OF VIRGINIA 159 
recchoing with this powerful and rapid noise. Extra 
large dead pines, or poplars with dead tops, are usually 
selected for a home, generally in close proximity to water. 
The nest cavity is rather pretentious, and always as high 
from the ground as possible, sometimes seventy feet or 
more up. Four to five eggs are laid, glossy white. Size, 
1.30x1.00. Fresh cges first week in May. It is not 
improbable that both forms of the Pileated Woodpecker 
overlap their breeding ranges in Tidewater. It is a bird 
of the heavy timber, and as our big tracts are now few 
and far between, we see less of them each year. Their 
food consists chiefly of ants and beetles, obtained from 
the under side of the bark and trunk of dead trees, the 
birds being experts in detaching the bark from the trunks. 
GENUS MELANERPES. 
[406]. Melanerpes erythrocephalus (Linnewus), Red- 
headed Woodpecker. 
Rayce.—Transition and Austral zones from south- 
eastern British Columbia, southern Alberta, Manitoba, 
and Ontario south to the Gulf Coast, and from central 
Montana, central Colorado, and central Texas east to 
valleys of the Ufudson and Delaware; rare and local in 
New England; casual in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, 
Nova Seotia, and New Brunswick; irregularly migratory 
in the northern parts of its range. 
While not so common as the Flicker or Downy, this 
handsome woodpecker is not rare with us, and remains 
the year round. It usually selects some tall, dead 
pine tree from which the bark has become detached, 
and after trial holes to the number of three or four are 
