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ground beneath. When'but'a few paces 
from the tree, my/fdpt pressed ‘upon a 
dry twig, which gave forth a very slight 
snap. Instantly the hammering ceased, 
and a scarlet head appeared at the door. 
Though I remained perfectly motion- 
less, forbearing even to wink till my 
eyes smarted, the bird refused to go 
on with his work, but flew quietly off to 
a neighboring tree. What surprised 
me was, that amid his busy occupa- 
tion down in the heart of the old tree, 
he should have been so alert and watch- 
ful as to catch the slightest sound from 
without. 
The woodpeckers all build in about 
the same manner, excavating the trunk 
or branch of a decayed tree and depos- 
iting the eggs on the fine fragments of 
wood at the bottom of the cavity. 
Though the nest is not especially an ar- 
tistic work, — requiring strength rather 
than skill, — yet the eggs and the young 
of few other birds are so completely 
housed from the elements, or protected 
from their natural enemies — the jays, 
crows, hawks, and owls. A tree with 
a natural cavity is never selected, but 
one which has been dead just long 
enough to have become soft and brittle 
throughout. The bird goes in horizon- 
tally for a few inches, making a hole 
perfectly round and smooth and adapted 
to his size, then turns downward, grad- 
ually enlarging the hole, as he proceeds, 
to the depth of ten, fifteen, twenty inches, 
according to the softness of the tree and 
the requirements of the female in lay- 
ing her eggs. A few days since I 
climbed up to the nest of the downy 
woodpecker, in the decayed top of a 
sugar-maple. For better protection 
against driving rains, the hole, which 
was rather more than an inch in diam- 
eter, was made immediately beneath a 
branch which stretched out almost hori- 
zontally fromthe main stem. Itappeared 
merely a deeper shadow upon the dark 
and mottled surface of the bark with 
which the branches were covered, and 
could not be detected by the eye until 
one was within a few feet of it. The 
young chirped vociferously as I ap- 
proached the nest, thinking it was the 
Bird’ s-Nests. 
[ June, 
old one with food; but the clamor 
suddenly ceased as I put my hand on 
that part of the trunk in which they 
were concealed, the unusual jarring 
and rustling alarming them into silence. 
The cavity, which was about fifteen 
inches deep, was gourd-shaped, and was 
wrought out with great skill and regu- 
larity. The walls were quite smooth 
and clean and new. 
I shall never forget the circumstance 
of observing a pair of yellow-bellied 
woodpeckers, —the most rare and se- 
cluded, and, next to the red-headed, 
the most beautiful species found in our 
woods, — breeding in an old, truncated 
beech in the Beaverkill Mountains, an 
offshoot of the Catskills. We had.been 
travelling, three brothers of us, all day 
in search of a trout lake, which lay far 
in among the mountains, had twice lost 
our course in the trackless forest, and, 
weary and hungry, had sat down to rest 
upon a decayed log. The chattering 
of the young, and the passing to and 
fro of the parent birds, soon arrested 
my attention, The entrance to the 
nest was on the east side of the tree, 
about twenty-five feet from the ground. 
At intervals of scarcely a minute, the 
old birds, one after another, would 
alight upon the edge of the hole with a 
grub or worm in their beaks; then each 
in turn would make a bow or two, cagt 
an eye quickly around, and by a single 
movement place itself in the neck of 
the passage. Here it would pause a 
moment, as if to determine in which 
expectant mouth to place the morsel, 
and then disappear within. In about 
half a minute, during which time the 
chattering of the young gradually sub- 
sided, the bird would again emerge, but 
this time bearing in its beak the ordure 
of one of the helpless family. Flying 
away very slowly with head lowered 
and extended, as if anxious to hold the 
offensive object as far from its plumage 
as possible, the bird dropped the unsa- 
vory morsel in the course of a few yards, 
and, alighting on a tree, wiped its bill on 
the bark and moss. This seems to be the 
order all day, — carrying in and carrying 
out. I watched the birds for an hour, 
