A RED-HEADED FAMILY. 17 



dead timber for him to make his nest-holes in. 

 I found a compromise-nest between two fence- 

 rails in Illinois, which was probably a fair index 

 of the future habit of the red-head. It was 

 formed by pecking away the inner sides of two 

 vertical parallel rails, just above a horizontal 

 one, upon which, in a cup of pulverized wood, 

 the eggs were laid. This was in the prairie 

 country between two vast fields of Indian corn. 

 The power of sight exhibited by the red- 

 headed woodpecker is quite amazing. ' I have 

 seen the bird, in the early twilight of a summer 

 evening, start from the highest spire of a very 

 tall tree, and fly a hundred yards straight to an 

 insect near the ground. He catches flies on 

 the wing with as deft a turn as does the great- 

 crested fly-catcher. It is not my purpose to 

 offer any ornithological theories in this pa- 

 per ; but I cannot help remarking that the far- 

 ther a species of woodpecker departs from the 

 feeding-habit of the ivory-bill, the more broken 

 up are its color-masses, and the more diffused 

 or degenerate becomes the typical red tuft on 

 the head. The golden-winged woodpecker 

 (Colaptes entrains), for instance, feeds much on 

 the ground, eating earth-worms, seeds, beetles, 

 etc. ; and we find him taking on the colors of 

 the ground-birds with a large loss of the char- 

 acteristic woodpecker arrangement of plumage 

 and color-masses. He looks much more like 

 a meadow-lark than like an ivory -bill ! The 

 red appears in a delicate crescent, barely no- 

 ticeable on the back of the head, and its bill 

 is slender, curved, and quite unfit for hard 

 pecking. On the other hand, the downy 

 woodpecker and the hairy woodpecker, having 

 kept well in the line of the typical feeding 

 2 



