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The Woodland Apartment: Downy

Downy Woodpeckers are usually peaceable birds. But one thing could cause the strange actions of this one, a nest. Sure enough, about half way up in the larger of the Fig. 216. The plumage of the female was rough and worn. erect stubs was a little round hole, the entrance to the Downy home. Why should the wren so persistently stay in this dead tree when the woodpecker was striving so fiercely to drive him away? Again the answer revealed itself; lower down in a shorter limb was another hole, the wren home. Fitting a long-focus lens to the graflex I made a view of Fig. 217. The four little woodpeckers looked little different from their parents. the wren just as he commenced his song and also one of the woodpecker just after he had charged.

Investigation showed that Downy already had five, glossy, white eggs reposing on the bare wood floor of his house. The wrens probably had arrived that very morning for they were just commencing work on their home. Considering the quiet domestic life that these woodpeckers are wont to lead, it is little wonder that they objected to the presence of the boisterous and inquisitive pair of wrens. They thought, correctly, that the continual song would sure- Fig. 218. The plumage of the male was always sleek. ly betray the hiding place of the one spot most dear to them. Downy took upon himself the task of driving away the unwelcome neighbors. His persistence was commendable but the lack of good generalship on his part, rendered his efforts futile. Instead of devoting his energies to preventing the building of their nest, he chased the male bird every time it started to sing. The little wren seemed to regard this as a sort of bird-play and, apparently, greatly enjoyed Fig. 219. The adult female (on the left) about to feed one ot the young. it; with just a short break in his song he kept dodging and flying back and forth singing louder and louder as the chase grew warmer.

Meanwhile the female wren was just as busy as she could be, carrying in small twigs, grasses and feathers; she was so very industrious that the nest was wholly completed the first day.

Angry "chucks" proceeding from under the fallen trunk soon attracted attention to another tenant in this woodland apartment. A hole in the ground at the base of the stump showed where a Chipmunk had taken refuge and his sharp, muffled voice showed that he did not approve of Fig. 220. The little woodpeckers were not in the least afraid. Fig. 221. One of them was very modest and tried to back down out of sight. the intrusion. A closer inspection of Downy's nest brought to my attention a fourth family occupying the top flat. A small colony of wood-boring bees had taken possession of the decayed interior of the limb about two feet above the entrance to the woodpecker nest. A number of small holes furnished the doors to this apartment; from these doors, from time to time, came tiny clouds of dust resembling smoke, showing that the occupants were still at work with their excavating.

Never did apartment block have more congenial surround- Fig. 222. Little Downies can climb well too. ings, the field-lawn was gaily decked with moon-faced daisies and golden buttercups. On one side was a large swamp, its spagnum moss-covered floor studded here and there with the rosette-like pitcher plants with deep red flowers nodding on slender stalks above the half-filled leaf pitchers that lure and destroy many insects. The humming of the bees, as they bumbled about the spotted, orange cornucopias of the jewel weed, suspended from under the leaves of the rank-growing plants that fringed the swamp, made an accompaniment to the sweet songs of Wood Thrushes.