r, my favorite
neighbor among the winter birds, to whom I will mainly devote the
remainder of this chapter. His retreat is but a few paces from my own,
in the decayed limb of an apple-tree which he excavated several autumns
ago. I say "he" because the red plume on the top of his head proclaims
the sex. It seems not to be generally known to our writers upon
ornithology that certain of our woodpeckers--probably all the winter
residents--each fall excavate a limb or the trunk of a tree in which
to pass the winter, and that the cavity is abandoned in the spring,
probably for a new one in which nidification takes place. So far as I
have observed, these cavities are drilled out only by the males. Where
the females take up their quarters I am not so well informed, though I
suspect that they use the abandoned holes of the males of the previous
year.

The particular woodpecker to which I refer drilled his first hole in my
apple-tree one fall four or five years ago. This he occupied till the
following spring when he abandoned it. The next fall he began a hole
in an adjoining limb, later than before, and when it was about half
completed a female took possession of his old quarters. I am sorry to
say that this seemed to enrage the male, very much, and he persecuted
the poor bird whenever she appeared upon the scene. He would fly at her
spitefully and drive her off. One chilly November morning, as I passed
under the tree, I heard the hammer of the little architect in his
cavity, and at the same time saw the persecuted female sitting at
the entrance of the other hole as if she would fain come out. She was
actually shivering, probably from both fear and cold. I understood the
situation at a glance; the bird was afraid to come forth and brave the
anger of the male. Not till I had rapped smartly upon the limb with my
stick did she come out and attempt to escape; but she had not gone ten
feet from the tree before the male was in hot pursuit, and in a few
moments had driven her back to the same tree, where she tried to
avoid him among the branches. A few days after, he rid himself of his
unwelcome neighbor in the following ingenious manner: he fairly scuttled
the other cavity; he drilled a hole into the bottom of it that let in
the light and the cold, and I saw the female there no more. I did not
see him in the act of rendering this tenement uninhabitable; but one
morning, behold it was punctured at the bottom, and the circumstances
all