exploring every branch of the tree, the female taking the lead, the male following her with an anxious note and look.  It was evident that the wife was to have her choice this time; and, like one who thoroughly knew her mind, she was proceeding to take it.  Finally the site was chosen upon a high branch, extending over one low wing of the house.  Mutual congratulations and caresses followed, when both birds flew away in quest of building material.  That most freely used is a sort of cotton-bearing plant which grows in old wornout fields.  The nest is large for the size of the bird, and very soft.  It is in every respect a first-class domicile.

On another occasion, while walking or rather sauntering in the woods (for I have discovered that one cannot run and read the book of nature), my attention was arrested by a dull hammering, evidently but a few rods off.  I said to myself, “Some one is building a house.”  From what I had previously seen, I suspected the builder to be a red-headed woodpecker in the top of a dead oak stub near by.  Moving cautiously in that direction, I perceived a round hole, 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, crows, 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 depth of ten, fifteen, twenty inches, according 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.