File:Bulletin - United States National Museum (1883) (14782769252).jpg

Identifier: bulletinunitedst261883unitfo (find matches)
Title: Bulletin - United States National Museum
Year: 1877 (1870s)
Authors: United States National Museum Smithsonian Institution United States. Dept. of the Interior
Subjects: Science
Publisher: Washington : Smithsonian Institution Press, (etc.) for sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. Govt Print. Off.
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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w-billed Cuckoo; Rain Crow. A very abundant summer resident, and especially numerous in springand fall, chiefly in high open woods. Arrives May 1 and departs latein September. It breeds here plentifully, placing its frail platform oftwigs on the bough of a tree. Both species of Cuckoo are notable fortheir tardiness in completing the clutch of eggs, so that fresh eggs andothers in different stages of incubation may be found in the same nestwith young birds. They also occasionally slip an egg in other birdsnests; but the parasitic habit is not established, as it is in the cases ofvarious Old World species of this family. (429) Suborder PICIFORMES: Woodpeckers.Family PICIDiE: Woodpeckers. 136. (25.) Hylotomus pileatus (Linn.) Bd. Pileated Woodpecker; Cock of the Woods; Black Log-cock. This is one of the birds which retires most speedily with the openingof the country, being wild and wary, and delighting in the heaviesttimber. It was rare in 1862, having already responded in this negative
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Fig. 61.—Foot of Pileated Woodpecker, nat. size. manner to the encroachment of the city upon its favorite haunts. It isstill, however, regularly exposed for sale in the market, being brought infrom the surrounding country, though we should doubt that a singlePileated Woodpecker now resides in the immediate vicinity of the city.The only one we remember to have ever seen alive was in a piece of heavytimber known as Gales Woods; but that was about 1857 or 1858.Mr. Shoemaker informs us that one was seen a year or two ago. Mr.Palmer states that he finds them every winter in market; that he sawBull. Nat. Mus. No. 26 6 82 AVIFAUNA COLUMBIANA. one in the fall of 1880 at Falls Church, and has three specimens, boughtin market on the 9th of January, 1879, which had been shot in Marylandnear the District line. (432) 137. (22.) Picas villosus Linn. Hairy Woodpecker. A permanent resident, but rare, and becoming more so as the timberdisappears. It was not at all common even twenty-live years ago.

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