This was too much for them, and their only comfort was in passing and holding their bills through the hard bars. I at last had one constructed with oak boards at the back and sides, and rails of the same in front. Their whole employment consisted in attempting to escape from their prison, regularly demolishing one every two days, although made of pitie boards of tolerable thickness. In a short time they began picking up the grasshoppers thrown into their cage, and were fully fed with cornmeal, which they preferred eating dry. They were sullen and cross, nay, three died in a few days but the others, having been fed on grasshoppers forcibly introduced into their mouths, were raised. I found it exceedingly difficult to entice them to open their bill in order to feed them. When the young were sufficiently grown to be taken out with safety, which I ascertained by seeing them occasionally peeping out of the hole, I carried them home, to judge of their habits in confinement, and attempted to raise them. I suffered her to bring out her young, both sexes alternately incubating, each visiting the other at intervals, peeping into the hole to see that all was right and well there, and flying off afterwards in search of food. They waited a few days as if undecided, when on a sudden I heard the female at work again in the tree she once more deepened the hole, made it broader at bottom, and recommenced laying. Before the Woodpeckers began to sit, I robbed them of their eggs, to see if they would lay a second time. The eggs, which were laid on fragments of chips, expressly left by the birds, were six, large, white and translucent. The hole was about 18 inches deep, and I could touch the bottom with my hand. The tree was large, but so situated, that, from the branches of another I could reach the nest. The nest, it is true, was originally their own. Next the nest itself was disposed of, the hole cleaned and enlarged, and there they raised a brood. Before these were half grown, the Woodpeckers returned to the place, and, despite of the cries and reiterated attacks of the Blue-birds, the others took the young, not very gently, as you may imagine, and carried them away to some distance. 'A pair of Pileated Woodpeckers had a nest in an old elm tree, in a swamp, which they occupied that year the next spring early, two Blue-birds took possession of it, and there had young. I will give you an instance of this, as related to me by my generous friend the Reverend JOHN BACHMAN of Charleston, who also speaks of the cruelty of the species. Their natural wildness never leaves them, even although they may have been reared from the nest. I shall never forget, that, while in the Great Pine Forest of Pennsylvania, I spent several days in the woods endeavouring to procure one, for the same purpose of proving its identity with others elsewhere seen. For miles have I chased it from one cabbage-tree to another, without ever getting within shooting distance, until at last I was forced to resort to stratagem, and seeming to abandon the chase, took a circuitous route, concealed myself in its course, and waited until it came up, when, it being now on the side of the trees next to me, I had no difficulty in bringing it down. Even in the wildest parts of Eastern Florida, where I have at times followed it, to assure myself that the birds I saw were of the same species as that found in our distant Atlantic States, its vigilance was not in the least abated.

Often when you think the next step will take you near enough to fire with certainty, the wary bird flies off before you can reach it. When followed it always alights on the tallest branches or trunks of trees, removes to the side farthest off, from which it every moment peeps, as it watches your progress in silence and so well does it seem to know the distance at which a shot can reach it, that it seldom permits so near an approach. When seen in a large field newly brought into tillage, and yet covered with girdled trees, it removes from one to another, cackling out its laughter-like notes, as if it found delight in leading you a wild-goose chase in pursuit of it. It is at all times a shy bird, so that one can seldom approach it, unless under cover of a tree, or when he happens accidentally to surprise it while engaged in its daily avocations. Wherever it occurs it is a permanent resident, and, like its relative the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, it remains pretty constantly in the place which it has chosen after leaving its parents. Even now, when several species of our birds are becoming rare, destroyed as they are, either to gratify the palate of the epicure, or to adorn the cabinet of the naturalist, the Pileated Woodpecker is every where to be found in the wild woods, although scarce and shy in the peopled districts. It would be difficult for me to say in what part of our extensive country I have not met with this hardy inhabitant of the forest.

Pileated woodpecker pronunciation