150 
RED-HEADED WOODPECKER. 
or, that the services of a useful animal should not be rewarded 
with a small portion of that which it has contributed to 
preserve? We are told, in the benevolent language of the 
Scriptures, not to muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth 
out the corn ; and why should not the same generous liberality 
be extended to this useful family of birds, which forms so 
powerful a phalanx against the inroads of many millions of 
destructive vermin ? 
The Red-headed Woodpecker is, properly speaking, a bird 
of passage ; though, even in the eastern states, individuals 
are found during moderate winters, as well as in the states of 
New York and Pennsylvania; in Carolina, they are somewhat 
more numerous during that season? but not one-tenth of what 
are found in summer. They make their appearance in 
Pennsylvania about the 1st of May, and leave us about the 
middle of October. They inhabit from Canada to the Gulf 
of Mexico, and are also found on the western coast of North 
America. About the middle of May they begin to construct 
their nests, which, like the rest of the genus, they form in the 
body or large limbs of trees, taking in no materials, but 
smoothing it within to the proper shape and size. The female 
lays six eggs, of a pure white, and the young make their first 
appearance about the "20th of June. During the first season, 
the head and neck of the young birds are blackish gray, 
which has occasioned some European writers to mistake them 
for females ; the white on the wing is also spotted with black ; 
but in the succeeding spring they receive their perfect 
plumage, and the male and female then differ only in the 
latter being rather smaller, and its colours not quite so vivid ; 
both have the head and neck deep scarlet ; the bill light blue, 
black towards the extremity, and strong ; back, primaries, 
wing-coverts, and tail, black, glossed with steel blue ; rump, 
lower part of the back, secondaries, and whole under parts 
from the breast downward, white ; legs and feet, bluish green ; 
claws, light blue ; round the eye, a dusky narrow skin, bare of 
feathers ; iris, dark hazel ; total length, nine inches and a half ; 
