_Behavior._--The hairy woodpecker is a much shier, more retiring bird than the confiding little downy; it is also more active and noisier; it usually will not allow such close approach but will dodge around the trunk of a tree or fly away, if an intruder comes too near, bounding through the air in a series of graceful dips and rebounds. Rex Brasher (1926) followed one for four hours that alighted “on two hundred and eighteen different trees, an average of nearly one a minute! The longest time he remained on one tree was seven minutes. This was a dead chestnut with most of the bark still adhering. By far the larger proportion of the trees were old chestnuts, and under their loosely attached covering he found most successful hunting. Rough-bark species were preferred--chestnuts, oaks, old maples and hickories, about in the order named. Smooth-barked ones received little notice.” Dr. Morris Gibbs (1902) says: “Have my readers carefully watched a Woodpecker leave its perch on the trunk or limb? The bird throws itself backward from its vertical position by a leg spring, together with a tail movement, turns in the air in the fraction of a second and is sweeping away to the next perch. Arriving at the next resting place it makes a single counteracting stroke of the wings against the air, and perches lightly on the bark of limb or trunk.” Like all woodpeckers, the hairy is an expert climber, perfectly at home on the trunk of a tree, or even on the under side of a branch, where its strong claws enable it to cling in almost any position or to move about with astonishing rapidity and skill in any direction. Its stiff tail feathers act as a prop and help to support it while hammering away at the bark with its powerful beak. Forbush (1927) says that it “is the embodiment of sturdy energy and persistent industry. Active, cheerful, ever busy, its life of arduous toil brings but one reward, a liberal sustenance. It sometimes spends nearly an hour of hard labor in digging out a single borer, but commonly reaches the object of its quest in much less time.” _Voice._--The ordinary call of the hairy woodpecker is louder and shriller than that of the downy. Francis H. Allen says, in his notes, that it bears “about the same relation to it as the solitary sandpiper’s _peet-weet_ does to that of the spotted sandpiper. I hear it most frequently from the female. In fact, a female of the species that visits my place at all times of the year often utters this note continually, as if calling for a mate or claiming territory, but she never nests very near.”