RED-HEADED WOODPECKER. 



151 



appearance about the 20th of June. Daring the first season, 

 the head and neck of the young birds are blackish gray, 

 which has occasioned some European writers to mistake them 

 for females ; the white on the wing is also spotted with black ; 

 but in the succeeding spring they receive their perfect plum- 

 age, and the male and female then differ only in the latter 

 being rather smaller, and its colours not quite so vivid ; both 

 have the head and neck deep scarlet ; the bill light blue, 

 black towards the extremity, and strong; back, primaries, 

 wing-coverts, and tail, black, glossed with steel blue; rump, 

 lower part of the back, secondaries, and whole under parts 

 from the breast downward, white; legs and feet, bluish green ; 

 claws, light blue ; round the eye, a dusky narrow skin, bare of 

 feathers ; iris, dark hazel ; total length, nine inches and a half; 

 extent, seventeen inches. The figure on the plate was drawn 

 and coloured from a very elegant living specimen. 



Notwithstanding the care which this bird, in common with 

 the rest of its genus, takes to place its young beyond the 

 reach of enemies, within the hollows of trees, yet there is one 

 deadly foe, against whose depredations neither the height of 

 the tree nor the depth of the cavity is the least security. 

 This is the black snake (Coluber constrictor), who frequently 

 glides up the trunk of the tree, and, like a skulking savage, 

 enters the woodpecker's peaceful apartment, devours the eggs 

 or helpless young, in spite of the cries and flutterings of the 

 parents ; and, if the place be large enough, coils himself up in 

 the spot they occupied, where lie will sometimes remain for 

 several days. The eager schoolboy, after hazarding his neck 

 to reach the woodpecker's hole, at the triumphant moment 

 when he thinks the nestlings his own, and strips his arm, 

 launching it down into the cavity, and grasping what he con- 

 ceives to be the callow young, starts with horror at the sight 

 of a hideous snake, and almost drops from his giddy pinnacle, 

 retreating down the tree with terror and precipitation. Several 

 adventures of this kind have come to my knowledge ; and one 

 of them was attended with serious consequences, where both 



