CONSPICUOUSLY BLACK AND WHITE 83%5 
While you have been examining the young, — which, 
if you are a woman, must be lowered to you, —the 
parents have ceased to protest and are watching you in 
silence from behind a tree trunk a hundred feet or so 
away. After you have replaced the nestlings and left 
the immediate vicinity, the adult birds will wait an 
hour or more before they come back to investigate the 
damage, and then it is the mother who finally ventures 
into the molested home to brood again, while the “ Cock 
of the Woods” watches, as before, from a neighboring 
tree. 
For a week or two after the young have left the nest, 
they follow their parents begging for food with ludicrous 
eagerness ; at this time the provender brought them con- 
sists of nuts, berries, ants, and the larvee of beetles. 
These, especially the nuts, are often placed in a crevice 
of the bark, and the youngster is compelled to pick 
them out. After a few trials he learns to hammer right 
merrily and is ready to forage for himself. Unlike other 
woodpeckers, but like the flickers again, the Pileated is 
often seen eating ants on the ground or on a log; hence 
his name of “ Log Cock.” 
The call-notes of the Pileated Woodpecker are very 
like those of the flicker, but louder and flatter in tone, 
“ kac-kac-kac-kac ” and “ wucker-wucker-wucker ” being 
the most common. When the bird is much excited, the 
note is a modification of both a loud and harsh “ hiker- 
hiker” rapidly repeated. As it excavates a new nest every 
year, there are often fresh chips at the foot of the nest 
tree to the amount of two or three quarts. The cavity 
