THE UOLOGIST. 



27 



ers, including Hylotomut< jiih'dtnfi, usually 

 make their exciavations in the shape of a 

 ^'ia(lu.;illy widening pocket, of whirh the 

 entrance is the narrowest pait. 



It is curious to note that (beginning with 

 the ivory-bill and coming down the line of 

 species in the scale of size) we tind the red 

 mark on the head rapidly falling away from 

 a grand scarlet crest some inches in height 

 to a mere touch of carmine or dragon's 

 Mood on crt)vvu, nape, cheek, or chin. 

 The lofty and brilliant head-plume of the 

 ivory-bill, his jjowerful beak, his semi-cir- 

 cidar claws and his perfectly spiked tail, as 

 well as his superiority of size and strength, 

 indicate that he is what he is, the original 

 type of the woodpecker, and the one pure 

 sjjecies left to us in America. He is the 

 only woodpecker which eats insects and 

 larva; (dug out of rotten wood) exclusively. 

 Neither the sweetest fruits nor the oiliest 

 grains can tempt him to depait one line 

 from his hereditary habit. He accejits no 

 gifts from man, and asks no favors. But 

 the pileateil woodpecker. ju>t one remove 

 lower in tht- scale ■ of size, strength and 

 beaty, shows a liittle tendency towards a 

 giaiu and fruit diet, and it also often de- 

 .scends to old logs and fallen boughs for its 

 food, a thing never thought of by the ivory- 

 bill. As f(u- the rest of the redhead family, 

 they are degenerate species, tlioiigh lively, 

 clever and exceedingly interesting. What a 

 sad dwarf the little downy woodpecker is 

 when conipiared with the ivory-billl and 

 yet to my mil. d it is clear that Picua lyahetf- 

 ceuH is the degenerate off -shoot from the 

 grand aitii.'pepMlvx tiunk. 



Our red-headed woodpecker {M . trythro- 

 (rphal'iM) is a genuine American in every 

 sense, a plausible, querulous, aggressive, 

 enterprising, crafty fellow, who tries every 

 mode of getting a livelihood, and always 

 with success. He is a woodpecker, a nut- 

 eater, a cider-taster, a judge of good fruits, 

 a connoisseur of corn, wheat and melons, 

 and an expert flycatcher as well. As if to 

 eorresi^ond with this versatility of habit, his 

 plumage is divided into four regular masses 

 of color. His head and neck .are crimson, 

 his back, down to secondaries, a brilliant 



block, tinged with green or blue in the gloss; 

 then comes a broad girdle of pure white, 

 followed by a mass of black at the tail and 

 wing-tips. He readily adapts himself to 

 the exigencies of civilized life. I prophecy 

 that, within less thatr a hundred years to 

 come, he will be making his nest on the 

 ground, in hedges or in the croffches of or- 

 chard trees. Already he has begun to push 

 his way out into oar smaller Western prai- 

 ries, where there is no dead timber for him 

 to make his ue-<t-h:)les in. 1 found a com- 

 promise-nest between two fence-rails in 

 Ilhuois, which was probably a fair index of 

 the future habit of the red-head. It was 

 formed by pecking away the inner sides of 

 two vertical parallel rails, just above a hor- 

 izontal one, upon which, in a cup of 

 pulverized wood, the eggs were laid. This 

 was in the ^jrairie country bet wee a two vast 

 fields of Indian corn. 



The power of sight exhibited l)y the red- 

 headed woodpecker is quite amazing. I 

 have seen the bird, in the eirly twilight of 

 a summer eveniny;, start from the highest 

 spire of a very tall tree, and fly a hundred 

 sards straight to an insect near the ground. 

 He catches flies on the wing with as deft a 

 turxi as does the great-crested fly-catcher. 

 It is not my purpose to oifer auj' ornithol- 

 ogical theories in this paper; but I canmjt 

 help remarking that the farther a species of 

 woodpecker departs from the feeding-habit 

 of the ivory-bill, the more broken up are 

 its color-masses, and the more diffused or 

 degenerate becomes the typical red tuft on 

 the head. The golden-winged woodpecker 

 (C'vlaptes avratvR), for instance, feeds much 

 on the ground, eating earth-wornis, seeds, 

 beetles etc.: and we And htm taking on the 

 colors of the ground-birds with a large loss 

 of the characteristic woodpecker arrange- 

 ment of lalumage and color-masses. He 

 looks much more like a meadow-lark than 

 hke an ivory-bill! The red appears in a 

 delicate crescent, barely noticeable on the 

 back of the hea^l, and its bill is slender 

 curved and quite unfit for hard pecking. 

 On the other hand, the downy woodpecker 

 and the hairy woodpecker, having kept well 

 in the line of the typical feeding habit. 



