20 
PILEATEI) WOODPECKER, 
of the United States from the interior of Canada to the Gulf 
of Mexico. He is very numerous in the Gennesee country, 
and in all the tracts of high timbered forests, particularly in 
the neighbourhood of our large rivers, where he is noted for 
making a loud and almost incessant cackling before wet 
weather ; flying at such times in a restless uneasy manner 
from tree to tree, making the woods echo to his outcry. In 
Pennsylvania and the northern states, he is called the Black 
Woodcock ; in the southern states, the Logcock. Almost 
every old trunk in the forest where he resides bears the marks 
of his chisel. Wherever he perceives a tree beginning to 
decay, he examines it round and round with great skill and 
dexterity, strips off the bark in sheets of five or six feet in 
length, to get at the hidden cause of the disease, and labours 
with a gaiety and activity really surprising. I have seen him 
separate the greatest part of the bark from a large dead pine 
tree, for twenty or thirty feet, in less than a quarter of an 
hour. Whether engaged in flying from 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 doubt- 
ing 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 
