114 WOODPECKERS, 
Belted Kingfisher, familiar by voice and appearance to q 
every one who lives near a river or pond. He comes 
Belted Kingfisher, 12 April, when the ice no longer coy- 
Cerylealeyon. ers his hunting ground, and remains 
Plate XXIII. yntil November; or, if the season be 
exceptionally mild, he sometimes stays for the winter 
fishing. His nest is built in a hole in a bank, where, 
early in May, his mate lays from five to eight white 
eggs. 
The Kingfisher is generally branded a fish thief and 
accounted a fair mark for every man with a gun, and, 
were it not for his discretion in judging distances and 
knowing just when to fly, he would long ago have disap- 
peared from the haunts of man. We might now be a 
few fish richer, but would they repay us for the loss of 
this genins of wooded shores ? 
WOODPECKERS AND WRYNECKS. (ORDER PICL) 
WOODPECKERS. (FAMILY PICIDZ.) 
Tur three hundred and fifty known species of Wood- 
peckers are represented in all the wooded parts of the 
world except the Australian region and Madagascar. 
Nearly one half this number are found in the New 
World, and of these twenty-five occur in North America. 
Few birds seem better adapted to their mode of life 
than Woodpeckers, the structure of their bill, tongne, 
tail, and feet being admirably suited to their needs. 
The notes of Woodpeckers can not be termed musical, 
and their chief contribution to the springtime chorus is a 
rolling tattoo which resembles the h-r-r-r-ring call of the 
tree frogs. The feathered drummer selects a resonant 
limb and pounds out his song with a series of strokes de- 
