My notes refer to a bit of courtship observed during the actual breeding season, May 11, 1911, in a wooded swamp in Lexington, Mass., where the species used to nest every year. The female bird was perched motionless along a horizontal limb of a tree, and the male was poised in the air just behind and a little above her. He was hovering. His wings were more than half spread, I should say, and waving slowly up and down, a maneuver which displayed finely the rows of white spots on the flight feathers and coverts. William Brewster (1936), in his Concord journal under date of May 5, 1905, notes another form of courtship. He says: “At 8 A. M. saw a pair of Downy Woodpeckers in young oaks behind Ball’s Hill, behaving very strangely. They kept flying from tree to tree, flapping their wings slowly and feebly like butterflies, sometimes moving on a level plane, sometimes in long loops, occasionally sailing from tree to tree in a long _deep_ loop. Their wings had a strange fin-like appearance due, probably, to the way they were held or flexed. They both uttered a low, harsh, chattering cry, almost incessantly. No doubt this was a love performance, but they were male and female and both ‘showed off’ in the same way.” Lewis O. Shelley (1932), who, at East Westmoreland, N. H., has had an extensive experience with banded birds throughout the year, describes the courtship thus: Courtship activities begin rather early with the male’s tattooing commencing in the warm days of March. I believe the most active mating display is given by a new male that desires a mate, not by a male mated the previous year whose mate is still living. The latter male seems to give a protective display to its rival, seemingly just enough to hold his mate’s trust.