CEOPHLOEUS PILEATUS ABIETICOLA Bangs

NORTHERN PILEATED WOODPECKER

Plates [20-24]

HABITS
Contributed by Bayard Henderson Christy

This, the largest race of Ceophloeus pileatus, inhabits the forests of the Transition and Canadian Zones, from the Atlantic coast to the Rocky Mountains. In the South it is replaced by C. p. pileatus and in the West by C. p. picinus. The southern limit of its range lies across southern Pennsylvania, West Virginia, central Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri. The most northerly record of its occurrence is that of John Reid, noted by Bendire (1895). He took a specimen on Big Island, in Great Slave Lake (lat. 61° N.). Bangs (1898), who described the northern form and named it C. p. abieticola, believed that in the mountains of Virginia and West Virginia lay the line of transition from the southern to the northern form; but later investigators have determined that the line lies, as first noted above, somewhat northward of Bangs’ location.

The characteristics that distinguish the northern from the southern form are greater size, longer bill, slatiness rather than sootiness of the black of the plumage, and greater extent of the white areas.

Catesby (1731) depicted the bird (in its southern form) and called it “the large red-crested woodpecker”; and Linnaeus (1758), citing Catesby as his source, named it, for his purposes, pileatus (= crested). Following Linnaeus, the English naturalist Latham (1783) began in 1781 to publish his General Synopsis; and he, lacking knowledge of the bird in its haunts, and finding Catesby’s circumlocution unwieldy, took from Linnaeus’s Latin, as a name for common usage, “pileated woodpecker.” The indications are that Latham coined the name; certainly he gave it currency.

The bird already possessed a common name; and it is a pity that Latham did not know it. In its native land it was, and still is, commonly called, the log-cock. That is a good name—apt, picturesque, and widely used. Wilson (1811) knew it well enough, and so did Audubon (1842); and they would have done well, had they given it place as the established vernacular name. But Wilson, under Bartram’s tutelage, followed Latham, and Audubon followed Wilson. They, in their prestige, have settled the matter. Nuttall (1832) tried to make a stand for log-cock, and others since have tried, but in vain. And now upon this splendid creature a dull piece of pedantry remains hopelessly fixed.

Another homespun name in extensive use is Cock-of-the-woods; yet another is Wood-cock. This last is suitable enough, but it leads obviously to confusion. Accordingly, within the range of the true woodcock (Philohela minor), the woodpecker is commonly distinguished as the “black woodcock.” Other appellatives that have been picked up here and there and gathered in the books are “black woodpecker,” “English woodpecker,” “black log,” “king-of-the-woods,” “stump breaker”; and, because of its cackling cry, “wood-hen,” “Indian-hen,” “laughing woodpecker,” “johnny-cock,” “wood-chuck,” and “cluck-cock.” (The last, given by Scoville, 1920, as current in Juniata County, Pa., is, perhaps, an assimilation from the Pennsylvania Dutch.)