172 BULLETIN 17 4, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



woodpecker." The indications are that Latham coined the name; 

 certainly he gave it currency. 



The bird already possessed a common name ; and it is a pity that 

 Latham did not know it. In its native land it was, and still is, 

 commonly called, the log-cock. That is a good name— apt, pic- 

 turesque, and widely used. Wilson (1811) knew it well enough, and 

 so did Audubon (1842) ; and they would have done well, had they 

 given it place as the established vernacular name. But Wilson, 

 under Bartram's tutelage, followed Latham, and Audubon followed 

 Wilson. They, in their prestige, have settled the matter. Nuttall 

 (1832) tried to make a stand for log-cock, and others since have 

 tried, but in vain. And now upon this splendid creature a dull piece 

 of pedantry remains hopelessly fixed. 



Another homespun name in extensive use is Coch-of-the-iuoods; 

 yet another is Wood-cock. This last is suitable enough, but it leads 

 obviously to confusion. Accordingly, within the range of the true 

 woodcock {Philohela minor), the woodpecker is commonly distin- 

 guished as the "black woodcock." Other appellatives that have been 

 picked up here and there and gathered in the books are "black 

 woodpecker," "Englisli woodpecker," "black log," "king-of-the- 

 woods," "stump breaker"; and, because of its cackling cry, "wood- 

 hen," "Indian-hen," "laughing woodpecker," "johnny-cock," "wood- 

 chuck," and "cluck-cock." (The last, given by Scoville, 1920, as 

 current in Juniata County, Pa., is, perhaps, an assimilation from the 

 Pennsylvania Dutch.) 



The subspecific name ahieticola ( = dweller amid fir trees) is in 

 some degree misleading, for, in the Northeastern States at least, the 

 bird is commonly found in forests of mingled conifers and hard- 

 Avoods; it shows no partiality to firs, nor even to conifers generally; 

 and it cuts its nesting cavities, in the large majority of cases, in the 

 dead and standing trunks of deciduous trees. In the Eocky Moun- 

 tains, however, according to the Weydemeyers (1928), it prefers 

 growths of larch, yellow pine, and Douglas fir. 



It is a denizen of extensive forests. It will adapt itself to second 

 growth — particularly where the young trees have sprung up about 

 some remnant of the old ; but in any case it requires wide areas. As 

 forests dwindle to woodlots, along with the wild turkey, the barred 

 owl, and the raven, it disappears. From regions once forested but 

 now devoted to agriculture it is gone; in the mountains, however, 

 in the marginal areas, where wooded ridges extend out to the plains, 

 and in forested swamp lands, it continues. In such territories, in- 

 deed, its numbers during the past 50 years have increased, and it 

 has reappeared in localities once deserted. Keports of such recrudes- 

 cence are many, and they come from widely scattered places, par- 

 ticularly in the States to eastward of the Mississippi Kiver. 



