933 NOTES ON THE 
SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 
Fourth quill longest; third a little shorter; first considera- 
bly shorter; general color above black, much variegated with 
white; feathers of the back and rump brownish-white, spotted 
with black; crown scarlet, bordered by black on the sides of the 
head and nape; a streak from above the eye, and another from 
the bristles of the bill, passing below the eye and into the yel- 
lowish of the belly, and a stripe along the edges of the wing 
coverts, white; a triangular broad spot of scarlet on the chin, 
bordered on each side by black stripes from the lower mandi- 
ble, which meet behind and extend into a large quadrate spot 
on the breast; rest of under parts yellowish-white, streaked on 
the sides with black; inner web of inner tail-feather, white 
spotted with black; outer feathers black, edged and spotted 
with white. Female with the red of the throat replaced by 
white. Iris dark hazel. 
Length, 8.25; wing, 4.75; tail, 3.30. 
Habitat, North America, north and east of the Great Plains. 
CEOPHLEUS PILEATUS (L.). (405.) 
PILEATED WOODPECKER. 
This is a magnificent bird as seen in his own haunts in the 
forest. I shall not soon forget the occasion, nor the scene 
which embraced the species as the central figure. It was a 
stirring, crisp, October morning in the heavy forest belt lying 
west of Minneapolis about twenty miles, where I was putting 
in a day amongst the Ruffed Grouse which then literally 
abounded there. My attention was at first arrested by a ham- 
mering that resembled that of the Woodpeckers except in its 
being somuch louder. It was, however, so continuous that I 
determined to ascertain its source. I had a dog with me that 
was coursing unrestrained through the woods. He evidently 
had preceded meinan endeavor to investigate the source of the 
hammering, and at the moment of my decision, had flushed the 
bird, which came directly to a tree not more than twenty yards 
distant from where I was standing as still as a statue. It did 
not discover me, but in an attitude of suspense, and listening 
to the footfalls of the dog, which had now no idea of where it 
was, it gave mean exhibition of itself which Audubon would 
have gone to Halifax to see, in which it remained motionless, 
long enough to have been ‘‘taken with a slow plate,” and in 
which I can never more forget him, notwithstanding having 
seen him many times since then in almost every other attitude 
possible to even a woodpecker. Presently the dog drew nearer, 
and then he began to prance around the trunk of the majestic 
