Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/360

344 him to move about between the ridges and dig away beneath the loose scales to his heart's content. He is probably capable of spending more time on a single tree than any of the others of his family. After having finished with the trunk he will carefully go over each branch from tip to base, never hurrying, but acting as if he knew that he had the



whole of eternity to do it in, and perfectly contented to spend half an hour on a space that he could cover with one of his wings. He is usually accompanied by other birds, for birds are not scattered evenly about the woods at any season of the year, but more in company or flocks of half a dozen or a dozen different species, brought together apparently for society's sake, and following any temporary leader from tree to tree.

Downy, however, seldom quits his work when the others see fit to depart, but keeps pegging away by himself until other birds come up, attracted, I fancy, by his rapping, to linger about in his company for a few minutes, and then off again as the whim seizes them. Like the majority of birds, the downy woodpecker is apt to be more in evidence during the spring and fall migration than at other times, but is never entirely absent, and often appears more than usually numerous immediately after a cold wave in midwinter. At this season he sleeps snugly in a hole cut out of the wood for the occasion, and evidently finds the getting up in the morning the most disagreeable part of it, for he seldom shows himself until long after the sun has begun to melt away the frost from the south side of the trees. He is most active now at midday, frequenting southern hillsides, where the air is warmest and the brown leaves show between the drifts, and where he is sure to have the company