NORTHERN PILEATED WOODPECKER 187 



crimson, and the great bird loomed blacker and bigger than he really was, 

 limned sharply against it. He had not dropped along like the smaller wood- 

 peckers, but had kept on more steadily, very like a heron, with only slight risings 

 and fallings. After a rest on the gum tree of some three minutes he flung 

 himself into the air and dove down into the Buck Hill Gorge. 



Vickers (1915) characterizes the bird's flight as "powerful and 

 straight-forward, his head and neck carrying his powerful beak like 

 a spear * * * [the bird] large as a crow and with a certain 

 short, sturdy, kingfisherlike aspect." 



In general conclusion it may be said that the pileated woodpecker 

 has the habit and manner of a giant, forest-loving flicker. 



Voice. — Throughout the greater part of the year the pileated wood- 

 pecker is a relatively silent bird, but during the nesting season drum- 

 ming and calling are frequent. The usual call is a cackle, resembling 

 that of the flicker, though louder and of more sonorous quality. 

 The "song" of the white-breasted nuthatch so far resembles it in pitch 

 and tempo that a nuthatch near at hand may, for an instant, suggest 

 the woodpecker far away. The ka, ka, ka of the woodpecker's cackle 

 is variable in quality, in speed of iteration, and in continuity, and 

 seems to be expressive, sometimes of alarm, sometimes of companion- 

 sliip, sometimes of contentment. Aretas A. Saunders (1935) has 

 noted that often there is rise in pitch at the beginning of a rendition 

 and a slight fall at the end; and Samuel Scoville, Jr. (1920), dis- 

 tinguishing this from the flicker's similar call, has remarked on 

 "a queer little quirk at the end." When a pair of birds cackle in 

 alternation, as commonly they do, a difference in pitch will be noted; 

 but whether that be a constant sexual difference, or a matter of in- 

 dividuality merely, I cannot say. 



In the nesting season the mated birds have another flickerlike 

 wuck-a-iouch call that seems to be peculiarly associated with their 

 conjugal relationship. They use it in courtship and when they relieve 

 one another in attendance at the nest. 



Dr. Sutton (1930) mentions yet another call and describes it as 

 "whining notes, suggesting the mew of the yellow-bellied sapsucker." 

 But it is more than that. It is a loud cry, that resembles the scream 

 of a hawk. It is commonly reiterated slowly in five or six repetitions. 

 Unless one were to follow the sound and discover its source, he would 

 hardly impute it to this bird. It too, I believe, is a call peculiar 

 to the nesting season. 



When the bird is in flight a slowly uttered piick^ puck may some- 

 times be heard, and sometimes what for lack of a better term may be 

 called a creaking of the moving wings. 



Besides these there is a high-pitched scream — "a bugie call," says 

 Florence Merriam Bailey (1902), with which the bird greets the 

 rising sun. Horace W. Wright (1912) has noted that in June the 

 bird is first heard within a few minutes after sunrise and has de- 



