ree strokes
following each other rapidly, succeeded by two louder ones with longer
intervals between them, and that has an effect upon the alert ear as
if the solitude itself had at last found a voice--does that suggest
anything less than a deliberate musical performance? In fact, our
woodpeckers are just as characteristically drummers as is the ruffed
grouse, and they have their particular limbs and stubs to which they
resort for that purpose. Their need of expression is apparently just
as great as that of the song-birds, and it is not surprising that they
should have found out that there is music in a dry, seasoned limb which
can be evoked beneath their beaks.

A few seasons ago a downy woodpecker, probably the individual one who is
now my winter neighbor, began to drum early in March in a partly decayed
apple-tree that stands in the edge of a narrow strip of woodland near
me. When the morning was still and mild I would often hear him through
my window before I was up, or by half-past six o'clock, and he would
keep it up pretty briskly till nine or ten o'clock, in this respect
resembling the grouse, which do most of their drumming in the forenoon.
His drum was the stub of a dry limb about the size of one's wrist. The
heart was decayed and gone, but the outer shell was hard and resonant.
The bird would keep his position there for an hour at a time. Between
his drummings he would preen his plumage and listen as if for the
response of the female, or for the drum of some rival. How swift his
head would go when he was delivering his blows upon the limb! His beak
wore the surface perceptibly. When he wished to change the key, which
was quite often, he would shift his position an inch or two to a knot
which gave out a higher, shriller note. When I climbed up to examine his
drum he was much disturbed. I did not know he was in the vicinity,
but it seems he saw me from a near tree, and came in haste to the
neighboring branches, and with spread plumage and a sharp note demanded
plainly enough what my business was with his drum. I was invading his
privacy, desecrating his shrine, and the bird was much put out. After
some weeks the female appeared; he had literally drummed up a mate; his
urgent and oft-repeated advertisement was answered. Still the drumming
did not cease, but was quite as fervent as before. If a mate could be
won by drumming she could be kept and entertained by more drumming;
courtship should not end with marriage