A marked peculiarity I have noted with _Sphyrapicus thyroideus_ is that the male takes a lookout station upon some suitable tree, where, at the approach of any possible danger, he gives the alarm by striking a short dry limb with his bill, by which a peculiar vibrating sound is given out, which the female, not very distant, fully understands, and is at once on the alert. If either excavating, guarding, or covering her eggs, she will immediately look out of her burrow, and, should the intruder’s path lie in the direction of her nest, she will silently slip away and alight in a tree some distance off, but in view of both her nest and the intruder. The first or second blow of a hatchet upon the tree trunk in which the nest is excavated will mark her movement again by a short flight, so managed as not to increase the distance--in fact oftener coming nearer. When satisfied that her treasures have been discovered, she utters a peculiar, low, grating sound, not unlike the purring of a cat. The male then comes to the fore and braving the danger, is very courageous, and, should the eggs be far advanced in incubation, he will even enter the nest when you are almost within reach of it. When the latter are rifled, he is always the first to go in and discover the fact, often passing in and out several times in a surprised sort of manner. CEOPHLOEUS PILEATUS PILEATUS (Linnaeus) SOUTHERN PILEATED WOODPECKER HABITS The above name is now restricted to the pileated woodpeckers of the Lower Austral forests of the Southern United States, except southern Florida, east of the Rocky Mountains. When Outram Bangs (1898) applied the name _abieticola_, to the northern race, he said: “Linnaeus based his _Picus pileatus_ on Catesby and Kalm. Taking Catesby as the best authority, southern South Carolina must be considered the type locality of the species, and birds from this region are as extreme of the southern race as those from Florida.” The southern pileated woodpecker is decidedly smaller than the northern bird and somewhat darker in coloration. Ridgway (1914) says of this race, in a footnote: “Some of the more northern examples are quite as slaty as the extreme northern form (_P. p. abieticola_) but they are distinctly smaller. In other words, I have restricted the name _pileatus_ to an intermediate form, characterized by the small size of _P. p. floridanus_ combined with an appreciably lighter (more slaty or sooty) coloration, often approaching closely the lightness of hue of _P. p. abieticola_.”