THE PILEATED WOODPECKEE. 99 



This excavation is often eighteen or twenty inches deep. It 

 is not lined with any soft material, and the eggs are depos- 

 ited on chips of the wood left in the bottom. These are 

 usnally five in number ; they are of a pure-white color, and 

 small for the size of the bird, measuring from .82 to .86 inch 

 in length, by from .74 to .77 inch in breadth. 



HYLATOMUS, Baird. 



Dryotomns, Malherbe, Mem. Ac. Metz. (1849) 322. (Not of Swainson, 1831.) 

 Drynpicus, Bonap. Consp. Zjgod. in Aten. Ital. (May, 1854). (Not of Malherbe.) 



Bill a little longer than the head; considerably depressed, or broader than high 

 at the base; shaped much as in C'trnpephilus, except shorter, and without the bristly 

 feathers directed fonvards at the base of the lower jaw; gonj-s about half the length 

 of the commissiu-e; tarsus shorter than any toe except the inner posterior; outer 

 posterior toe shorter than the outer anterior, and a little longer than the inner 

 anterior; inner posterior very short, not half the outer anterior, about half the inner 

 anterior one. 



Tail long, graduated, the longer feathers much incurved at the tip; wing longer 

 than the tail, reaching to the middle of the exposed surface of tail, considerably 

 graduated, though pointed, the fourth and fifth quills longest. 



Color uniform black, with white patches on the side of the head; head with 

 pointed crest. 



HYLATOMUS PILEATUS- — ^aW. 

 The Pileated Woodpecker; Log Cock. 



Pictis pileatus, Linnaeus. Syst. Nat., I. (1766) 173. Vieill. Ois. Am. Sept., 11. 

 (1807) 58. Wilson, Am. Om., IV. (1811) 27. Aud. Orn. Biog., II. (1834) 74. 



Description. 



Fourth and fifth quills equal and longest, third intermediate between the sixth 

 and seventh; bill blue-black; general color of body, wings, and tail, dull greenish- 

 black; a narrow white streak from just above the eye to the occiput, a wider one 

 from the nostril feathers (inclusive) under the eye and along the side of the head and 

 reck; side of the breast (concealed by the wing), axillaries, and under wing coverts, 

 and concealed bases of all the quills, with chin and beneath the head, white, tinged 

 with sulphur-yellow; entire crown, from the base of the bill to a well-developed 

 occipital crest, as also a patch on the ramus of the lower jaw, scarlet-red ; a few 

 white crescents on the sides of the body and on the abdomen ; iris very dark hazel. 



Female without the red on the cheek, and the anterior half of that on the top 

 )f the head replaced by black. 



Length, about eighteen inches; wing, nine and a half inches. 



This species is a resident in the northern districts of 

 New England throughout the year. It has been known 



