RED-HEADED WOODPECKER. 99 
trees, in the north-eastern parts of South Carolina,* and the thousands 
of peach-trees that yearly decay from the same cause. Will any one 
say, that taking half a dozen, or half a hundred, apples from a tree, 
is equally ruinous with cutting it down? or, that the services of a 
useful animal should not be rewarded with a small portion of that 
which it has contributed to preserve? Weare told, in the benevolent 
language of the Scriptures, not to muzzle the mouth of the ox that 
treadeth out the corn; and why should not the same generous liberal- 
ity be extended to this useful family of birds, which forms so powerful 
a phalanx against the inroads of many millions of destructive vermin r 
The Red-headed Woodpecker is, properly speaking, a bird of pas- 
sage ; though, even in the Mastern States, individuals are found during 
moderate winters, as well as in the states of New York and Pennsy!- 
vania; in Carolina, they are somewhat more numerous during that 
season, but not one tenth of what are found in summer. They make 
their appearance in Pennsylvania about the Ist of May, and leave us 
about the middle of October. They inhabit from Canada to the Gulf 
of Mexico, and are also found on the western coast of North America. 
About the middle of May they begin to construct their nests, which, 
like the rest of the genus, they form in the body or large limbs of 
trees, taking in no materials, but smoothing it within to the proper 
shape and size. The female lays six eggs, of a pure white, and the 
young make their first appearance about the 20th of June. During 
the first season, the head and neck of the young birds are blackish 
gray, which has occasioned some European writers to mistake them 
for females; the white on the wing is also spotted with black; but in 
the succeeding spring they receive their perfect plumage, and the 
male and female then differ only in the latter being rather smaller, 
and its colors not quite so vivid; both have the head and neck deep 
scarlet; the bill light blue, black towards the extremity, and strong; 
back, primaries, wing-coverts, and tail, black, glossed with steel blue ; 
rump, lower part of the back, secondaries, and whole under parts 
from the breast downward, white; legs and feet, bluish green; claws, 
light blue; round the eye, a dusky narrow skin, bare of feathers; iris, 
dark hazel; total length, nine inches and a half; extent, seventeen 
inches. The Fig. 35, on the plate, was drawn and colored from a 
very elegant living specimen. 
Notwithstanding the care which this bird, in common with the rest 
of its"genus, takes to place its young beyond the reach of enemies, 
within the hollows of trees, yet there is one deadly foe, against whose 
depredations neither the height of the tree, nor the depth of the cavity, 
is the least security. This is the black snake, (Coluber constrictor,) who 
frequently glides up the trunk of the tree, and, like a skulking savage, 
enters the Woodpecker’s peaceful apartment, devours the eggs or 
helpless young, in spite of the cries and flutterings of the parents ; and, ‘ 
if the place be large enough, coils himself up in the spot they occu- 
pied, where he will sometimes remain for several days. The eager 
schoolboy, after hazarding his neck to reach the Woodpecker’s hole, 
* In one place, on a tract of two thousand acres of pine land, on the Sampit 
River, near Georgetown, at least ninety trees in every hundred were destroyed by 
this pernicious insect, —a small, black-winged buy, resembling the weevil, but 
somewhat larger. : 
