96 RED-HEADED WOODPECKER. 
eye, sides of the neck, ear-feathers and breast, dirty white, with 
mninute, transverse touches of a drab or clay color; sides under the 
wings, speckled with dark brown, black, and dirty white; belly and 
vent, thickly mottled with szoty black, deep brown, and pure white, in 
transverse touches ; tail, very short, consisting of twelve feathers, the 
exterior one on each side a quarter of an inch shorter, the rest length- 
ening gradually to the nuddle ones; legs and feet, a light clay color, 
and pretty stout; bill, straight, slender, half an inch long, and not 
notched at the point, of a dark brown or black above, and whitish 
below; nostril, oblong; eye, light hazel. The female wants the 
points of white on the wing-coverts. The food of this bird is derived 
from that great magazine of so many of the feathered race, insects 
and their larve, particularly such as inhabit watery places, roots of 
bushes, and piles of old timber. 
It were much to be wished that the summer residence, nest, and 
eggs of this bird, were precisely ascertained, which would enable us 
to determine whether it be, what I strongly suspect it is, the same 
species as the common domestic Wren of Britain.* 
RED-HEADED WOODPECKER.— PICUS ERYTHROCE- 
PHALUS. — Fie. 35. 
Picus erythrocephalus, Linn. Syst. i. 174,7.— Gmel. Syst. i. 429. — Pic noir a do- 
mino rouge, Buffon, vii. 55, Pl. enl. 117.— Catesby, i. 20.— Arct. Zool. ii. 
No. 160.— Lath. Syn. ii. 561.— Peale’s Museum, No. 1922. 
MELANERPES ERYTHROCEPHALUS. — Swatnson.t 
Picus erythrocephalus, Bonap. Synop. p. 45.— Wagler S; ec. Av. Picus, No. 14. 
—The Red-headed’ Woodpecker, dai, pl. 27; Orn. Big. \. p. 14 —Me- 
Janerpes erythrocephalus, North. Zool. ii. p. 316. 
Tuer: is perhaps no bird in North America more universally known 
than this. His tricolored plumage, red, white, and black, glossed with 
* There is a very great alliance between the British and American specimens ; 
and all authors who have described this bird and that of Europe, have done so with 
uncertainty. Wilson evidently had a doubt, both from what he says, and from 
marking the species and his eae with a query. Vieillot had doubts, and 
Bonaparte goes a good deal on his authority, but points out no difference between 
the birds. Mr. Swainson, in the Northern Zoology, has described a bird, as that 
of Vieillot’s, killed on the shores of Lake Huron, and proves distinctly that the 
plumage, and some of the relative proportions, vary. It is likely that there are two 
American species concerned in this, — one northern, another extending to the south, 
and that one perhaps may be identical with that of Europe; one certainly seems 
distinct. Ihave retained hyemalis with a mark of doubt, it being impossible to 
determine those so closely allied, without an examination of numerous species. 
—Eb. 
+ This will pomt out another of Mr. Swainson’s groups among the Wood- 
ckers, equally distinct with Colapies. The form is long and swallow-like; the 
Bil more rounded than angular, the culmen quite round; the wings nearly as long 
as the tail. In their manners, they are extremely familiar; and during summer, 
