THE WOODPECKER. 



PLATE XLVII. 



Class Aves. Order Scanores: climbing. Genus Picus. 



Species There are ten species of the Woodpecker in the 



United States. 



The following article is from Wilson's Ornithology. 



THIS majestic and formidable species, in strength and mag- 

 nitude, 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 distin- 

 guished characteristic, in the superb carmine crest, and bill of 

 polished ivory, with which she has ornamented him. His eye 

 is brilliant and daring ; and his whole frame so admirably 

 adapted for his mode of Ife, and method of procuring subsist- 

 ence, as to impress on the mind of the examiner the most rever- 

 ential 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 indefati- 

 gable search for prey ; but the royal hunter now before us, 

 scorns the humility of such situations, 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 

 he seems the sole lord and inhabitant. Wherever he fre- 

 quents, he leaves numerous monuments of his industry be- 

 hind 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 

 axemen had been at work for the whole morning. The 



