«s 



APR 17 1915 



1 HE (JOLOGIST. t^j^ 



Vol. XXXH. No. 4. 



Albion, N. Y. Apr. 15, 1915.. 



Whole No. 333 



Owned and Published Monthly, by R. M. Barnes, Albion, N. Y., and Lacon, III. 



Awkwardness. 



March 6th the Editor of THE OOLO- 

 GIST fell about twenty-five feet out 

 of a Live Oak tree, forty miles North 

 and a little west of Los Angeles. He 

 sustained a compound fracture of the 

 Tibia, and a fracture of the Fibula of 

 the left leg, a broken nose and a frac- 

 tured and dislocated left shoulder, be- 

 sides internal injuries of a more or 

 less serious nature. 



He was at once rushed to a hospital, 

 where at this writing (April 1st) he 

 is resting comfortably and on the road 

 to ultimate recovery it is believed. 



"The accident was due solely to a 

 proper lack of care on our part, and no 

 one else is to blame; only our neglect 

 to use the ordinary safeguards and 

 rules which have guided our climbing 

 all our life; a carelessness for which 

 we must pay the penalty." — R. M. 

 Barnes. 



Pileated Woodpecker. 

 (Ceophloens pileatus) 

 Among the Woodpeckers are found 

 certain universal anatomical charac- 

 teristics. The feet are perfectly zygo- 

 dactyle by reversion of the fourth toe; 

 tail feathers stiff and sharp, and the 

 chisel like bill adapted for the pur- 

 pose of chipping away the wood of the 

 trees, looking for food. An arrange- 

 ment of the hyoid bone of long, slend- 

 er, flexible filaments extending over 

 the skull behind, between the skin and 

 the bone, surrounded by highly de- 

 veloped muscles, enables the tongue to 

 be extended several inches beyond the 



bill. The tongue is slender, pointed 

 and thickly barbed on its extremity. 

 The small neck compared with the 

 size of the skull makes it impossible 

 to invert the skin over the head, gen- 

 erally employed in the skinning of 

 other birds during the process of 

 mounting. The skull is extremely firm 

 and solid, the bone is almost as hard 

 and rigid as ivory. By means of the 

 bill the bird perforates the bark and 

 wood of the trees to reach the larvae 

 of the insects feeding beneath it. The 

 cutting away of the wood is done by 

 powerful strokes of the bird's head, 

 which can be heard quite a distance 

 away; in the meantime the bird clings 

 to the rough bark of the tree, while 

 the short stiff feathers of the tail are 

 pressed against the bark, thereby sup- 

 porting the heavy weight of the body. 

 The hole being made and the burrow 

 of the grub exposed, the long tongue is 

 then thrust out; the larvae or insect 

 impaled on the barbed extremity and 

 then drawn back to the Woodpecker's 

 mouth. 



Where the birds are not molested 

 they return to their favorite breeding 

 grounds for quite a number of years. 

 They lay from three to five glossy 

 white eggs, same as almost all wood- 

 peckers. 



In their favorite woods some old 

 stumps show their work plainly. 



The mating season of these birds 

 is in our locality usually in April. 

 They excavate a deep hole in a de- 

 cayed tree; cutting away the wood 

 with such force that the chips are 



