16 A RED-HEADED FAMILY. 



tary habit. He accepts no gifts from man, and 

 asks no favors. But the pileated woodpecker, 

 just one remove lower in the scale of size, 

 strength, and beauty, shows a little tendency 

 towards a grain and fruit diet, and it also often 

 descends to old logs and fallen boughs for its 

 food a thing never thought of by the ivory-bill. 

 As for the rest of the red-headed family, they 

 are degenerate species, though lively, clever, 

 and exceedingly interesting. What a sad 

 dwarf the little downy woodpecker is when 

 compared with the ivory-bill ! and yet to my 

 mind it is clear that Picus pubescens is the de- 

 generate off-shoot from the grand campephilus 

 trunk. 



Our red-headed woodpecker (M. erythro- 

 cephalus) is a genuine American in every sense, 

 a plausible, querulous, aggressive, enterpris- 

 ing, crafty fellow, who tries every mode of get- 

 ting a livelihood, and always with success. He 

 is a wood-pecker, a nut-eater, a cider-taster, a 

 judge of good fruits, a connoisseur of corn, 

 wheat, and melons, and an expert fly-catcher as 

 v/ell. As if to correspond with his versatility 

 of habit, his plumage is divided into four reg- 

 ular masses of color. His head and neck are 

 crimson, his back, down to secondaries, a 

 brilliant black, tinged with green or blue in 

 the gloss ; then comes a broad girdle of pure 

 white, followed by a mass of black at the tail 

 and wing-tips. He readily adapts himself to 

 the exigencies of civilized life. I prophecy 

 that, within less than a hupdred years to come, 

 he will be making his nest on the ground, in 

 hedges or in the crotches of orchard trees. 

 Already he has begun to push his way out into 

 our smaller Western prairies, where there is no 



