20 PILEATED WOODPECKER. 



though, in fact, his range extends over the whole of the United 

 States from the interior of Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. 

 He is very numerous in the Gennesee country, and in all the 

 tracts of high-timbered forests-, particularly in the neighbour- 

 hood of our large rivers, where he is noted for making a loud 

 and almost incessant cackling before wet weather ; flying at 

 such times in a restless uneasy manner from tree to tree, 

 making the woods echo to his outcry. In Pennsylvania and 

 the northern states, he is called the black woodcock ; in the 

 southern states, the logcock. Almost every old trunk in the 

 forest where he resides bears the marks of his chisel. Where- 

 ever he perceives a tree beginning to decay, he examines it 

 round and round with great skill and dexterity, strips off the 

 bark in sheets of five or six feet in length, to get at the hidden 

 cause of the disease, and labours with a gaiety and activity 

 really surprising. I have seen him separate the greatest part 

 of the bark from a large dead pine tree, for twenty or thirty 

 feet, in less than a quarter of an hour. Whether engaged in 

 flying from tree to tree, in digging, climbing, or barking, he 

 seems perpetually in a hurry. He is extremely hard to kill, 

 clinging close to the tree even after he has received his mortal 

 wound ; nor yielding up his hold but with his expiring breath. 

 If slightly wounded in the wing, and dropt while flying, he 

 instantly makes for the nearest tree, and strikes with great 

 bitterness at the hand stretched out to seize him; and can 

 rarely be reconciled to confinement. He is sometimes observed 

 among the hills of Indian corn, and it is said by some that he 

 frequently feeds on it. Complaints of this kind are, however, 

 not general ; many farmers doubting the fact, and conceiving 

 that at these times he is in search of insects which lie concealed 

 in the husk. I will not be positive that they never occasionally 

 taste maize ; yet I have opened and examined great numbers 



value. For the type of one of them, he has chosen the Picus pileatus, 

 under the title of Dryotomus, differing from Picus, in the exterior outer 

 toe being shorter than the anterior external one, exactly the reverse of 

 the proportions of Picus. — Ed. 



