RED-HEADED WOODPECKER. 1 ^y 



black, glossed with steel blue, is so striking and characteristic, 

 and his predatory habits in the orchards and cornfields, added 

 to his numbers, and fondness for hovering along the fences, so 

 very notorious, that almost every child is acquainted with the 

 red-headed woodpecker. In the immediate neighbourhood 

 of our large cities, where the old timber is chiefly cut down, 

 he is not so frequently found; and yet, at this present time 

 (June 1808), I know of several of their nests within the 

 boundaries of the city of Philadelphia. Two of these are in 

 button-wood trees {Platanus occidentalis), and another in the 

 decayed limb of an elm. The old ones, I observe, make their 

 excursions regularly to the woods beyond the Schuylkill, about 

 a mile distant, preserving great silence and circumspection 

 in visiting their nests, — precautions not much attended to by 

 them in the depth of the woods, because there the prying eye 

 of man is less to be dreaded. Towards the mountains, par- 

 ticularly in the vicinity of creeks and rivers, these birds are 

 extremely abundant, especially in the later end of summer. 

 Wherever you travel in the interior at that season, you hear 

 them screaming from the adjoining woods, rattling on the 

 dead limbs of trees, or on the fences, where they are perpetually 

 seen flitting from stake to stake, on the roadside, before you. 

 Wherever there is a tree or trees of the wild cherry covered 

 with ripe fruit, there you see them busy among the branches ; 

 and in passing orchards, you may easily know where to find 

 the earliest, sweetest apples, by observing those trees on or 

 near which the red-headed woodpecker is skulking ; for he is 

 so excellent a connoisseur in fruit, that wherever an apple or 

 pear is found broached by him, it is sure to be among the 

 ripest and best flavoured : when alarmed, he seizes a capital 

 one by striking his open bill deep into it, and bears it off to 

 the woods. When the Indian-corn is in its rich, succulent, 

 milky state, he attacks it with great eagerness, opening a pas- 

 sage through the numerous folds of the husk, and feeding on 

 it with voracity. The girdled, or deadened timber, so common 

 among cornfields in the back settlements, are his favourite 



