PILEATED WOODPECKER. 
167 
and along tlie back, where they are about an inch apart, nearly to the 
rump ; the first five primaries are wholly black, on the next five the 
white spreads from the tip higher and higher to the secondaries, which 
are wholly white from their coverts downwards : these markings, when 
the wings are shut, make the bird appear as if his back were white, 
hence he has been called, by some of our naturalists, the large White- 
backed Woodpecker ; the neck is long ; the beak an inch broad at the 
base, of the color and consistence of ivory, prodigiously strong, and ele- 
gantly fluted ; the tail is black, tapering from the two exterior feathers, 
which are three inches shorter than the middle ones, and each feather 
has the singularity of being greatly concave below ; the wing is lined 
with yellowish white ; the legs are about an inch and a quarter long, the 
exterior toe about the same length, the claws exactly semicircular and 
remarkably powerful, the whole of a light blue or lead color. The 
female is about half an inch shorter, the bill rather less, and the whole 
plumage of the head black, glossed with green ; in the other parts of 
the plumage she exactly resembles the male. In the stomachs of three 
which I opened, I found large quantities of a species of worm called 
borers, two or three inches long, of a dirty cream-color, with a black 
head ; the stomach was an oblong pouch, not muscular like the gizzards 
of some others. The tongue was worm-shaped, and for half an inch at 
the tip as hard as horn, flat, pointed, of the same white color as the bill, 
and thickly barbed on each side. .. 
Species II. PIOUS PILEATUS. 
PILEATED WOODPECKER. 
[Plate XXIX. Fig. 2.j 
Picus pileatus, Lath. Tnd. Orn. i., p. 225, 4. — Linn. Si/st. i., p. 173, 3. — Gmel. 
St/st. I., p. 425. — Picus nigerVirginianus cristatus, Briss. iv., p. 29, 10. — Picnoir 
d Iwppe rouge.. Buff, til, p. 48. — Pic noir hupjje de la Louisiane, PL Enl. 718. 
— Larger crested Woodpecker, Catesb. Car. i., 17. — Pileated Woodpecker, Arct. 
Zool. 11., No. 157. — L ATH. Sgn. II., p. 554, 3. — Id. Sup. p. 105. — Bartram, p. 289. 
This American species is the second in size among his tribe, and may 
be styled the Great Northern Chief of the Woodpeckers, 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 
Genesee country, and in all the tracts of high-timbered forests, particu- 
larly in the neighborhood of our large rivers, where he is noted for 
making a loud and almost incessant cackling before wet weather ; flying 
