A RED-HEADED FA MIL Y. 29 



peared to be, as he braced himself for an ef- 

 fort which was to generate a force sufficient to 

 hurl his heavy head and beak back and forth 

 at a speed of about twenty-eight strokes to 

 the second ! 



All of our woodpeckers, pure and simple — 

 that is, all of the species in which the wood- 

 pecker character has been preserved almost 

 unmodified — have exceedingly muscular heads 

 and strikingly constricted necks ; their beaks 

 are nearly straight, wedge-shaped, fluted or 

 ribbed on the upper mandible, and their nos- 

 trils are protected by hairy or feathery tufts. 

 Their legs are strangely short in appearance, 

 but are exactly adapted to their need, and their 

 tail-feathers are tipped with stiff points. These 

 features are all fully developed in the Campe- 

 philus principalis, the bill especially showing a 

 size, strength and symmetrical beauty truly 

 wonderful. 



The stiff pointed tail-feathers of the wood- 

 pecker serve the bird a turn which I have 

 never seen noted by any ornithologist. When 

 the bird must strike a hard blow with its bill, 

 it does not depend solely upon its neck and 

 head ; but, bracing the points of its tail-featiiT 

 ers against the tree, and rising to the full 

 length of its short, powerful legs, and drawing 

 back its body, head, and neck to the farthest • 

 extent, it dashes its bill home with all the 

 force of its entire bodily weight and muscle. I 

 have seen the ivory-bill, striking thus, burst 

 off from almost flinty-hard dead trees frag- 

 ments of wood half as large as my hand ; and 

 once in the Cherokee hills of Georgia I watched 

 apileated woodpecker (ffylotomus pileatus) dig 

 a hole to the very heart of an exceedingly. 



