232 NOTES ON THE 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 



Fourth quill longest; third a little shorter: first considera- 

 bly shorter; general color above black, much variegated with 

 white; feathers of the back and rump brownish-white, spotted 

 with black; crown scarlet, bordered by black on the sides of the 

 head and nape; a streak from above the eye, and another from 

 the bristles of the bill, passing below the eye and into the yel 

 lowish of the belly, and a stripe along the edges of the wing 

 coverts, white; a triangular broad spot of scarlet on the chin, 

 bordered on each side by black stripes from the lower mandi- 

 ble, which meet behind and extend into a large quadrate spot 

 on the breast; rest of under parts yellowish-white, streaked on 

 the sides with black; inner web of inner tail-feather, white 

 spotted with black; outer feathers black, edged and spotted 

 with white. Female with the red of the throat replaced by 

 white. Iris dark hazel. 



Length, 8.25; wing, 4.75; tail, 3.30. 



Habitat, North America, north and east of the Great Plains. 



CEOPHLffilS PILEATIS (L.) (405.) 

 PILEATED WOODPECKER. 



This is a magnificent bird as seen in his own haunts in the 

 forest. I shall not soon forget the occasion, nor the scene 

 which embraced the species as the central figure. It was a 

 stirring, crisp, October morning in the heavy forest belt lying 

 west of Minneapolis about twenty miles, where I was putting 

 in a day amongst the Ruffed Grouse which then literally 

 abounded there. My attention was at first arrested by a ham- 

 mering that resembled that of the Woodpeckers except in its 

 being so much louder. It was, however, so continuous that I 

 determined to ascertain its source. I had a dog with me that 

 was coursing unrestrained through the woods. He evidently 

 had preceded me in an endeavor to investigate the source of the 

 hammering, and at the moment of my decision, had flushed the 

 bird, which came directly to a tree not more than twenty yards 

 distant from where I was standing as still as a statue. It did 

 not discover me, but in an attitude of suspense, and listening 

 to the footfalls of the dog, which had now no idea of where it 

 was, it gave me an exhibition of itself which Audubon would 

 have gone to Halifax to see, in which it remained motionless, 

 long enough to have been "taken with a slow plate." and in 

 which I can never more forget him. notwithstanding having 

 seen him many times since then in almost every other attitude 

 possible to even a woodpecker. Presently the dog drew nearer, 

 and then he began to prance around the trunk of the majestic 



