The Downy Woodpecker 
219 
They form a merry company, these little forest-rangers, and never 
lack for music as they march. The shrill piping peto, pcto, peto, of the 
Titmouse mingles with the tenor-drum tap, tap of Downy’s bill on the 
bark, while ever and again the Chickadee, a mere bundle of nerves 
and fluffy feathers, “merrily sings his chick-a-dee-dee.” 
Not merely for company do these birds thus associate, but for 
mutual protection as well. Twenty pairs of sharp eyes are more likely 
to see an enemy approaching than is a single pair, and it is well for a 
small bird to keep a sharp lookout at this season, for 
it is more readily seen by a hawk in a leafless, wintry 
wood than if it were within a shady summer forest. 
Like all other woodpeckers. Downy’s mate lays white eggs. These 
usually number four or five, and are placed on a soft bed of fine chips 
at the bottom of a hole, which both parents have helped to dig, usually 
in the under side of a decayed limb of the tree. Nature is not prone 
Mutual 
Protection 
to use her coloring-matter on eggs which, like the woodpeckers’, are 
hid away in dark holes in trees. When the little ones are hatched 
Downy and his mate are kept very busy for a long time bringing them 
good things to eat, for the little woodpeckers have great appetites, which 
seem never to be satisfied. 
Downy is not only a very neighborly little fellow in his social 
relations with other wild birds fortunate enough to make his accjuaint- 
ance, but he also renders them a very great service in providing many 
homes which they can use. He and his mate usually dig out a new nest 
every year, and, as a rule, he makes a new hole for 
roosting purposes every winter. As a result of this. Downy’s 
many unused Downy Woodpecker’s nests are scattered Home 
about in all our orchards, groves, and woodlands, like empty houses. 
Some little birds like the protection afforded by a hollow in a tree, 
when in spring they get ready to build their nests, and these old 
abandoned Downy nests are just exactly what they are looking for. I 
remember finding a nest of one of these little woodpeckers in a small 
dead birch-stump standing near a brook by the edge of a pasture. The 
nest was only about five feet from the ground, and although many cattle 
passed that way each day, and the farmer’s house-cat sometimes wand- 
ered along the stream, the little white eggs were hatched and the young 
reared in safety. A year later I chanced again to pass that way. Great 
was my delight to find that, although the Downies had moved on to 
another place, their old home contained six as wide-awake little birds 
as anyone could wish to meet with on a bright spring morning. 
Scarcely had I made the discovery when their mother appeared, and lo ! 
it was our dainty friend the Chickadee. She and her 
mate had filled the hole half full of various kinds of 
soft material, and evidently were as proud of their 
snug home as if they had dug it out with their own weak little bills. 
One Sunday morning not long ago I heard a House Wren singing. 
His heart was full of joy. It was clear that he had won his mate for 
New 
Tenants 
