is as much a spring note as any 

 these mornings; it echoes peculiarly in the air of a 

 spring morning. 



[See also under Robin, p. 391 ; General and Miscel- 

 laneous, p. 431.] 



1 [Probably for winter quarters.] 



