272 SCANSORES. — PICID^. 



branch, but if so, it is lengthwise, not across, as 

 other birds perch; neither does he stand up on 

 the toes, elevating the tarsi, but squats down close 

 to the wood, clinging rather than perching. Far 

 more usually, however, he flies direct to the trunk, 

 on whose perpendicular side he alights as suddenly 

 as if he had been stuck there, and either com- 

 mences rapping with his powerful beak, or hops 

 upward till he finds a more promising scene of 

 operations. If he wishes to descend, which he 

 does but seldom, it is backward and in a diagonal 

 direction ; or sometimes he turns, so as to come 

 down sideways, but it is never more than a short 

 distance, and is performed so awkwardly, and in 

 so scrambling a manner, as to indicate that he is 

 not formed for descending. 



His food is not confined to boring larvae ; the 

 large red ants, so common in the woods, I have 

 found numerous in his stomach ; and at other 

 times, hard strong seeds enclosed in a scarlet pulpy 

 skin. In March we sometimes find him filled with 

 the white pulp and oval seeds of the sour- 

 sop. He is said to feed on the beautiful cher- 

 ries {Cordia collococca) which in brilliant bunches 

 are ripe at the same season ; and I have seen 

 him engaged in picking off" the pretty crimson 

 berries, that hang like clusters of miniature grapes 

 from the fiddlewood (Cytharaxylon). Sometimes 

 he extracts the pulp of the orange, having cut a hole 

 through the rind; and mangoes he eats in the 

 autumn. He does damage to the sugar-cane, by 

 chiselling away the woody exterior, and sucking 



