554=* AVES— WOODPECKER. 



superior to the common herd of woodpeckers. The royal hunter before us, 

 scorns the humility of searching for prey in trees, shrubbery, orchards, rails, 

 and old prostrate logs, and seeks the most towering trees of the forest ; seem- 

 ing 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 impenetrable recesses, amid ruinous piles of de- 

 caying 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 frequents, 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 quaatities as 

 to suggest the idea that half a dozen axe-men had been at work there the 

 whole morning. But examine the tree closely where he has been at work, 

 and you will soon perceive, that it is neither for amusement nor mischief 

 that he slices off the bark, or digs his way into the trunk. The sound and 

 healthy tree is not the least object of his attention. The diseased, infested 

 with insects and hastening to putrefaction, are his favorites ; there the deadly 

 crawling enemy have formed a lodgment between the bark and tender wood, 

 to drink up the very vital part of the tree. 



This bird is not migratory : it breeds in the Carolinas, and builds a large 

 and capacious nest in a cypress tree. It is called by the natives the large 

 Logcock. Its food consists entirely of insects and larva;. Its common note, 

 repeated every three or four seconds, very much resembles the tone of a 

 trumpet, seeming to be near at hand, though perhaps one hundred yards off. 

 This it utters while mounting along the trunk, or digging into it. At these 

 times it has a stately and novel appearance, and his note instantly attracts 

 the notice of a stranger. 



The ivory-billed woodpecker is twenty inches long ; the general color is 

 black, glossed with green ; fore part of the head black ; the rest of the crest 

 of a most splendid red, spotted at the bottom with white ; the beak is of the 

 color and consistence of ivory, prodigiously strong, and elegantly fluted. 



THE PILEATED WOODPECKERi 



Is the next in size, and may be styled the great northern chief, though his 

 range extends from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, over the whole range of 

 the United States. In Pennsylvania and the northern states he is called 

 the black woodcock; in the southern states, the lesser logcock. He is very 

 numerous in all the tracts of high timbered forests, in the neighborhood of 

 large rivers, where he is noted for making a loud and incessant cackling be- 



1 Pints pUeatus, Lin. 



