Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/130

124 feet in length was brought to the nest-site, and passed five times round the larger, and twice about the smaller of the two twigs, with overlaps due to working each string-end independently. Having thus fixed it firmly at the middle, the intelligent course would have been to have incorporated the loose ends with the nest. Instead, they were both left flying free, so that this labor, however begun, was not intelligently finished. The eighteen' inches of free string really served to render the nest conspicuous.

Woodpecker Drilling for Insects.—While in the Maine woods on August 13, my attention was drawn to the freshly drilled hole of a

 illustrating an act probably instinctively begun, but not intelligently finished, since the ends of the twine were not incorporated with the structure, but left hanging free.

woodpecker (Fig. 24), in a pine tree, which was two feet in diameter at the base, and apparently sound. This hole, which was remarkable for its size, had been cut at a point seven feet up, through nearly five inches of solid sap wood, to the heart of the tree, and was 9 inches long, 5 inches wide, and 8 inches deep. These dimensions would imply the removal of over three hundred cubic inches of wood, and the chips, some of which were four inches long (Fig. 25), were plainly the work of our largest northern species, the pileated woodpecker or log cock.

A moment's inspection showed that this woodpecker had tunneled