THE WOODPECKER. 



103 



cry, which throws terror and confusion into the 

 whole insect tribe. They creep hither and 

 thither, seeking for safety ; while the bird 

 luxuriously feasts upon them at leisure, dart- 

 ing its tongue with unerring certainty, and 

 devouring the whole brood. 



The woodpecker, however, does not confine 

 its depredations solely to trees, but sometimes 

 lights upon the ground, to try its fortune at an 

 ant-hill. It is not so secure of prey there as 

 in the former case, although the numbers are 

 much greater. They lie generally too deep 

 for the bird to come at them ; and- it is 

 obliged to make up by stratagem the defect 

 of power. The woodpecker first goes to their 

 hills, which it pecks, in order to call them 

 abroad ; it then thrusts out its long red tongue, 

 which being like a worm, and resembling 

 their usual prey, the ants come out to settle 

 upon, in great numbers ; however, the bird 

 watching the properest opportunity, withdraws 

 its tongue at a jerk, and devours the devour- 

 ers. This stratagem it continues till it has 

 alarmed their fears ; or till it is quite satisfied. 1 



As the woodpecker is obliged to make 

 holes in trees to procure food, so is it also to 

 make cavities still larger to form its nest, and 

 to lay in. This is performed, as usual, with 

 the bill; although some have affirmed that the 

 animal uses its tongue as a gimblet to bore 

 with. But this is a mistake; and those that 

 are curious, may often hear the noise of the 

 bill making its way in large woods and for- 

 ests. The woodpecker chooses, however, for 

 this purpose, trees that are decayed, or wood 

 that is soft, like beech, elm, and poplar. In 

 these, with very little trouble, it can make 

 holes as exactly round as a mathematician 

 could with compasses. One of these holes the 

 bird generally chooses for its own use, to nestle 

 and bring up its young in ; but as they are 

 easily made, it is delicate in its choice, and 

 often makes twenty before one is found fit to 

 give entire satisfaction. Of those which it has 

 made and deserted, other birds, not so good 

 borers, and less delicate in their choice, take 

 possession. The jay and the starling lay 

 their eggs in these holes ; and bats are now 

 and then found in peaceable possession. Boys 

 sometimes have thrust in their hands with 

 certain hopes of plucking out a bird's egg 

 but to their great mortification, have had their 

 fingers bitten by a bat at the bottom. 



The woodpecker takes no care to line its 

 nest with feathers or straw : its eggs are depo- 

 sited in the hole, without any thing to keep 



1 The Wryneck, (See Plate XV. fig. 9.) so called 

 from a habit of turning the neck, bears a close analogy 

 to the woodpeckers, in the extensibility of the tongue 

 and the position of the toes. This bird darts its long 

 tongue into an ant hill, and draws it out loaded with ants 

 which are retained by the viscous liquid which covers it 



hem warm, except the heat of the parent's 

 aody. Their number is generally five or six ; 

 always white, oblong, and of a middle size. 

 When the young are excluded, and before 

 they leave the nest, they are adorned with a 

 scarlet plumage under the throat, which adds 

 to their beauty. 2 



2 Ivory billed Woodpecker. " This majestic, and for- 

 midable species, (says Wilson, in his American Ornithu- 

 ogy) in strength and magnitude stands at the head 

 of the whole class of woodpeckers hitherto discovered. 



He may be called the king or chief of his tribe; 

 and nature seems to have designed him a dis- 

 tinguished characteristic in the superb carmine crest 

 and bill of polished ivory with which she has or- 

 namented him. His eye is brilliant and daring; 

 and his whole frame so admirably adapted for his mode 

 of life, and method of procuring subsistence, as to im- 

 press on the mind of the examiner the most reverential 

 ideas of the Creator. His manners have also a dignity 

 in them superior to the common herd of woodpeckers. 

 Trees, shrubbery, orchards, rails, fence posts, and old 

 prostrate logs, are alike interesting to those, in their 

 humble and indefatigable search for prey; but the royal 

 hunter now before us, scorns the humility of such situa- 

 tions, and seeks the most towering trees of the forest ; 

 seeming particularly attached to those prodigious cypress 

 swamps, whose crowded giant sons stretch their bare and 

 blasted, or moss-hung arms midway to the skies. In 

 these almost inaccessible recesses, amid ruinous piles of 

 impending timber, his trumpet-like note and loud strokes 

 resound through the solitary savage wilds, of which lie 

 seems the sole lord and inhabitant. Wherever he fre- 

 quents, he leaves numerous monuments of his industry 

 behind him. We there see enormous pine trees with 

 cart-loads of bark lying around their roots, and chips of 

 the trunk itself in such quantities as to suggest the idea 

 that half a dozen of axe-men had been at work there for 

 the whole morning. The body of the tree is also dis- 

 figured with such numerous and so large excavations, 

 that one can hardly conceive it possible for the whole to 

 be the work of a woodpecker. With such strength, and 

 an apparatus so powerful, what havoc might he not com- 

 mit, if numerous, on the most useful of our forest trees ! 

 and yet with all these appearances, and much of vulgar 

 prejudice against him, it may fairly be questioned whe- 

 ther he is at all injurious; or, at least, whether his ex- 

 ertions do not contribute most powerfully to the protec- 

 tion of our timber. Examine closely the tree where he 

 has been at work, and you will soon perceive, that it is 

 neither from motives of mischief nor amusement that he 

 slices ofi'the bark, or digs his way into the trunk. For 



