The Pileated Woodpecker is a beautiful bird of great size and strength. Its bill is both large and powerful. In fact, it is exceeded in size by but one of the Woodpeckers—the ivory-billed species—which is a resident of the Southern States. It is quite variable in its habits. In some sections it is very shy and retiring, while in others it is quite tame and becomes quite accustomed to man if not ruthlessly annoyed. Mr. Hardy, writing of his experience with this bird in the woods of Maine, says: “I once had two so tame they would allow me to sit within four paces of them, and put my hand upon the tree when they were not ten feet above my head.” Mr. Chapman, writing of its habits in the cypress swamps of Florida, says: “There, contrary to the experience of Audubon, I found it by no means a wild bird. Indeed, flickers were more difficult to approach,” and he also writes: “I have called these birds to me by simply clapping my slightly closed palms, making a sound in imitation of their tapping on a resonant limb.” Another writer states that when called in this manner, “they seem to lose their usual shyness and seem stupefied at not finding their mate, as they had expected.” Few birds are more useful in the preservation of the forest from destruction by insect pests. “A workman is known by his chips.” The energy and perseverance of the Pileated Woodpecker, as it seeks for the destructive borers or other injurious insects, in the bark and wood of afflicted trees, is amply attested by numerous denuded trees and by the strips of bark and piles of chips lying on the ground. The hammering of the more familiar species of woodpeckers is but a light tapping when compared with the loud and resounding whacks of its powerful strokes. It has been known to “chisel holes six or eight inches deep in cedar and other soft-wood trees, and as large as the holes in a post-and-rail fence,” and to “pick a large hole through two inches of frozen green hemlock to get at the hollow interior.” It seldom, if ever, attacks healthy trees and it is a constant resident of extensive forests that have been swept by destructive fires and the bare tree trunks left to decay. [Illustration: PILEATED WOODPECKER. (Ceophloeus pileatus). ½ Life-size. FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES.]