NOETHERX PILEATED WOODPECKER 181 



a very shy manner. As a rule the female fed the young, but on three occasions 

 the male was identified at tlie hole. * * * 



As a rule the adult appeared suddenly at the hole, flying noiselessly through 

 the forest. Occasionally it alighted below the hole and rapidly ascended by 

 hops, or it alighted on some neighboring tree, and often calling like a Flicker, 

 glided on motionless outstretched wings in a graceful curve to its young. The 

 flight away from the hole was always direct after a preUminary downward 

 glide and lacked the usual woodpecker undulations. * * * 



The three young crowded to the hole as soon as a parent appeared any- 

 where in the neighborhood and eagerly stretched forth their heads and necks. 

 * * * They were always hungrj' and screamed with rasping voices for food, 

 once or twice they uttered low whinnies. The adult inserted its bill to its full 

 length into the throats of the young and vigorously regurgitated and pumped in 

 the nourishment. * * * After feeding the young, the female on several 

 occasions, the male on one, entered the nest, to emerge after a minute or two 

 and glide away. Once I detected a white piece in the bill, once, something 

 dark, but the other times nothing at all. 



Herbert L. Stoddard (1917) has noted the "hissing" noise of the 

 young within the nesting cavity when the trunk is jarred, "similar to 

 young flickers, but a great deal louder." 



When the young have flown from the nest, the cavity is not 

 utterly abandoned. I once saw one of the parent birds reenter at 

 midday a cavity from which the young had recently flown and 

 remain within for 40 minutes. Why, I know not. The mate accom- 

 panied this returning bird and waited near by. Maurice Brooks 

 writes (MS.) : "Nest cavities are sometimes used as roosting places 

 after the nesting season. On the evening of August 2, 1937, at 

 Jacksons Mill [Lewis County, W. Va.], I saw six birds (two adults 

 and four young) enter a cavity that had held a nest earlier in the 

 season. This was probably the brood of the year, with the parents." 



Food. — The pileated woodpecker lives upon insects that infest 

 standing and fallen timber and supplements this diet with wild berries 

 and acorns. 



Ants are the chief item of food. It is in pursuit of ants that the 

 woodpecker cuts its great furrows in the boles of standing trees, liv- 

 ing and dead. On examination the heart wood exposed by the 

 woodpecker's operations will be found to have been penetrated by 

 the labyrinthine passageways of the great carpenter ants, Camponotus 

 herculeanus (Linnaeus). 



All the observations of others that have come to my attention upon 

 the woodpecker when actually engaged in cutting these great trunk- 

 penetrating chasms have been made in winter and early in spring, 

 and with them my own are in agreement. It is a natural surmise 

 that only in winter is such heavy work done, since in summer proper 

 food is more easily available. Another surmise along the same lines 

 is that the disappearance of the bird from particular areas, followed 

 after an interval of years by reappearance, may perhaps have oc- 



