This American species is the second in size among his tribe, and may be styled the great northern chief of the woodpeckers, though, in fact, his range extends over the whole of the United States from the interior of Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. He is very numerous in the Gennesee country, and in all the tracts of high timbered forests, particularly in the neighbourhood of our large rivers, where he is noted for making a loud and almost incessant cackling before wet weather; flying at such times in a restless uneasy manner from tree to tree, making the woods echo to his outcry. In Pennsylvania and the northern states he is called the black woodcock; in the southern states, the logcock. Almost every old trunk in the forest where he resides bears the marks of his chisel. Wherever he perceives a tree beginning to decay, he examines it round and round with great skill and dexterity, strips off the bark in sheets of five or six feet in length, to get at the hidden cause of the disease, and labours with a gaiety and activity really surprising. I have seen him separate the greatest part of the bark from a large dead pine tree, for twenty or thirty feet, in less than a quarter of an hour. Whether engaged in flying from tree to tree, in digging, climbing, or barking, he seems perpetually in a hurry.