184 BULLETIN 174, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



was made up of wild berries {Ilex^ Cassine, Vitis cordifolia^ Nyssa 

 sylvatica, and Viburnum nudum — in all, 11 percent of the whole), 

 mast (2 percent), and rotten wood (4 percent). 



Catesby's (1731) assertion, repeated time and again by the earlier 

 writers, that the pileated woodpecker sometimes pierces the husks 

 of maize standing in the field, was almost certainly based on faulty 

 observation. No modern confirmation is to be found of this or of 

 any other predatory practice. To the contrary, the finding after 

 careful investigation (Beal, 1911) is: "The food of the pileated wood- 

 pecker does not interest the farmer or horticulturist, for it is ob- 

 tained entirely from the forest or the wild copses on its edge. This 

 bird does not visit either the orchard or .the grain field, and all 

 its work in the forest helps to conserve the timber * * *, its 

 killing should be strictly prohibited at all times." 



Behavior. — The bird is but little known — surprisingly little, con- 

 sidering how large a bird it is. It is a forest dweller ; it lives almost 

 wholly within the canopy of the treetops; it is alert, furtive (almost) 

 as a bear, rather silent in midsummer (the season when city dwellers 

 ordinarily visit the northern forests) ; and it easily eludes observa- 

 tion. It is not strange then that, its gigantic operations remaining 

 in evidence, the bird itself should in common thought have become 

 a somewhat fabulous creature. Thoreau (1906) never saw it; and 

 this is what he wrote of it in the Moosehead Lake journal under 

 date of July 25, 1857: "Our path up the bank here led by a large 

 dead white pine, in whose trunk near the ground were great square- 

 cornered holes made by the woodpeckers. * * * They were seven 

 or eight inches long by four wide and reached to the heart of the 

 tree through an inch or more of sound wood, and looked like great 

 mortise-holes whose corners had been somewhat worn and rounded 

 by a loose tenon. The tree for some distance was quite honeycombed 

 by them. It suggested woodpeckers on a larger scale than ours, as 

 were the trees and the forest." 



To one who visits its haunts the presence of the pileated wood- 

 pecker is immediately made manifest by operations such in magnitude 

 as to have astonished Thoreau. Dead Norway pines may be found, 

 gaunt and bare, their bark split away in plates and lying heaped 

 at the base, and living white pines — young trees, particularly — 

 pierced to the core with deep pyramidal incisions. The freshly cut 

 wood gleams clean, and turpentine in pellucid globules rims the 

 cut and drips downward. Great boles of maples and basswoods 

 stand, furrowed from broken top to base, the ground below littered 

 with splinters, often half a hand's breadth in extent. The cuts are 

 roughly rectangular in outline. They may be 4, 5, or even 6 or 8 

 inches wide and are sunk deep into the heart of the tree. They 

 may extend vertically for a few inches or for a foot or more. They 



