174 
GOLDEN-WINGED WOODPECKEK. 
acterized as follows : " transversely striate with black and gray ; chin 
and breast black ; does not climb trees;"* Avhich is just as correct as if, 
in describing the human species, we should say — skin striped with black 
and green ; cheeks blue ; chin orange ; never walks on foot, &c. The 
pages of natural history should resemble a faithful mirror, in Avhich 
mankind may recognise the true images of the living originals ; instead 
of which we find this department of them, too often, like the hazy and 
rough medium of wretched window-glass, through whose crooked pro- 
tuberances everything appears so strangely distorted, that one scarcely 
knows his most intimate neighbors and acquaintance. 
The Golden-winged Woodpecker has the back and wings above of a 
dark uml)er, transversely marked with equidistant streaks of black ; 
upper part of the head an iron gray ; cheeks and parts surrounding the 
eyes, a fine cinnamon color ; from the lower mandible a strip of black, 
an inch in length, passes down each side of the throat, and a lunated 
spot, of a vivid blood red, covers the hindhead, its two points reaching 
within lialf an inch of each eye ; the sides of the neck, below this, in- 
cline to a bluish gray ; throat and chin a very liglit cinnamon or fawn 
color ; the breast is ornamented with a broad crescent of deep black ; 
the belly and vent white, tinged with j^ellow, and scattered with innu- 
meral.)le round spots of black, every feather having a distinct central 
spot, those on the thighs and vent being heart-shaped and largest ; the 
lower or inner side of the wing and tail, shafts of all the larger feathers, 
and indeed of almost evei'y feather, are of a beautiful golden yellow — 
that on the shafts of the primaries being very distinguishable, even when 
the wings are shut ; the rump is white, and remarkably prominent ; the 
tail-coverts Avhite, and curiously serrated with black ; upper side of the 
tail, and the tip below, black, edged with light loose filaments of a cream 
color, the two exterior feathers serrated with whitish ; shafts black 
towards the tips, the two middle ones nearly wholly so ; bill an inch and 
a half long, of a dusky horn color, somewhat bent, ridged only on the 
top, tapering, but not to a point, that being a little wedge-formed ; legs 
and feet light blue ; iris of the eye hazel ; length twelve inches, extent 
twenty. The female differs from the male chiefly in the greater obscurity 
of the fine colors, and in wanting the black moustaches on each side 
of the throat. This description, as well as the drawing, was taken from 
a ver}^ beautiful and perfect specimen. 
Though this species, generally speaking, is migratory, yet they often 
remain with us in Pennsylvania during the whole winter. They also in- 
habit the continent of North America, from Hudson's Bay to Georgia ; 
and' have been found by voyagers on the northwest coast of America. 
They arrive at Hudson's Bay in April, and leave it in September. Mr. 
* Turton's Linnaeus, vol. i., p. 264. 
