304 NORTHERN ZOOLOGY. 



[100.] 1. Picus (Dryotomus) pileatus. (Swains.) Pileated Woodpecker. 



Sub-family, Picianse, Swains. Genus, Picus, Linn. Sub-genus, Dryotomus*, Swains. 

 Pileated Woodpecker (Picus pileatus). Penn. Arct. Zool., ii., p. 269, No. 157- Wils., iv., pi. 29, f. 1. 

 Picus pileatus. Bonap. Syn., No. 38. Wagler, Sp. Av. Picus 2. 

 Mohkeechae-cannsbshees, Cree Indians. Thede-dilleh, Chipewyans. 



This great Woodpecker is resident all the year in the interior of the fur- 

 eountries, up to the sixty- second or sixty-third parallels, rarely appearing near 

 Hudson's Bay, but frequenting the gloomiest recesses of the forests that skirt 

 the Rocky Mountains. The stillness of these primeval shades is often invaded 

 by the stroke of its powerful bill, which excels the woodman's axe in the loudness 

 of its sound, and still more in the rapidity with which its blows are urged ; nor 

 does it fall far short in the quantity of chips it produces. Like other "Wood- 

 peckers, it is extremely industrious, seemingly never a moment idle, flying from 

 tree to tree, and plying its head like a hammer the instant that it alights. A few 

 strokes of the bill suffice to indicate the state of the tree ; and if the bird judges 

 that it would explore the interior in vain, it instantly quits it for another. 

 According to the American naturalists, it inhabits all the United States, and is 

 particularly numerous in the Gennessee country. — R. 



DESCRIPTION 

 Of a male, killed in the winter, lat. 57°, near the Rocky Mountains. 



Colour. — Top of the head, occipital crest, and maxillary stripe, bright scarlet. Line 

 bounding the crest laterally from the eye, a band from the nostrils to the side of the nape, 

 thence along the neck to the sides of the breast, the concealed bases of all the quill feathers, 

 a spot covered by the spurious wing, the chin, throat, and inner wing coverts, pure white. A 

 bar across the orbit and ears to the middle of the nape, and the rest of the plumage pitch- 

 black, purest on the quills and tail. Some of the ventral feathers are fringed with grey, and 

 two or three of the greater quills are tipped exteriorly with brownish-white. Bill blackish- 

 grey above, pale horn-colour beneath. Irides golden-yellow. Legs bluish-black. — The female 

 has a yellowish-brown forehead, with darker shafts and a blackish maxillary stripe. — R. 



Form, typical of the sub-genus. Bill, in comparison with the typical Woodpeckers, much 

 less robust, the culmen being very slightly arched in the middle, and the lateral angle nearer 

 to the central ridge than to the commissure ; the base is considerably wider than it is high, 

 rendering the bill depressed for more than half its length, — a structure which sufficiently 



* Agi/«T9/K»s, qui quercus vel arbores secat. 



