334 BIRDS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



These birds are sometimes shot, but their practice of eating 

 ants and their larvae gives a taste to their flesh. Sometimes 

 they are persecuted as fruit stealers, but most unwisely, for all 

 the woodpeckers are very efficient aids to the horticulturist. 

 When they alight on a tree, they listen attentively, and the 

 slightest movement of an insect under the bark does not escape 

 them. They enlarge the hole by repeated blows of their pow- 

 erful bill ; then striking in their long, viscid tongues, with their 

 horny tip, they seize the grub, and put a period to his mining. 



They build in hollow places, found, or made for the pur- 

 pose, in trees ; and such is the strength of their bill, that they 

 have been known to make excavations a foot and a half deep, 

 into the heart of the hardest wood. Their blows may be 

 heard at a great distance, as loud as those of a hammer. The 

 eggs, about six in number, and pure white, are deposited on 

 bits of the wood. Soon after the young are hatched, they 

 leave their den, and are fed on the branches of the tree till they 

 are able to fly. 



The Pileated Woodpecker, Picus pileatus, is a large and 

 powerful bird, not uncommon in the woodlands of Massachu- 

 setts, but seldom found in the vicinity of large towns. It does 

 not leave us in winter, like the preceding, but remains through- 

 out the year in our wild forests ; and almost every wood-cutter 

 can describe the rapid and angry manner in which he strips 

 the bark from a hemlock or spruce, throwing it in long flakes 

 around him. Should any one pursue him, he keeps far out of 

 his reach, laughing, as one would think from his loud cackle, 

 at his enemy's vain endeavors. He never, under any circum- 

 stances, relents from his natural wildness. If wounded, he 

 makes fierce resistance to all attempts to seize him ; and if 

 overpowered and carried captive, spends all his time in trying 

 to escape from his prison. This he can easily do, unless the 

 materials are very hard and strong ; and if he does not succeed, 

 he can make an impression in an hour on the walls of his house 

 of bondage, which the carpenter cannot repair in a day. 



This bird excavates a gallery with its bill, for a nest, in 



