RED-HEADED WOODPECKER. 411 



As nobody disturbed these birds, they became very confiding. Many of the large 

 post-oaks near my house were cut down in the fall. The trunks were used for fence-rails, 

 and the tops remained on the ground. Underneath the bark of these large limbs innu- 

 merable wood worms and other insects had begun their work, and the Pileated Wood- 

 peckers were constantly at work. With powerful strokes they hammered off the bark' 

 and captured their insect prey. Their beauty, activity, and docility excited my admira- 

 tion. When I approached one of them too closely, it uttered a loud and laughing ha-he, 

 ha-he, and then took wing. It is very noisy during the mating season, and indulges a 

 good deal of its time in drumming on a dry hollow limb. Its call-note sounds like 

 a-wickj a-wick, but it also utters a loud taok-tack-tack, which is several times repeated. 

 The nest I have found from ten to fifty feet from the ground, usually in post-oaks, 

 but also in elms, cypresses, cotton-wood trees, and sycamores, and in Wisconsin in 

 birches, oaks, tamaracks, and hemlocks. In Florida it is said to excavate a hole for its 

 nest also in cabbage palmettos. The cavity is from ten to twenty inches deep, and the 

 entrance is so large that I could easily put my hand into it. The eggs, usually from 

 three to five, but sometimes six, are pure glossy white. Only one brood is raised in a 

 season. I found the first nest with a full complement of eggs near the West Yegua in 

 Texas on the first day of April. 



Though a very beneficial bird, the Pileated Woodpecker is much persecuted. In the 

 French Market of New Orleans I saw large bunches of these birds offered for sale, and 

 they are by the Negroes of that city evidently considered as game birds, though they 

 have a very offensive smell. This peculiar odor is imparted to them by the large black 

 ants on which they greed,ily feed. In the days of my boyhood I often saw Indians who 

 were decorated with the beautiful red crests of these Woodpeckers. 



NAMES: Pileated Woodpecker, King of the Woods, Log-cock, Black Wood-cock, Cock of the Woods. 

 SCIENTIFIC NAMES: Picus pileatus Linn. (1766). Hylotomus pileatus Baird (1858). CEOPHLCEUS 



PILBATUS Cab. (1S62). 

 DESCRIPTION: Long red crest. Bill, black. General color of body, wings, and tail, dull greenish-black. A 

 narrow white streak from just above the eye to the occiput; a wider one from the nostril feathers, 

 under the eye and along the side of the head ,and neck; sides of breast (concealed by the wing), 

 axillaries, and under wing-coverts, and concealed bases of all the quills, wth chin and beneath the 

 head, ■white, tinged with sulphur-yellow. Entire crown from the base of the bill to a well-developed 

 occipital crest, as also a patch on the ramus of the lower jaw, scarlet-red. Long primaries tipped 

 with white. — Length, 18.00 inches; wing, 9.50; tail, 6.50 inches. 



RED-HEADED WOODPECKER. 



Melanerpes erythrocephalus Swainson. 



Plate XXXVI. Pig. 4. 



li^HE MEXICANS call the Woodpeckers 'Carpenteros,' and most appropriately, for 

 the chisel-shaped bill not only serves the bird in procuring its daily food, but is 

 also the sole agent employed in digging the wonderful cavities in which the eggs are 

 laid and the young reared. It is probable that, putting aside the universal enemy, 



