PILEATED WOODPECKER. 
17 
Whether engaged in flyingfrom 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 of these birds, 
killed in various parts of the United States, from lake Ontario to 
the Alatamaha river, but never found a grain of Indian corn in 
their stomachs. 
The Pileated Woodpecker is not migratory, but braves the 
extremes of both the arctic and torrid regions. Neither is he 
gregarious, for it is rare to see more than one or two, or at the 
most three, in company. Formerly they were numerous in the 
neighbourhood of Philadelphia; but gradually as the old timber 
fell, and the country became better cleared, they retreated to the 
forest. At present few of those birds are to be found within ten 
or fifteen miles of the city. 
Their nest is built, or rather the eggs are deposited, in the hole 
of a tree, dug out by themselves, no other materials being used 
but the soft chips of rotten wood. The female lays six large eggs 
of a snowy whiteness; and, it is said, they generally raise two 
broods in the same season. 
This species is eighteen inches long, and twenty-eight in ex- 
tent; the general colour is a dusky brownish black; the head is 
ornamented with a conical cap of bright scarlet; two scarlet mus- 
taches proceed from the lower mandible; the chin is white; the 
nostrils are covered with brownish white hair-like feathers, 
and this stripe of white passes thence down the side of the neck 
VOL. II. — c 
