PILEATED WOODPECKER 197 



white spots. The throat white and vent also white or 

 whitish. Is this the arctic three-toed ? x Probably many- 

 trees dying on this large burnt tract will attract many 

 woodpeckers to it. 



PILEATED WOODPECKER 



July 25, 1857. Our path up the bank here 2 led by a 

 large dead white pine, in whose trunk near the ground 

 were great square- cornered holes made by the wood- 

 peckers, probably the red-headed. They were seven or 

 eight inches long by four wide and reached to the heart 

 of the tree through an inch or more of sound wood, and 

 looked like great mortise-holes whose corners had been 

 somewhat worn and rounded by a loose tenon. The tree 

 for some distance was quite honeycombed by them. It 

 suggested woodpeckers on a larger scale than ours, as 

 were the trees and the forest. 3 



flickeb; pigeon woodpeckeb 



AprUS, 1842. I have just -heard the flicker among 

 the oaks on the hillside ushering in a new dynasty. It 

 is the age and youth of time. Why did Nature set this 

 lure for sickly mortals ? Eternity could not begin with 



1 [The birds must have been arctic three-toed woodpeckers, though 

 Thoreau misplaces the yellow crown-patch. This species, usually very 

 rare in Massachusetts, visited the State in considerable numbers in this 

 winter of 1860-1861.] 



a [On the West Branch of the Penobscot, Maine.] 



8 [These mortise-shaped holes, found abundantly in the forests of 

 northern New England, are the work of the pileated woodpecker, which 

 Thoreau saw and heard in the Maine woods, but somewhat hastily de- 

 nominated the red-headed woodpecker from the conspicuous red crest.] 



