GOLD-WINGED WOODPECKER. 
45 
the male and female alternately relieving 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 em- 
ployment they are so extremely intent, that they may be 
heard till a very late hour in the evening, thumping like 
carpenters. I have seen an instance where they had dug first 
five inches straight forward, and then downward more than 
twice that distance, 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, very thick at the greater end, and tapering 
suddenly to the other. 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 larvse 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 plumb. 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 gold-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 for the peculiar manner 
each has of procuring its food. The former, like a powerful 
wedge, to penetrate the dead and decaying branches, after 
worms and insects ; the latter, like a long and sharp pickaxe, 
to dig up the hillocks of pismires, that inhabit old stumps in 
prodigious multitudes. These beneficial services would entitle 
him to some regard from the husbandman, were he not accused, 
