. If the bird felt musical before,
of course he felt much more so now. Besides that, the gentle deities
needed propitiating in behalf of the nest and young as well as in behalf
of the mate. After a time a second female came, when there was war
between the two. I did not see them come to blows, but I saw one female
pursuing the other about the place, and giving her no rest for several
days. She was evidently trying to run her out of the neighborhood. Now
and then she, too, would drum briefly as if sending a triumphant message
to her mate.

The woodpeckers do not each have a particular dry limb to which they
resort at all times to drum, like the one I have described. The woods
are full of suitable branches, and they drum more or less here and
there as they are in quest of food; yet I am convinced each one has its
favorite spot, like the grouse, to which it resorts, especially in the
morning. The sugar-maker in the maple-woods may notice that their
sound proceeds from the same tree or trees about his camp with great
regularity. A woodpecker in my vicinity has drummed for two seasons on
a telegraph pole, and he makes the wires and glass insulators ring.
Another drums on a thin board on the end of a long grape-arbor, and on
still mornings can be heard a long distance.

A friend of mine in a Southern city tells me of a red-headed woodpecker
that drums upon a lightning-rod on his neighbor's house. Nearly every
clear, still morning at certain seasons, he says, this musical rapping
may be heard. "He alternates his tapping with his stridulous call, and
the effect on a cool, autumn-like morning is very pleasing."

The high-hole appears to drum more promiscuously than does the downy. He
utters his long, loud spring call, whick--whick--whick--whick, and then
begins to rap with his beak upon his perch before the last note has
reached your ear. I have seen him drum sitting upon the ridge of the
barn. The log cock, or pileated woodpecker, the largest and wildest of
our Northern species, I have never heard drum. His blows should wake the
echoes.

When the woodpecker is searching for food, or laying siege to some
hidden grub, the sound of his hammer is dead or muffled, and is heard
but a few yards. It is only upon dry, seasoned timber, freed of its
bark, that he beats his reveille to spring and wooes his mate.

Wilson was evidently familiar with this vernal drumming of the
woodpeckers, but quite misinterprets it. Speaking of the red