, about the size of that made
by an inch-and-a-half auger, near the top of the decayed trunk, and
the white chips of the workman strewing the ground beneath. When but a
few paces from the tree, my foot 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
motionless, 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 occupation down in
the heart of the old tree, he should have been so alert and watchful
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 depositing the eggs on the fine
fragments of wood at the bottom of the cavity. Though the nest is not
especially an artistic 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, 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 horizontally for
a few inches, making a hole perfectly round and smooth and adapted to
his size, then turns downward, gradually enlarging the hole, as he
proceeds to the softness of the tree and the urgency of the mother
bird to deposit her eggs. While excavating, male and female work
alternately. After one has been engaged fifteen or twenty minutes,
drilling and carrying out chips, it ascends to an upper limb, utters a
loud call or two, when its mate soon appears, and, alighting near it
on the branch, the pair chatter and caress a moment, then the fresh
one enters the cavity and the other flies away.

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
diameter, was made immediately beneath a branch which stretched out
almost horizontally from the main stem. It appeared 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
approached the nest, thinking it was the