34 B Y- WA YS AND BIRD-NO TES. 



towards a grain and fruit diet, and it also often 

 descends to old logs and fallen boughs for its 

 food — a thing never thought of by the ivory- 

 bill. As for the rest of the red-headed family, 

 they are degenerate species, though lively, 

 clever, and exceedingly interesting. What a 

 sad dwarf the little downy woodpecker is when 

 compared with the ivory-bill! and yet to my 

 mind it is clear that Picus puiescens is the de- 

 generate off-shoot from the grand campephilus 

 trunk. 



Our red-headed woodpecker (M. erythro- 

 ciphalus) is a genuine American in every sense, 

 a plausible, querulous, aggressive, enterpris- 

 ing, crafty fellow, who tries every mode of get- 

 ting 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 fly-catche.r as 

 well. As if to correspond with his versatility 

 of habit, his plumage is divided into four reg- 

 ular masses of color, His head and neck are 

 crimson, his back, down to secondaries, a 

 brilliant black, 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 than a hundred years to come, 

 he will be making his nest on the. ground, in 

 hedges or in the crotches of orchard trees. 

 Already he has begun to push his way out into 

 our smaller Western prairies, where there is no 

 dead timber for him to make his nest-holes in. 

 I found a compromise-nest between two fence- 

 rails in Illinois, which was probably a fair index 

 of the future habit of the red-head. It was 



