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NATURE STUDY. 
Woodpecker Architecture. 
BY EDWARD J. BURNHAM. 
When a lad, the attempt was once made to imitate, with 
a pocket-knife, the work of a woodpecker in excavating its 
home. The nest selected as a pattern was in a maple about 
six inches in diameter. The tree was dead, but had not 
been greatly mellowed by time, as the trial proved. Half 
an hour’s hard work with the knife-point left a more last¬ 
ing impression upon the mind than upon the tree. It is 
probable that the wood¬ 
pecker uses its beak both 
as a chisel and a forceps, 
the combination affording 
an evident advantage 
over the knife-point; but 
even so the task is for¬ 
midable . To drill a hori¬ 
zontal tunnel, two inches 
in diameter and five inch¬ 
es deep, in comparatively 
hard wood, is not light 
work; but, if a nest is in¬ 
tended, much more must 
be done, for a vertical 
shaft is to be drilled in 
the direction of the grain, 
Tig. i. in the case of the hairy 
woodpecker, four inches in diameter and six inches deep— 
and all this to be accomplished by a bird less than ten 
inches in length from tip to tip, by means only of a sharp 
beak and the muscles of a somewhat slender neck. But the 
little architect, like a good carpenter, evidently takes pleas- 
