DOWNY WOODPECKER. 
163 
larly carry out the chips, often strewing them at a 
distance to prevent suspicion. This operation some- 
times occupies the chief part of a week. Before she 
begins to lay, the female often visits the place, passes 
out and in, examines every part both of the exterior and 
interior, with great attention, as every prudent tenant 
of a new house ought to do, and at length takes complete 
possession. The eggs are generally six, pure white, and 
laid on the smooth bottom of the cavity. The male 
occasionally supplies the female with food while she is 
sitting ; and about the last week in June the young are 
perceived making their way up the tree, climbing with 
considerable dexterity. All this goes on with great 
regularity where no interruption is met with ; but the 
house wren, who also builds in the hollow of a tree, 
but who is neither furnished with the necessary tools 
nor strength for excavating such an apartment for 
himself, allows the woodpeckers to go on, till he thinks 
it will answer his purpose, then attacks them with 
violence, and generally succeeds in driving them off. 
X 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 impertinent 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 cor- 
roding 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 
