The Canadian WoodjyecJcers, l83 



•tree, for twenty or thirty feet, in less than a quarter of an hour. Whether 

 • engaged in flying from tree to tree, in digging, climbing, or barking, he 

 seems perpetually in a hurry. He is extremely hard to kill, clinging close 

 -to the tree even after he has received his mortal wound ; nor yielding up his 

 hold but with his expiring breath. If slightly wounded in the wing, and 

 dropped while flying, he instantly makes for the nearest tree, and strikes with 

 great bitterness at the hand stretched out to seize him ; and can rarely be 

 reconciled to confinement. He is sometimes observed among the hills of 

 Indian corn, and it is said by some that he frequently feeds on it. Com- 

 plaints of this kind are, however, not general ; many farmers doubting the 

 fact, and conceiving that at these times he is in search of insects which lie 

 concealed in the husk. I will not be positive that they never occasionally 

 taste maize ; yet I have opened and examined great numbers of these birds, 

 skilled in various parts of the United States, from Lake Ontario to the 

 Alatamaha Hiver, but never found a grain of Indian corn in their stomachs. 



" The Pileated Woodpecker is not migratory, but braves the extremes of 

 both the arctic and torrid regions. Neither is he gregarious, for it is rare 

 to see more than one or two, or at the most three, in company. Formerly 

 they were numerous in the neighbourhood of Philadelphia ; but gradually, 

 ;as the old timber fell, and the country became better cleared, they retreated 

 te the forest. At present few of .those birds are to be found within ten or 

 fifteen miles of the city. 



" Their nest is built, or rather the eggs are deposited, in the hole of a 

 tree, dug out by themselves, no other materials being used but the soft chips 

 of rotten wood. The female lays six large eggs, of a snowy whiteness ; and, 

 it'is said, they generafly raise two broods in the same season. 



-" This species is eighteen inches long, and twenty-eight in extent ; the 

 general color is a dusky brownish black ; the head is ornamented with a 

 conical cap of bright scarlet ; two scarlet mustaches proceed from the lower 

 mandible ; the chin is white ; the nostrils are covered with brownish white, 

 hair-like feathers, and this stripe of white passes from thence down the side 

 of the neck to the sides, spreading under the wings ; the upper half of the 

 wings is white, but concealed by the black -coverts ; the lower extremities of 

 the wings -are blaok, so that tiie white on the wing is not seen but when the 

 bird is flying, at which time it is very prominent ; the tail is tapering, the 

 f^ithers being ^very convex above, and strong ; the legs are of a leaden gray 

 color, very short, scarcely half an inch ; the toes -very long ; claws, strong 

 aad semicircular, and of a pale blue ,• the bill is fluted, sharply ridged, Tery 

 broad at the base, bluish black above, below and at the point bluish white ; 

 the eye is of a bright golden color, the pupil black ; the tongue, like those 

 of its tribe, is worm-shaped, except near the tip, where for one-eighth of an 

 JEch it is horny, pointed, and beset with barbs. 



" The female has the forehead, and nearly to the crown, of alightbroTMi 

 color, and the mustaches are dusky, instead of red. In both, a fine line of 

 «white separates the red ci-est from the dusky line that passes over the eye."' 



