20 
GOLDEN-WINGED WOODPECKER. 
tion, are truly surprising; the male and female alternately reliev- 
ing and encouraging each other by mutual caresses, renewing 
their labours for several days, till the object is attained, and the 
place rendered sufficiently capacious, convenient and secure. At 
this employment they are so extremely intent, that they may be 
heard till a very late hour in the evening, thumping like carpen- 
ters. I have seen an instance where they had dug first five inches 
straight forwards, and then downwards more than twice that dis- 
tance, through a solid black oak. They carry in no materials for 
their nest, the soft chips, and dust of the wood, serving for this 
purpose. The female lays six white eggs, almost transparent. 
The young early leave the nest, and, climbing to the higher 
branches, are there fed by their parents. 
The food of this bird varies with the season. As the common 
cherries, bird-cherries, and berries of the sour gum, successively 
ripen, he regales plentifully on them, particularly on the latter; 
but the chief food of this species, or that which is most usually 
found in his stomach, is wood-lice, and the young and larvae of 
ants, of which he is so immoderately fond, that I have frequently 
found his stomach distended with a mass of these, and these only, 
as large nearly as a plum. For the procuring of these insects, 
nature has remarkably fitted him. The bills of Woodpeckers, 
in general, are straight, grooved or channelled, wedge-shaped, 
and compressed to a thin edge at the end, that they may the 
easier penetrate the hardest wood; that of the Golden-winged 
Woodpecker is long, slightly bent, ridged only on the top, and 
tapering almost to a point, yet still retaining a little of the wedge 
form there. Both, however, are admirably adapted to the pecu- 
liar manner each has of procuring its food. The former, like a 
powerful wedge, to penetrate the dead and decaying bi’anches, 
after worms and insects; the latter, like a long and sharp pick- 
axe, to dig up the hillocks of pismires, that inhabit old stumps 
in prodigious multitudes. These beneficial services would en- 
title him to some I'egard from the husbandman, were he not ac- 
cused, and perhaps not without just cause, of being too partial 
to the Indian corn, when in that state which is usually called 
