l6o DOWNY WOODPECKER. 



and generally succeeds in driving them off. I saw some weeks 

 ago a striking example of this, where the woodpeckers 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 imper- 

 tinent intruder, and finally forced to abandon the place. 



The principal characteristics of this little bird are diligence, 

 familiarity, 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 

 crevices between the bark and wood, he labours 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, with- 

 out in the least embarrassing 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 exist- 

 ence ; " expressions improper, because untrue ; and absurd, 

 because contradictory. The posture is that for which the 

 whole organisation of his frame is particularly adapted ; and 

 though, to a wren or a humming bird, the labour 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 



