Section Three Inches Wide Across the Hole and Then Move

down and cut out another section. The two holes were dug in about two hours.

Of summertime feeding Ora W. Knight (1908) says: “Except the Flicker this is the only species of Woodpecker I have observed feeding on the ground, but this species likes to tear open the ant hills found in open places in the woods and feed on the ants and their larvæ.” He also says that in the fall these birds eat “dogwood berries, choke and black cherries and other wild fruits and berries, also beechnuts and acorns for which it has a decided fondness.”

Dr. Sutton (1930) says:

The food of this species in Pennsylvania, according to official examination of four stomachs, is largely of ants. The stomach and crop of a male specimen weighing nine ounces, collected at Northumberland, Northumberland County, on November 10, 1928, contained 469 carpenter ants (Camponotus herculaneus), most of them so recently swallowed as to permit of counting them easily. The stomach of a female taken at Aitch, Huntingdon County, on November 30, 1928, contained the remains of at least 153 carpenter ants, one small carabid beetle, the legs of a small bug (apparently a squash-bug), and 17 wild grapes, swallowed whole.

F. E. L. Beal (1911) gave the results of examination of the contents of 80 stomachs collected far and wide throughout the range of the species. Animal food amounted to 72.88 percent; vegetable, 27.12 percent. Beetles made up 22.01 percent of the total, and ants 39.91 percent. As many as 2,600 ants were counted in a single stomach. The ants were “mostly of the larger species that live in decaying timber.” Ants and beetles together made up the bulk of the animal food (61.92 percent).

The Biological Survey (A. L. Nelson) has kindly made reply to my inquiry concerning stomach examinations of the subspecies abieticola alone. Data were available from 23 specimens, three collected in January, two in June, two in July, six in October, eight in November, and two in December. They were collected, two in Canada, two in New Brunswick, four in New York, four in Pennsylvania, six in Michigan, two in Illinois, two in Minnesota, and one in Iowa.

Animal food amounted to 83 percent of the whole; vegetable, 17 percent, with but a trace of gravel (one stomach only). The chief item was ants, principally large black ants, such as Camponotus and Crematogaster; this item alone constituted 60 percent of the whole. The animal food otherwise consisted of a variety of beetles and of a very few (2 percent) caterpillars. The vegetable food was made up of wild berries (Ilex, Cassine, Vitis cordifolia, Nyssa sylvatica, and Viburnum nudum--in all, 11 percent of the whole), mast (2 percent), and rotten wood (4 percent).

Catesby’s (1731) assertion, repeated time and again by the earlier writers, that the pileated woodpecker sometimes pierces the husks of maize standing in the field, was almost certainly based on faulty observation. No modern confirmation is to be found of this or of any other predatory practice. To the contrary, the finding after careful investigation (Beal, 1911) is: “The food of the pileated woodpecker does not interest the farmer or horticulturist, for it is obtained entirely from the forest or the wild copses on its edge. This bird does not visit either the orchard or the grain field, and all its work in the forest helps to conserve the timber * * *. Its killing should be strictly prohibited at all times.”

Behavior.--The bird is but little known--surprisingly little, considering how large a bird it is. It is a forest dweller; it lives almost wholly within the canopy of the treetops; it is alert, furtive (almost) as a bear, rather silent in midsummer (the season when city dwellers ordinarily visit the northern forests); and it easily eludes observation. It is not strange then that, its gigantic operations remaining in evidence, the bird itself should in common thought have become a somewhat fabulous creature. Thoreau (1906) never saw it; and this is what he wrote of it in the Moosehead Lake journal under date of July 25, 1857: “Our path up the bank here led by a large dead white pine, in whose trunk near the ground were great square-cornered holes made by the woodpeckers. * * * They were seven or eight inches long by four wide and reached to the heart of the tree through an inch or more of sound wood, and looked like great mortise-holes whose corners had been somewhat worn and rounded by a loose tenon. The tree for some distance was quite honeycombed by them. It suggested woodpeckers on a larger scale than ours, as were the trees and the forest.”

To one who visits its haunts the presence of the pileated woodpecker is immediately made manifest by operations such in magnitude as to have astonished Thoreau. Dead Norway pines may be found, gaunt and bare, their bark split away in plates and lying heaped at the base, and living white pines--young trees, particularly--pierced to the core with deep pyramidal incisions. The freshly cut wood gleams clean, and turpentine in pellucid globules rims the cut and drips downward. Great boles of maples and basswoods stand, furrowed from broken top to base, the ground below littered with splinters, often half a hand’s breadth in extent. The cuts are roughly rectangular in outline. They may be 4, 5, or even 6 or 8 inches wide and are sunk deep into the heart of the tree. They may extend vertically for a few inches or for a foot or more. They may be aligned in vertical rows, and may run together in furrows of several feet in length. Crumbling stumps and moss-covered logs lying on the forest floor will often be found ripped and torn by the woodpecker’s beak.

It is, as has been said, a wary creature, and is not easily stalked. On one occasion, when I had successfully approached a male that was idling in the top of a gaunt chestnut near the nesting tree, I paused, before shifting from an uncomfortable position, until the bird should sidle around the limb. Even so, he was quicker than I; for, before I had completed my movement, he was peering from the opposite side, and, detecting me, was off. Again I came upon a bird--a male--suddenly, in open forest. He did not immediately take wing, but, hitching downward upon the tree trunk, he reached the ground, hopped off, and then flitted away through the undergrowth, so that I scarcely saw him go. And when I came upon him again he repeated the maneuver.

With all their alertness, the birds have a large store of curiosity. Dr. Sutton (1930) has remarked that some individuals will “fly up hastily and boldly upon hearing a commotion in the woods.” They may sometimes be called up by imitating their cry, by clapping together the cupped palms of one’s hands, or by pounding with a billet of wood upon a tree trunk. I was following one morning a forest trail, where I knew a pair of the woodpeckers to be in residence, and had a glimpse, as I walked, of a large bird flying away. There stood against the sky, in the direction of the retreat, the stub of a great treetop. Pausing in my tracks, I waited until, after a few minutes, the suspected woodpecker came leaping up the stub--to have a look at me, as I supposed. In such case, the square shoulders of the bird, the slender white-striped neck, and the hammer head with its pointed scarlet crest are very conspicuous.

Maurice Brooks (1934) has remarked upon the playfulness of the birds when at ease.

For all their alertness, it remains still to be said that on occasion, when the birds are feeding, or when tending a nestful of young, it is possible to approach quietly and to remain watching, while they, unheeding, continue their activities.

It is common to find hairy and downy woodpeckers associated with the pileated, both on nesting grounds and when feeding. There is here, I believe, some measure of commensalism. I have in mind an observation upon a downy on the same dead hemlock tree with a pileated woodpecker. The larger bird was scaling off the bark and feeding; the smaller seemed to be gleaning over areas the pileated had left.

Tucked in the niche formed by a great furrowlike incision in the bole of a basswood tree, and about 10 feet from the ground, I once found a nest of the olive-backed thrush.

When I cut down the stub of which I have spoken, and which contained four old nesting cavities of the pileated woodpecker, I found the lowest, 25 feet from the ground, to be occupied by a family of white-footed mice (Peromyscus maniculatus), and I have no doubt that these cavities, after their abandonment by the woodpeckers, are commonly used by flying squirrels, by owls, and by tree-nesting ducks.

Prof. Brooks (1934) has most engagingly described the enticement of pileated woodpeckers to come to feeding trays, and, incidentally, has adduced evidence of their traits of caution and of curiosity. To this he adds (MS.): “I have indicated, in an article in Bird-Lore, that we have found Pileated Woodpeckers something of clowns. The gourd experience described in the above-mentioned article seemed to be in a spirit of play. The evident curiosity displayed by many birds observed is noteworthy; under its urge they apparently lose much of their fear. Around our blinds they have used a slow and cautious approach, but once at the feeding shelves, they have not been particularly nervous or excitable. At times I have found them surprisingly tame in the open woods.”

The pileated woodpecker lives, as has been said, almost entirely within the forest cover. Its flight is commonly a matter of gliding and of slow-measured flapping through the trees. Its appearance then is unmistakable--large and black, with a flashing pattern of white beneath the wings, and a gleaming scarlet crest.

At times it rises above the treetops and moves over greater distances, and then its manner of flight bears greater likeness to the typical bounding or galloping flight of the generality of woodpeckers. Its outline against the sky is not unlike a kingfisher’s. Dr. Sutton (1930) describes an encounter in the Pennsylvania mountains with a bird that “cackled for about fifteen minutes, pounding intermittently on a tree trunk. It then rose in air, mounted to a plane above the tree-tops, and flew in direct course down the valley, uttering a single, loud, even-toned puck about every two seconds, as far as we could hear it. The bird was still flying high when it faded from view.”

Cornelius Weygandt (1912) described from Monroe County, Pa., the appearance of “the Logcock that in late July and early August made the sunset hour more memorable by its passing”:

It was on the evening of July 26 that we first saw him * * * we noticed a large bird flying heron-like toward us. He passed us and made his way onward toward a tall broken-topped gum tree that stood out black against the sunset. He “landed” on its side near the top, woodpecker fashion, and bobbed downtrunk backwards for several yards. The sky was mauve and gold and crimson, and the great bird loomed blacker and bigger than he really was, limned sharply against it. He had not dropped along like the smaller woodpeckers, but had kept on more steadily, very like a heron, with only slight risings and fallings. After a rest on the gum tree of some three minutes he flung himself into the air and dove down into the Buck Hill Gorge.

Vickers (1915) characterizes the bird’s flight as “powerful and straight-forward, his head and neck carrying his powerful beak like a spear * * * [the bird] large as a crow and with a certain short, sturdy, kingfisherlike aspect.”

In general conclusion it may be said that the pileated woodpecker has the habit and manner of a giant, forest-loving flicker.

Voice.--Throughout the greater part of the year the pileated woodpecker is a relatively silent bird, but during the nesting season drumming and calling are frequent. The usual call is a cackle, resembling that of the flicker, though louder and of more sonorous quality. The “song” of the white-breasted nuthatch so far resembles it in pitch and tempo that a nuthatch near at hand may, for an instant, suggest the woodpecker far away. The ka, ka, ka of the woodpecker’s cackle is variable in quality, in speed of iteration, and in continuity, and seems to be expressive, sometimes of alarm, sometimes of companionship, sometimes of contentment. Aretas A. Saunders (1935) has noted that often there is rise in pitch at the beginning of a rendition and a slight fall at the end; and Samuel Scoville, Jr. (1920), distinguishing this from the flicker’s similar call, has remarked on “a queer little quirk at the end.” When a pair of birds cackle in alternation, as commonly they do, a difference in pitch will be noted; but whether that be a constant sexual difference, or a matter of individuality merely, I cannot say.

In the nesting season the mated birds have another flickerlike wuck-a-wuck call that seems to be peculiarly associated with their conjugal relationship. They use it in courtship and when they relieve one another in attendance at the nest.

Dr. Sutton (1930) mentions yet another call and describes it as “whining notes, suggesting the mew of the yellow-bellied sapsucker.” But it is more than that. It is a loud cry, that resembles the scream of a hawk. It is commonly reiterated slowly in five or six repetitions. Unless one were to follow the sound and discover its source, he would hardly impute it to this bird. It too, I believe, is a call peculiar to the nesting season.

When the bird is in flight a slowly uttered puck, puck may sometimes be heard, and sometimes what for lack of a better term may be called a creaking of the moving wings.

Besides these there is a high-pitched scream--“a bugle call,” says Florence Merriam Bailey (1902), with which the bird greets the rising sun. Horace W. Wright (1912) has noted that in June the bird is first heard within a few minutes after sunrise and has described the awakening thus: “There are eight records, when a bird has been heard loudly rapping in the distance with slow and measured blows or has called lustily and long, sometimes answered by another.”

Enemies.--The number of eggs laid suggests that there must be some wastage: that somewhere in the round of life the bird must be peculiarly exposed to destruction; and to this point Dr. Sutton (1930) speaks:

The Duck Hawk (Rhynchodon peregrinus anatum) appears to be the chief, indeed perhaps the only, natural enemy of this woodpecker in this State [Pennsylvania]. At Spruce Creek, Huntingdon County, where these falcons have nested for years, I found, on March 21, 1921, the head and plumage of a male woodpecker which had not been dead long. Near Palmerton, Carbon County, I saw a Duck Hawk pursue and with ease strike down a pileated woodpecker that had started to fly across the river. The hawk flew so fast that the woodpecker seemed to have been unaware of the pursuit. A cloud of feathers burst from the body of the victim as it collapsed. The duck hawk apparently winters regularly along some of our streams, and takes whatever comes along, with a preference, perhaps, for the somewhat larger birds; and to it the comparatively clumsy log cock falls easy prey. So far as I know, neither the great horned owl nor the Cooper’s hawk ever captures the bird, and our stomach examinations of several hundred Goshawks revealed none of its bones or plumage, though this savage predator no doubt occasionally captures such birds as are to be found throughout the winter.

R. B. Simpson (1910) wrote: “I once shot a Sharp-shinned Hawk that was making a desperate attempt to catch a pileated * * *. A year or two ago in summer along a trout stream in virgin forest back in the mountains [of northern Pennsylvania], I came to a mossy spot where a pileated had been wrecked and a close inspection showed the tracks of a huge wildcat who had no doubt caught the big woodpecker on the ground or on a log.” See also Bendire (1895).

In addition to man’s disturbance of habitat with which this paper has had largely to do, the following matters are noteworthy:

Pennant (1785) wrote that the Indians made a practice of decking their calumets with the crests of these birds. And see Bendire (1895).

Audubon (1842) said of the pileated woodpecker: “Its flesh is tough, of a bluish tint, and smells so strongly of the worms and insects on which it generally feeds, as to be extremely unpalatable.” Sutton (1930), however, was able to show, both by the testimony of living witnesses and by written record as well, that these birds, along with other smaller birds, were once commonly exposed for sale as food in city markets.

Major Bendire (1895) wrote:

I have occasionally seen bunches of these birds, numbering from four to twelve, exposed for sale in the markets of Washington, D. C. * * * I tried to eat one, when short of meat, while traveling through the Blue Mountains of Oregon, but I certainly can not recommend it. It feeds to a great extent on the large black wood ants, which impart to it a very peculiar, and to me an extremely unpleasant flavor, a kind of sweet-sour taste, which any amount of seasoning and cooking does not disguise, and I consider it as a very unpalatable substitute for game of any kind.

Winter.--As is true of other members of the family, the pileated woodpecker may in fall be found digging for himself a cavity for winter occupancy. Few birds other than the woodpeckers make what may be called habitations, except as part of or incident to the activities of reproduction. And in the case of the woodpeckers, while I know that in particular instances these winter retreats are not so used, I am unable to say that they never are subsequently used as nesting cavities.

Hoyes Lloyd (1932) wrote:

One of the most delightful bird adventures we have had at Rockcliffe Park [near the City of Ottawa] was the visit to us of a pileated woodpecker. It first came at 4:30 p. m., on October 12, 1928, and excavated a hole in a hollow basswood for sleeping quarters * * *. The chips, from live wood, were up to three inches by two inches in area, and an eighth of an inch thick. Each chip had two or three gouge-like beak marks across its surface. At 4:50 p. m. on the next day the pileated came home, and although we were all outdoors, it went directly to its own tree and after a brief survey of affairs in the vicinity, retired. The approach was silent except, possibly for a single Flicker-like note in the distance. About 9 a. m., on the 14th, our bird woke me up with a loud kuk-kuk-kuk call and it looked very large as it climbed up the home basswood. Promptly at quarter to five it came home, undoubtedly after a day among the big hardwoods of the neighborhood. We were all impressed by its great length of neck, as it swung its head with a curious bobbing motion, that was used, without doubt, to give a view on each side of the home tree, before going into the hole for the night. A pileated, thought to be the same bird, came back on March 22, 1929, possibly, or certainly on the 23rd, and slept in its winter home.

Prof. Brooks writes (MS.): “At French Creek [Upshur County, W. Va.], two birds used a nesting cavity as a roosting place during the following winter.”

CEOPHLOEUS PILEATUS FLORIDANUS (Ridgway)

FLORIDA PILEATED WOODPECKER

HABITS

This is the race that is supposed to inhabit central and southern Florida, as far north as Orange County, but there seems to be some doubt as to the desirability of naming it. Ridgway (1914) describes it as “similar to P. p. pileatus, but decidedly blacker (that is, the general black color less slaty or sooty), and average size less, with bill usually relatively shorter and broader.” But he admits his doubt, in a footnote, saying:

I have found it very difficult to decide as to the propriety of separating a form of this species from central and southern Florida, but after having several times laid out and carefully compared the entire series of specimens from more southern localities, have come to the conclusion that to do so will, apparently, best express the facts of the case. Going by size alone, there is little difference between specimens from southern and central Florida and those from localities as far northward as Maryland (lowlands), southern Illinois, and Missouri; in fact some of these more northern specimens are quite as small as Florida ones. But the series from central and southern Florida are uniformly decidedly blacker than the rest. * * * 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.

Bangs (1898), in separating the northern race from the southern, says that “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.” Furthermore, Arthur H. Howell (1932) observes that “careful study of a large series from Florida in comparison with a series of typical pileatus from the Middle States shows no constant difference in color, as claimed by Ridgway for the subspecies ‘floridanus’; evidently specimens kept for some years become more brownish (less sooty), which fact probably explains Ridgway’s mistake, he having compared fresh Florida skins with older skins from the Middle States.” Probably, also, if specimens from the two regions in similar seasonal plumage were compared, there would not be so much difference in coloration as Ridgway claims. Even if Ridgway is correct in his diagnosis, it would seem unwise, in the author’s opinion, to recognize the Florida race and thus establish an intermediate race, where the gradation in both size and color warrants the naming of only the two extremes.

Mr. Howell (1932) says of its haunts: “The pileated woodpecker in Florida inhabits several different types of country--pine woods, cypress swamps, hardwood swamps, and hammocks of cabbage palmetto and other trees. The birds are perhaps most numerous in hammocks or swamps, where there is an abundance of decaying trees.”

Nesting.--Mr. Howell (1932) writes: “We found a number of pairs breeding in cypress trees along the borders of Lake Istokpoga. The nests are excavated either in living trees or in rotten stubs, from 12 to 75 feet from the ground. The trees commonly used for nesting sites are cypress, pine, black gum, oak, and cabbage palmetto.” While collecting in the Florida Keys in 1908, I found a pair of pileated woodpeckers nesting on Murrays Key on April 3 and surprised one of the birds working in its nesting hole; the excavation was about 12 feet from the ground in the main trunk of a live black mangrove, which stood in the inner fringe of mangroves around the borders of the island. I climbed up to it and reached into the cavity but could not touch the bottom of it; we were unable to visit the island again.

Major Bendire (1895) writes:

In southern Florida the mating season commences early in March, and farther north correspondingly later. A suitable tree having been selected, generally a dead one in large and extensive woods, both birds work alternately on the nesting site. This is usually excavated in the main trunk, from 12 to 75 feet from the ground, and it takes from seven to twelve days to complete it. The entrance measures from 3 to 3½ inches in diameter, and it often goes 5 inches straight into the trunk before it is worked downward. The cavity varies from 7 to 30 inches in depth, and is gradually enlarged toward the bottom, where it is about 6 inches wide. A layer of chips is left at the bottom, on which the eggs are deposited. Occasionally the entrance hole, instead of being circular, is oval in shape, like that of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. The inside of the cavity is quite smooth, the edges of the entrance are nicely beveled, and, taken as a whole, it is quite an artistic piece of work.

Dr. William L. Ralph told Bendire of a clever trick practiced by this woodpecker; he found a nest “in the second week in April, about the time nidification is at its height there. On rapping on the trunk of the tree the bird, which was at home, stuck his head out of the hole and dropped some chips, naturally causing the Doctor to believe that the nesting site was still unfinished. The same performance was repeated on several subsequent visits, and finally he concluded to examine the nest anyhow, when he found nearly full-grown young. This pair of birds must have had eggs at the time he first discovered the nest, and the chips were simply thrown out as a ruse to deceive him.”

Eggs.--This woodpecker lays, ordinarily, three or four eggs, rarely five. These are indistinguishable from those of the species from other southern States. The measurements of 22 eggs average 33.61 by 24.75 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure =36.2= by 24.5, 35.70 by =26.19=, =31.5= by 24.0, and 34.2 by =22.8= millimeters.

Food.--Mr. Howell (1932) states that “this large woodpecker is a decidedly useful species. It never injures farm crops, but feeds entirely in the forests, rendering good service there in the destruction of wood-boring beetles. It eats, also, ants and wild fruits and berries, including the fruit of the sour gum, tupelo gum, dogwood, persimmon, frost grape, holly, poison ivy, sumac, and hackberry.” C. J. Maynard (1896) says that they “are partial to the berries of the palmetto, feeding, in Florida, upon little else when these are in season.”

CEOPHLOEUS PILEATUS PICINUS (Bangs)

WESTERN PILEATED WOODPECKER

HABITS

In describing and naming this large, dark-colored race from the Northwest coast region, Outram Bangs (1910) says that it is “as large as, or even larger than, P. pileatus abieticola (Bangs), but color sooty black as in P. pileatus pileatus (Linn.), the throat usually much marked with sooty, and the sides and flanks but slightly marked with grayish.”

Major Bendire (1895) writes of its haunts: “In the mountains of Oregon, and presumably in other localities, the pileated woodpecker is most frequently met with in the extensive burnt tracts, the so-called ‘deadenings,’ where forest fires have swept through miles of fine timber and killed everything in its path. Such localities afford this species an abundant food supply in the slowly decaying trees, and are sure to atract them.”

Grinnell, Dixon, and Linsdale (1930) say that in the Lassen Peak region in California “individuals of this woodpecker were found in or among white firs, red firs, incense cedars, and yellow pines. Foraging birds were often working on rotting stumps or logs close to the ground. Almost invariably, even when in the tops of tall trees, the birds were on dead or softened wood.”

Nesting.--J. A. Munro (1923) says: “In southern British Columbia nesting begins early in May. The nest is a chiselled hole in a tree, fourteen to eighteen inches deep, cut occasionally in a green cottonwood or poplar, more often in a dead pine or fir, and rarely in any but the tallest trees and at a considerable distance above the ground. On a cushion of fine chips three or four rose-white eggs are laid.”

Carriger and Wells (1919) give an interesting account of the nesting of the western pileated woodpecker in Placer County, Calif. The first nest, containing young birds, was found early in June 1915. “The tree stood about fifteen feet from the shore of the lake and in about five feet of water. At its base the diameter was about eighteen inches, at the nest entrance about ten. The tree was a live aspen. * * *

“The nest cavity was eighteen inches deep and six inches in diameter, while the entrance was three inches in width. The entire excavation had been made in live wood although there were plenty of large dead trees near by.”

On May 16, 1916, they returned to this locality and found the birds nesting in the same tree in a new hole “located three feet higher up and on the opposite side of the tree.” The nest contained three newly hatched young and one unhatched egg. Another visit was made the following year, on May 5, but the woodpeckers “had abandoned the lake and were making their home in a tree located in the channel of a small stream which flowed into the lake and about three hundred yards from their former site. The nest was found to be about half completed. Visits were made to it on several occasions until May 26, but the birds were not seen again.”

In 1918 they were more successful. There was practically no water in the lake; and, on May 2, a search was “made through the aspen grove which in former years had stood in its entirety in from two to seven or eight feet of water, with the result that Mr. Flickinger discovered a fresh hole forty feet up in a live aspen growing close to the lake shore.” The nest had been completed, but no eggs had been laid. Returning on May 12, they collected a set of four fresh eggs. They say:

The nest cavity was eighteen inches deep by about six in diameter, while the entrance was nearly four inches across.

The nest was visited again on June 1 by both of us, and to our surprise we found that the birds had used the same cavity for a second set of eggs, four in number, which were three-quarters incubated. The short time intervening between the two sets shows that the birds did not lose any time after their first set was lost to them. The locality was again visited on June 30 and we found that the birds had finished another cavity about two hundred feet from the first tree and apparently the female was brooding a third set. We did not disturb the bird and hope that she successfully raised her brood.

Inasmuch as the lake contained no water at this point we made a careful search of the upper end of the basin with the result that twenty cavities in all were located in various trees in what is usually the lake or very close to its shores. Most of these cavities were in live aspens. Apparently this pair of birds has nested here for a great many years, for although we have carefully worked the surrounding country for miles in every direction we have never discovered other birds or their cavities.

Eggs.--The western pileated woodpecker apparently lays either three or four eggs; I have no record of five. The eggs are indistinguishable from those of the northern pileated woodpecker. The measurements of two eggs in the P. B. Philipp collection are 30.9 by 23 and 29.6 by 22.9 millimeters. W. L. Dawson (1923) gives the average measurement as 32.5 by 24.1 millimeters.

Young.--Mrs. Irene G. Wheelock (1904) gives the following interesting account of the young:

The parents are very devoted to their treasures whether they be eggs or infant woodpeckers, and the male rarely fails to stand on guard on a high perch ready to warn and defend should possible danger threaten. The method of feeding is like that of the flickers, by regurgitation for the first two weeks or longer. The adult comes with gular pouch full of food and alights at one side of the nest hole to rest a moment. Though he may have come noiselessly and from the other side of the tree, yet his approach is always heralded by a mowing-machine chorus from the young, plainly heard some yards away. If old enough, the queer-looking little heads are thrust out of the doorway, and the parent, inserting his long bill into the open mouth of a youngling, shakes it vigorously, thereby emptying the food from his throat into that of his offspring. Each in turn is fed in this odd fashion. * * *

For a week or two after the young have left the nest, they follow their parents begging for food with ludicrous eagerness; at this time the provender brought them consists of nuts, berries, ants, and the larvae of beetles. These, especially the nuts, are often placed in a crevice of the bark, and the youngster is compelled to pick them out. After a few trials he learns to hammer right merrily and is ready to forage for himself.

Food.--The western pileated woodpecker lives on much the same kind of food as its eastern relative, but naturally on different species of insects and berries. Dr. Harold C. Bryant (1916) examined the stomach of one, taken in Lake County, Calif., on November 5, 1915, and says: “The stomach contained more than fifty carpenter ants (Camponotus herculaneus subsp.) and 131 seeds of poison oak (Rhus diversiloba). As the seeds of poison oak are hard and without a noticeable covering of softer material it is difficult to understand what there is about them that is attractive to birds. Certain it is that the seeds are incapable of complete digestion by woodpeckers.” And he adds: “The stomachs of two pileated woodpeckers taken in or near Yosemite National Park * * * were filled with carpenter ants (Camponotus herculaneus modoc Wheeler), many of them winged. Each stomach contained more than a hundred of these ants. In addition one stomach contained a whole fruit of manzanita (Arctostaphylos nevadensis Gray) and the other, four large beetle larvae (Cerambycidae), unidentifiable as to genus or species, which had evidently been dug out of some dead tree, as the stomach contained slivers of dead wood.”

J. A. Munro (1930) writes: “On December 2, 1926, a pileated woodpecker was seen scrambling among the thick entwined branches of Virginia creeper that partly covered the walls of a house situated on the shore of Okanagan Lake. Here it remained for twenty minutes, busily picking off the fruit. Subsequently, during the month of December, it often was observed eating these berries at the same place and likewise at a vine-covered house half a mile distant. Sometimes it appeared at both houses on the same day, but more often only one house was visited.”

Charles W. Michael (1928) gives the following interesting account:

Beside the road, with branches overhanging it, stands a group of mountain dogwoods (Cornus nuttalli). These trees bore this year a heavy crop of fruit. At the end of each flower stalk was a bunched cluster of ripe berries. The Pileated Woodpecker was here today [September 19] to collect his toll of fruit. The fruit being at the ends of slender branches we thought the heavy-bodied bird would be out of luck. How could the big fellow reach the fruit? He was apparently not just sure himself. At first he tried walking out the heavier branches; but always as he approached the tip-ends they bent under his weight and threw the berries beyond reach. By working out on a cedar branch that intermingled with the dogwood branches he did manage to get a taste of fruit, just enough to tease his appetite. He was not to be cheated, however; for his next move was to flutter clumsily up to a branch containing berries, clutch the branch firmly with his strong feet, and then drop to swing like a great pendulum. He now had the system. Swinging head down he would pick the berries one by one, loosen his hold, swing into flight and then repeat the performance on another branch.

MELANERPES ERYTHROCEPHALUS (Linnaeus)

RED-HEADED WOODPECKER

PLATES 25-27

HABITS

This handsome and conspicuously colored woodpecker enjoys a wide distribution over much of North America, from southern Canada to the Gulf coast, east of the Rocky Mountains, and west of New England and eastern Canada. It is recorded from British Columbia, and is rare in New England. The only one I have seen in southeastern Massachusetts, in 50 years of field work, was chased across the line from Rhode Island before I shot it. Throughout the northern portion of its range, it is a summer resident only, though in mild winters, when food is abundant, it may remain all through winter.

The red-headed woodpecker is essentially a bird of the open country and not in any sense a forest dweller. I first met this woodpecker in northern New York while on a fishing trip on the St. Lawrence River; here it was fairly common in open groves of large trees or in groups of scattered trees in open fields, where its brilliant color pattern made it very conspicuous; it was frequently seen sitting on telegraph poles, fence posts, the dead tops of tall trees, or on dead stubs. Dr. Elon H. Eaton (1914) says of its haunts in that State: “The preferred home of this woodpecker is in open groves and ‘slashings’ and ‘old burns’ and tracts of half-dead forest where the live trees are scattered and dead stubs are in abundance.”

Spencer Trotter (1903) writes: “I first saw the bird on a certain hill-side in Maryland that was grown up with tall white-oaks, not thickly, but open enough for a sheep-pasture, with vistas of close-cropped grass among the gray tree-trunks. In this setting a Woodpecker winged before me from tree to tree with its strongly contrasted blotches of black, white, and crimson flashing in the sunlight.”

In Florida I have found it most commonly in the large burned-over areas in the pine woods, where numerous dead trees and stubs are left standing; these offer attractive nesting sites and some food supply. But Arthur H. Howell (1932) says: “The red-head is the most domestic of our woodpeckers, living frequently in the heart of populous towns and nesting in telephone poles on village streets. The birds are especially attracted to newly cleared lands, where many dead or girdled trees are left standing. They are common, also, in open pine forests in certain sections, but in other seemingly suitable localities are not to be found.”

Nesting.--As my experience with the nesting habits of the red-headed woodpecker is almost nothing, I shall have to draw on the observations of others. Major Bendire (1895) makes the following general statement:

Some of its nesting sites are exceedingly neat pieces of work; the edges of the entrance hole are beautifully beveled off, and the inside is as smooth as if finished with a fine rasp. The entrance is about 1¾ inches in diameter and the inner cavity varies from 8 to 24 inches in depth; the eggs are deposited on a layer of fine chips. It usually nests in the dead tops or limbs of deciduous trees, or in old stumps of oak, ash, butternut, maple, elm, sycamore, cottonwood, willow, and other species, more rarely in coniferous and fruit trees, at heights varying from 8 to 80 feet from the ground, and also not infrequently in natural cavities. On the treeless prairies it has to resort mainly to telegraph poles and fence posts, and here it also nests under the roofs of houses or in any dark corner it can find.

John Helton, Jr., tells me that in Alabama the favorite nesting site is in a rotten stump from which the bark has peeled off; he very seldom finds a nest in a tree with bark on it. M. G. Vaiden sends me a note on a nest that was only 5 feet from the ground in a limb of a-dead oak near Rosedale, Miss. The nests are often placed near houses or in trees on town or village streets. Two broods are often raised in a season and sometimes in the same cavity; A. D. DuBois tells, in his notes, of such a Minnesota nest; the earlier brood had been raised in a newly excavated cavity that was 14 inches deep; the second set of eggs was laid at a depth of only 9 inches, the bed for the eggs having been raised 5 inches by chiseling fresh chips from the inner walls of the cavity. Dr. H. C. Oberholser (1896b) gives the average measurements of four Ohio nests as follows: Total depth 10.75; diameter of entrance 2.06 by 1.66; diameter at entrance 3.81 by 2.69; diameter at middle 4.50 by 3.88; and diameter at bottom 4.41 by 3.35 inches.

In the prairie regions and in other places, where trees are scarce and these woodpeckers are common, some unusual and odd nesting sites have been noted. Kumlien and Hollister (1903) write: “Among some of the odd nesting sites we have noted are the following: Between two flat rails on an old style rail fence; the hub of a broken wagon wheel, leaning against a fence; the box of a grain drill left standing in a field; a hole excavated in the hollow cylinder of an ordinary pump; common fence posts and telegraph poles. These were usually in prairie regions where there were few, if any, suitable trees.”

G. S. Agersborg (1881) mentions a nest that “was in the angle formed by the shares of an upturned plow” in South Dakota. And E. A. Stoner (1915) flushed a red-headed woodpecker from a blue jay’s nest in Iowa. “The nest was eight feet up in an oak sapling and was a typical Blue Jay’s but was found to contain three pure white and unmistakably Woodpecker eggs.”

Eggs.--Major Bendire (1895) writes: “The number of eggs to a set varies from four to seven, sets of five being most frequently found, while occasionally as many as eight eggs have been taken from a nest. Mr. R. C. McGregor records taking a set of ten eggs of the red-head, varying in size from ordinary down to that of the song sparrow. Incubation varied from fresh in the smallest egg to advanced in the larger (Oologist, vol. 5, p. 44, 1888).”

If the first set of eggs is taken, another set will be completed within the next 10 or 12 days, usually in the same hole. Like the flicker, this woodpecker is very persistent in its attempt to raise a brood and will keep on laying, if repeatedly robbed. C. C. Bacon (1891), of Bell, Ky., reports taking six sets of eggs, 28 eggs in all, from the same nest in a single season, after which the birds drilled a new hole in the same tree and raised a brood of four young; this persevering pair drilled two holes and laid 32 eggs before they succeeded in raising a brood.

The eggs vary in shape from short ovate to rounded ovate, are pure white in color, and somewhat glossy when incubated. The measurements of 54 eggs average 25.14 by 19.17 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure =27.18= by 19.30, 26.16 by =20.57=, =23= by 18.20, and 23.11 by =17.78= millimeters.

Young.--Incubation is said to last for about 14 days. Both sexes assist in this duty, as well as in the care of the young. As an egg is laid each day, and, as incubation often begins before the set is complete, the young may hatch on different days.

Mr. DuBois writes to me that one nest that he watched held newly hatched young on June 11; they were in the nest on July 7 but had left before 2 p. m. on the 9th, making the period in the nest approximately 27 days. He says: “The newly hatched, naked young have extremely long necks, longer in fact than their bodies. The four young all faced inward, each toward a point to the right of the center of the nest; and when in repose, each neck crossed the necks of the two others at right angles to its own--like woof and warp in a loom. A little noise on my part made all four of them stretch their necks straight upward; but when they collapsed, their necks became again interwoven. Each lowered its head to its own right side of the one opposite it. There were egg shells still in the nest.”

Julian K. Potter (1912) says of a nest that he watched at Camden, N. J.:

The old birds fed the young at varying intervals, sometimes going to the nest once in every three or four minutes for a half hour, then not appearing again for fifteen or twenty minutes. * * *

The young birds left the nest about June 25. On that day I saw them out in the open, quite able to take care of themselves, although the parents fed them occasionally. [This pair raised a second brood that season, and had young on July 30.] Meanwhile the young of the first brood were being very much misused by their parents, and were driven away whenever they came in sight; in fact they were persecuted to such an extent that they must have been driven from the locality, for I was unable to find them after July 30.

Some writers have said that only one brood is raised in a season, and others that two broods are raised only in the southern part of the breeding range. But Mr. DuBois reports two broods in Minnesota; and Mr. Potter one brood one season and two broods the next season for his pair in New Jersey.

Plumages.--The young are hatched naked and blind, but they acquire the juvenal plumage before they leave the nest. The sexes are alike in all plumages, and the juvenal plumage is quite unlike that of the adult. In the juvenal plumage, the head, neck, and upper chest are brownish gray, spotted above and streaked below with dusky; the back is black but not glossy as in the adult; the wings are as in the adult, except that the secondaries and tertials are white but more or less patterned or barred with black, chiefly near the tips, and the primaries are edged with buffy white on the outer webs; the under parts below the chest are dull white, clouded with brownish gray and more or less streaked with dusky, chiefly on the sides and flanks. This plumage is usually worn in its purity through July and August and sometimes into October, though sometimes a few red feathers are seen in the head; I have seen two or three red feathers in the head as early as June 29 and a bird not much farther advanced on December 1. But usually the complete molt into the adult plumage begins in September and lasts through winter; the change begins on the head and back in fall, but the wings are not usually molted until April, and even then some of the juvenal secondaries may be retained. Most young birds are in practically adult plumage before May.

Adults have a complete postnuptial molt in August and September; they may have a partial molt in spring, but I have not seen it. Some highly plumaged birds, probably old birds and mostly from western localities, have the abdomen tinged with red.

Food.--Much has been written on the food habits of the red-headed woodpecker, a most resourceful feeder on a greatly varied diet. Prof. F. E. L. Beal (1895) makes the following report on the contents of 101 stomachs, collected throughout the year in various parts of the country:

Animal matter, 50 percent; vegetable matter, 47 percent; mineral matter, 3 percent. * * * The insects consist of ants, wasps, beetles, bugs, grasshoppers, crickets, moths, and caterpillars. Spiders and myriapods also were found. Ants amounted to about 11 percent of the whole food. * * * Beetle remains formed nearly one-third of all food. * * * The families represented were those of the common May beetle (Lachnosterna), which was found in several stomachs, the predaceous ground beetles, tiger beetles, weevils, and a few others. * * * Weevils were found in 15 stomachs, and in several cases as many as 10 were present. Remains of Carabid beetles were found in 44 stomachs to an average amount of 24 percent of the contents of those that contained them, or 10 percent of all. The fact that 43 percent of all the birds taken had eaten these beetles, some of them to the extent of 16 individuals, shows a decided fondness for these insects, and taken with the fact that 5 stomachs contained Cicindelids or tiger beetles forms a rather strong indictment against the bird.

The vegetable food includes corn, dogwood berries, huckleberries, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, mulberries, elderberries, wild black cherries, choke cherries, cultivated cherries, wild grapes, apples, pears, various seeds, acorns, and beechnuts. Prof. Beal (1895) reports that--

corn was found in 17 stomachs, collected from May to September, inclusive, and amounted to more than 7 percent of all the food. While it seems to be eaten in any condition, that taken in the late summer was in the milk, and evidently picked from standing ears. This * * * corroborates some of the testimony received, and indicates that the Redhead, if sufficiently abundant, might do considerable damage to the growing crop, particularly if other food was not at hand. While the fruit list is not so long as in the case of the Flicker, it includes more kinds that are, or may be, cultivated; and the quantity found in the stomachs, a little more than 33 percent of all the food, is greater than in any of the others. Strawberries were found in 1 stomach, blackberries or raspberries in 15, cultivated cherries in 2, apples in 4, and pears in 6. Fruit pulp was found in 33 stomachs, and it is almost certain that a large part of this was obtained from some of the larger cultivated varieties. Seeds were found in but few stomachs, and only a small number in each.

Audubon (1842) gives this woodpecker a rather bad name, saying:

I would not recommend to anyone to trust their fruit to the red-heads; for they not only feed on all kinds as they ripen, but destroy an immense quantity besides. No sooner are the cherries seen to redden, than these birds attack them. * * * Trees of this kind are stripped clean by them. * * * I may safely assert that a hundred have been shot upon a single cherry-tree in one day. * * * They have another bad habit, which is that of sucking the eggs of small birds. For this purpose, they frequently try to enter the boxes of the Martins or Bluebirds, as well as the pigeon-houses, and are often successful. The corn, as it ripens, is laid bare by their bill, when they feed on the top parts of the ear, and leave the rest either to the Grakles or the Squirrels, or still worse, to decay, after a shower has fallen upon it.

Bendire (1895) adds to the evidence against this gay villain. He personally saw a red-headed woodpecker rifle a nest of a red-shafted flicker and carry off an egg. He quotes from one observer who had seen one of these woodpeckers clean out a nest of young of the tufted titmouse, and from another who had seen one carrying off a freshly killed young robin. W. G. Smith wrote to him from Colorado: “The red-headed woodpecker is a common summer resident in the lower foothills along the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains in this State, and I consider it a veritable butcher among our nuthatches and chickadees, driving every one away from its nesting sites, and woe to the bird that this villain can reach. It destroys both eggs and young, dragging the latter out of their nests and frequently leaving them dead at the entrance of their holes.”

He also relates the following personal experience:

We noticed a red-headed woodpecker take something, apparently a bunch of moss, from a crotch of a maple and carry it to a fence post of an adjacent field. After worrying some time in trying to swallow something rather too large for his gullet, he finally succeeded, after an effort, and then worked some little time, evidently trying to secrete the remainder. Both of us had our field glasses and were watching the bird’s actions closely. After some little time he flew back to the tree he had started from, while we proceeded to the fence post to investigate, and, much to our disgust and surprise, we found the freshly killed and partly eaten body of a young bird, almost denuded of feathers, securely tucked away behind the loose bark of the post. His victim was too much mutilated to identify positively, but looked like a half-grown bluebird, whose head had been crushed in, the brain abstracted, and the entire rump and entrails torn out; the only parts left intact were the breast, upper part of the back, and the lower portion of the head. The missing parts had evidently just been eaten by the rascal while clinging to the top of the post, and the remnant was then hidden for future use.

Howard Jones (1883), of Circleville, Ohio, reports the following incident:

Under the eaves of a large barn near Mt. Sterling, O., a colony of Cliff Swallows have built for some years. Last year they were nearly exterminated by several woodpeckers. The redheads would alight at the doors of the mud huts and extract the eggs from the nests with their bills. In some nests the necks or entrance-ways were so long that the woodpeckers could not reach the eggs by this means, but not willing to be cheated of such choice food they would climb around to the side, and with a few well directed blows of their bills make openings large enough to enable them to procure the eggs. Of the dozens of nests built not a single brood was reared in any. One woodpecker bolder than the rest began eating hen’s eggs wherever they could be found.

Mr. DuBois says in his notes: “A redhead, seeing a young lark sparrow flutter in the grass, attacked it and might have killed it, had I not intervened. He had struck the young bird at one of his lores and had brought blood. I have also seen this woodpecker attack a young bluebird, on the ground, just after it had left the nest.”

But not all red-headed woodpeckers are cannibals or murderers; perhaps many individuals never indulge in such practices; and all of them have some harmless and useful feeding habits. Their insect-eating habits are impressive. They are very fond of grasshoppers and destroy them in large numbers. H. B. Bailey (1878) quotes the following from a letter from G. S. Agersborg, of Vermillion, S. Dak.:

Last spring in opening a good many birds of this species with the object of ascertaining their principal food, I found in their stomachs nothing but young grasshoppers. One of them, which had its headquarters near my house, was observed making frequent visits to an old oak post, and on examining it I found a large crack where the Woodpecker had inserted about one hundred grasshoppers of all sizes (for future use, as later observations proved), which were put in without killing them, but they were so firmly wedged in the crack that they in vain tried to get free. I told this to a couple of farmers, and found that they had also seen the same thing, and showed me the posts which were used for the same purpose. Later in the season the Woodpecker, whose station was near my house, commenced to use his stores, and today (February 10) there are only a few shrivelled-up grasshoppers left.

Milton P. Skinner (1928), referring to the feeding habits of this woodpecker in North Carolina, writes:

Flying insects are an important source of food supply all through the winter, but with the increase of the number of insects in March this activity greatly increases. The observation post for fly-catching is usually the one in which the nest hole is situated. But I noted at least one bird that used four tall trees in succession for this purpose. On February 1, 1927, a red-headed woodpecker was seen clinging to the side of a telephone pole. Twice it left the pole, flew out twenty feet, caught an insect each time, and returned to the pole to eat it. Two weeks later another bird was seen to make six trips similarly out and back during six minutes, sometimes going more than a hundred feet from its perch. As the bird went direct to the insect, caught it and returned immediately to its perch, it seemed likely that the insect was seen each time before the bird started, indicating wonderful eyesight. While not engaged in thus hawking, this bird hunted the limbs for prey. Ten days later I found this bird watching for insects and making ten fly-catching sallies in minute and a half. Its flights were from ten to one hundred and fifty feet in length, and all the insects were from forty to sixty feet above the ground. One of the redheads seen fly-catching in December, returned to its dead stub where it drilled for grubs and borers in the usual woodpecker fashion, except that its strokes were heavy and deliberate. On another occasion, I saw one of these birds fly down into the road to catch and eat an earthworm.

E. D. Nauman (1930), in Iowa, watched a red-headed woodpecker feeding a young bird in the top of a tall tree. “The adult bird was at work, darting off every few moments into the air in pursuit of insects and returning after each flight to the young bird on the tree with its prey. I watched and timed it carefully for an hour. It made from five to seven trips per minute, always at an elevation of 50 to 100 feet, and caught at each trip from one to three or more insects. * * *

“A computation based upon careful observation showed that a single individual Redhead had destroyed over 600 insects in one hour. When I left, the bird was still at work, and I am, of course, unable to state how long it had been at work at this place before I came there.”

A. V. Goodpasture (1909), of Nashville, Tenn., made some interesting observations on the feeding habits of this woodpecker. He watched one preparing insect food for its young on a stump, some 4 feet high, near its nest, and says:

When one of the woodpeckers came in, it did not go directly to the nest, but always alighted first on this stump, where it hammered away for a time, then proceeded to the nest with a shapeless mass in its beak. My glass having failed to disclose their object in thus lighting and hammering on the stump before feeding their young, I went down to reconnoiter. The place looked like a field hospital after a severe engagement. There were wings, and wing-covers, heads and legs strewn around the stump in great profusion. Then I understood it all. The stump was their meat-block, and they were preparing the food for their young by removing the hard and indigestible parts. They dispatched this work with much dexterity, without using their feet to confine the insect; they laid it on the stump, and, with the bill alone, succeeded in removing the undesirable parts.

The kinds of insects whose remains were found there was a study. They were almost as gaudy as the woodpecker himself. * * * Woodpeckers can undoubtedly distinguish between colors; they find the ruddiest apple and the rosiest peach in the orchard. In like manner, they seem to be attracted by bright-colored insects. They prefer beautiful butterflies, silky moths, and brilliant beetles. The favorite food of this pair was the June-bug; not the plain brown beetle of the northern states, but the beautiful green and gold June-bug of the South--associated in the mind with sultry summer days, and ripe blackberries, on which he feeds. * * *

I found not only the dismembered wing-covers of the June-bug around the Woodpecker’s meat-block, but, in a pit on the splintered top of the stump, I found a live June-bug. And what a prison he was in! It was a thousand times worse than the Black Hole of Calcutta. They had turned him on his back and pounded him into a cavity that so exactly fitted him that he could move nothing but his legs, which were plying like weaver’s shuttles in the empty air. I always found the June-bugs deposited on their backs, and always alive.

The red-headed woodpecker also shares with the California woodpecker the provident habit of storing acorns and nuts. Fannie Hardy Eckstorm (1901) says:

Lately it has been discovered that they not only eat beechnuts all the fall, but store them up for winter use. This time the observation was made in Indiana. There, when the nuts were abundant, the red-heads were seen busily carrying them off. Their accumulations were found in all sorts of places; cavities in old tree-trunks contained nuts by the handful; knot-holes, cracks, crevices, seams in the barns were filled full of nuts. Nuts were tucked into the cracks in fence-posts; they were driven into railroad ties; they were pounded in between the shingles on the roofs; if a board was sprung out, the space behind it was filled with nuts, and bark or wood was often brought to cover over the gathered store.

Unlike the California woodpecker, it does not make holes for the reception of the nuts but uses what cavities it can find. Dr. Thomas S. Roberts (1932) says that, on the outskirts of St. Paul, “a redhead spent most of October putting acorns into cracks and climbing-iron holes in a telephone pole and under the shingles of a near-by house. One crack was closely plugged for a distance of twenty feet. When the nuts were too large for the cracks they were split and driven in in pieces.”

George A. Dorsey (1926) tells of an amusing attempt of a young redhead to fill a hole in a telephone pole:

Finally he found a hole to his liking, and, chattering as he worked, he drove the acorn in. Imagine my surprise when I saw a couple of acorns fall out on the other side of the pole! The hole was bored straight through the pole, and the Woodpecker was wasting his time by pushing the acorns through. He seemed to know that something was wrong, but couldn’t quite reason it out. He would chatter agitatedly and hitch around the pole to examine the other side of the pole, but would finally give it up and go off for another acorn. I watched him poke acorns in the hole several times, only to have some of the ones he had previously placed there fall out on the other side. On the ground under the pole was about a double handful of acorns that had fallen out.

E. D. Nauman (1932) saw a house mouse running across a paved street, but it had not gone very far when a red-headed woodpecker “darted down out of the grove and made an attack upon it. The woodpecker struck the mouse several hard and vicious blows with its stout bill, rolling and tossing it over and over. It appeared that a moment more of such treatment must have finished the mouse, had not a vehicle approached just at that instant, threatening to crush both the red-head and its prey. The bird darted away just in time to save itself, and the mouse, not having been struck by the wheels, hurriedly limped to the edge of the pavement, got over the curb with difficulty, and hid in the grass. The red-head flew back immediately to see what had become of its prospect for dinner, but the mouse was so well hidden that the bird had to give up the chase.”

Mr. DuBois writes to me that “a red-headed woodpecker was observed hanging upside down from the small twigs at the end of a branch of a large oak, evidently gleaning insect life of some sort from the twigs. It flew to another tree and repeated this method of feeding.”

Lewis O. Shelley tells me that he observed one “feeding on ants in a dry, harvested oat piece, obtaining the ants by thrusting the bill into an ant tunnel entrance and working the bill to form a cone-shaped opening, up through which the ants emerged at the disturbance, and were licked up without the bill being withdrawn from this foodhopper.”

Behavior.--Audubon (1842) writes attractively of the behavior of this woodpecker:

With the exception of the mocking-bird, I know of no species so gay and frolicksome. Indeed, their whole life is one of pleasure. They find a superabundance of food everywhere, as well as the best facilities for raising their broods. * * * They do not seem to be much afraid of man, although they have scarcely a more dangerous enemy. When alighted on a fence-stake by the road, or in a field, and one approaches them, they gradually move sidewise out of sight, peeping now and then to discover your intention; and when you are quite close and opposite, lie still until you are past, when they hop to the top of the stake, and rattle upon it with their bill, as if to congratulate themselves on the success of their cunning. Should you approach within arm’s length, which may frequently be done, the woodpecker flies to the next stake or the second from you, bends his head to peep, and rattles again, as if to provoke you to a continuance of what seems to him excellent sport. * * *

They chase each other on wing in a very amicable manner, in long, beautifully curved sweeps, during which the remarkable variety of their plumage becomes conspicuous, and is highly pleasing to the eye. When passing from one tree to another, their flight resembles the motion of a great swing, and is performed by a single opening of the wings, descending at first, and rising towards the spot on which they are going to alight with ease, and in the most graceful manner. They move upwards, sidewise, or backwards, without apparent effort, but seldom with the head downwards. * * *

On the ground, this species is by no means awkward, as it hops there with ease, and secures beetles which it had espied whilst on the fence or a tree.

Red-headed woodpeckers are quite quarrelsome at times with other species; besides attacking various small birds, driving them away from their nests, or robbing them of their eggs or young, they contend with other hole-nesting birds, such as starlings and the smaller woodpeckers, for the possession of nesting holes. They are jealous of their food supply and will drive other birds away from their favorite feeding places or from any choice morsel of food. They are generally the winners in such encounters, even against such aggressive rivals as blue jays and starlings. But toward birds of their own species they are often solicitous, friendly, and helpful to birds in trouble. Mr. DuBois writes to me: “A wounded female, after several attempts to fly, fluttered to the ground; and while she was fluttering in the air, her mate flew to her and apparently tried to help her to a place of safety. After reaching the ground, the female lay still in the grass, although only winged; but her mate clung to a nearby tree, from which he flew down to her repeatedly, showing great distress.”

H. M. Holland (1931) tells the following story:

A red-head was caught by one wing, and possibly a foot, in a crack formed at the tip of a tall, dead tree where the trunk had been broken off and left a splintered stub. Perhaps a dozen red-heads were present, all flying here and there, evidently much excited, and make a great ado, a veritable woodpecker hubbub.

First one and then another would alight just below and apparently peck at, or more often while in flight would strike or brush against the hapless victim, whose struggles were renewed at each encounter. The clamor became actually distressing. At times two or three were simultaneously fluttering close to the captive. These activities continued for several minutes when suddenly the bird was freed, to accomplish which it would seem that a concerted effort had been made. Quiet was restored almost at once and the participants dispersed.

Julian K. Potter (1912) noticed that sparrows bothered his woodpeckers considerably about their roosting holes and saw one of them fighting two starlings for the possession of a cavity, but all were eventually driven away and learned the lesson of “no trespass.” He says: “On one occasion, when I watched the woodpeckers until dark, I found that one went to roost in the nesting-hole about dusk, and the other, probably the male, shortly after went into an old hole in the same dead tree higher up.”

Mrs. John Franklin Kyler (1927) gives an interesting account of a red-headed woodpecker that she raised by hand from the nest, beginning before the young bird had opened its eyes; it developed into a very satisfactory pet, with marked affection for its foster mother; anyone who wants to try raising young birds could learn much by reading her story.

Voice.--Bendire (1895) writes: “Its ordinary call note is a loud ‘tchur-tchur’; when chasing each other a shrill note like ‘chärr-chärr’ is frequently uttered, and alarm is expressed by a harsh, rattling note, as well as by one which, according to Mr. Otto Widmann, is indistinguishable from the note of the Tree-frog (Hyla arborea). He tells me that both bird and frog sometimes answer each other.”

Describing their spring notes, W. L. Dawson (1903) says:

Then the woods and groves soon resound with their loud calls, Quee-o--quee-o--queer. These queer cries are not unpleasant, but the birds are a noisy lot at best. When one of them flies into a tree where others are gathered, all set up an outcry of yarrow, yarrow, yarrow, which does not subside until the newcomer has had time to shake hands all around at least twice. Besides these more familiar sounds the red-heads boast an unfathomed repertory of chirping, cackling, and raucous noises. The youngsters, especially,--awkward, saucy fellows that most of them are--sometimes get together and raise a fearful racket until some of the older ones, out-stentored, interpose.

Field marks.--The red-headed woodpecker is so conspicuously marked that it hardly could be mistaken for anything else. The large white areas in the wings and on the rump are much in evidence, in any plumage, especially in flight. The bright red of the entire head and neck and the plain white breast of the adult are also very conspicuous.

Enemies.--The red-headed woodpecker has some bad habits, which have at times caused considerable damage to property, arousing the enmity of those who have suffered from its depredations and resulting in the destruction of large numbers of these birds. Raids on cultivated fruits have given these woodpeckers a bad name and many have been killed by fruit growers. Audubon (1842) asserts that as many as “a hundred have been shot upon a single cherry tree in one day. Pears, peaches, apples, figs, mulberries, and even peas, are thus attacked.”

They do considerable damage to pole lines by excavating their nests in them. An editorial in The Osprey (vol. 1, p. 147) quotes, as follows, from an article in the Kansas City Star:

The little red-headed woodpecker has become such a nuisance on the electric lines of the metropolitan street railway system, that it has become necessary to appoint an official woodpecker exterminator. The title has been conferred on Coffee Rice, an Independence young man, and yesterday he killed nineteen of the destructive birds on the Independence line. The woodpeckers attack the large poles which hold up the feed cables and dig holes into the center and downward to a depth of more than a foot. * * * The result is that in a season the water gets into the heart of the pole and it rots off and breaks, requiring a new pole to be set up; whereas, ordinarily, the life of the big pole is several years. A large number of the electric line poles have been ruined this way, and there was a threatened loss of many thousand dollars unless the pest was checked.

Red-headed woodpeckers seem to be oftener killed on highways by speeding automobiles than any other species, as attested by several observers. Dr. Dayton Stoner (1932) made some observations on this point on an automobile trip, on July 15, 1924, for a distance of 211 miles on well-graveled roads in Iowa. He says:

En route, 105 dead animals representing fifteen species were counted; of these, thirty-nine were red-headed woodpeckers. The mortality in this species was higher than for any other species of vertebrate animal noted and I believe that several contributory factors are responsible for it. First, these birds have a propensity for feeding upon insects and waste grain in and along the roads; second, they delay taking wing before the approaching car, in all probability being poor judges of its speed; and third, they have a slow “get-away,” that is, they can not quickly gain sufficient speed to escape the oncoming car. However, I feel certain that a speed as high as thirty-five to forty miles an hour is necessary in order to overtake these birds.

Alexander Wilson (1832) writes:

Notwithstanding the care which this bird, in common with the rest of its genus, takes to place its young beyond the reach of enemies, within the hollows of trees, yet there is one deadly foe, against whose depredations neither the height of the tree nor the depth of the cavity, is the least security. This is the black snake (Coluber constrictor), who frequently glides up the trunk of the tree, and, like a skulking savage, enters the woodpecker’s peaceful apartment, devours the eggs or helpless young, in spite of the cries and fluttering of the parents; and, if the place be large enough, coils himself up in the spot they occupied, where he will sometimes remain for several days.

Fall.--The fall migration is often well marked. A. H. Helme (1882), writing from Millers Place, Long Island, N. Y., where the bird occurs mainly as a migrant, says:

The first one observed this season was on the 10th of September. On the 12th I saw three, and on the 20th I saw one. Early on the morning of the 24th of September they began to pass over in large numbers, and continued to pass until about 10 o’clock, after which very few were seen, except straggling groups of three or four, and occasionally a single one was seen to pass over during the day. The flight must have consisted of several hundred, principally young birds. They came from the east and were flying west. Many of them in their flight would alight for a few minutes in the orchards and corn fields to feed on the half-ripened corn, or search among the apple trees for the larva or eggs of insects but would soon continue on their journey, and their places would be supplied by others. I noticed one or two to dart out and seize an insect in the manner of a flycatcher. The following day but two or three were seen. A few stragglers, however, were occasionally met with up to the 10th of October, and one was seen as late as the 23rd of November.

John B. Semple (1930) writes:

On September 16, 1929, a flight of red-headed woodpeckers (Melanerpes erythrocephalus) was observed passing over the marshes at the head of Sandusky Bay, Ohio. The birds were flying in little groups of two to five against a stiff southwest wind heading nearly south and at an elevation of sixty to eighty yards. Rather more than half of them were immature birds but the old and young were not segregated. I was hunting ducks at the time and counted forty-eight woodpeckers passing in a little more than two hours. They apparently came from Ontario and probably crossed Lake Erie by way of Point Pelee and Bass Island which would make the flight over water only about nine miles. It was interesting to note that each successive group of birds followed exactly the same route over the marshes although those that had gone before were well out of sight.

Winter.--The red-headed woodpecker is generally considered to be a migratory species throughout the northern portion of its breeding range, but its movements seem to depend almost entirely on the abundance or scarcity of its winter food supply, mainly acorns and beechnuts; when these nuts are available in considerable quantities, this woodpecker is to be found in reasonable numbers within its summer range in the northern States. When Dr. C. Hart Merriam (1878) referred to it as remaining occasionally in northern New York, Lewis County, in winter, some of his ornithological friends were skeptical. He says:

I therefore wrote to my friend, Mr. C. L. Bagg, asking him to send me a lot of red-headed woodpeckers as soon as possible, and in a week’s time received a box containing over twenty specimens,--all killed in Lewis County and when the snow was three feet deep! This was proof positive. Notes kept by Mr. Bagg and myself during the past six years show that they were abundant here during the winters 1871-72, 1873-74, 1875-76, and 1877-78; while they were rare or did not occur at all during the winters of 1872-73 and 1876-77. Their absence was in no way governed by the severity of the winters, but entirely dependent upon the absence of the usual supply of beechnuts. While the greater portion of nuts fall to the ground and are buried beneath the snow far beyond the reach of the woodpeckers, yet enough remain on the trees all winter to furnish abundant subsistence for those species which feed on them. * * *

During the autumn the scattered pairs for several miles around usually congregate in some suitable wood, containing a plenty of beech-trees, and here spend the long cold winter in company, chattering and chasing one another about among the trees to keep warm, and to help while away the time. “Coe’s woods,” in this immediate vicinity, has long been famous as the great winter resort for the red-headed woodpeckers of the neighborhood, and it is certainly the most suitable place for their purposes to be found for many miles around. This piece of woods, not over an eighth of a mile in extent, contains, besides hundreds of beeches (Fagus ferruginea), a large number of elms (Ulmus americana), and white ash-trees (Fraxinus americana) of great size, most of the tops of which are now dead. What more favorable location than this woods could a woodpecker desire? Here they have beechnuts in abundance and a bountiful supply of dead limbs and tree-tops far above the reach of the small charges commonly used by bird-collectors.

James B. Purdy (1900) says that “the presence of the Red-headed Woodpecker (Melanerpes erythrocephalus) during the winter months in Michigan does not depend upon the temperature, but entirely upon the food supply, viz.: the crop of acorns and beechnuts which precedes the winter. If these nuts are plenty, the red-headed woodpeckers will always be found during the winter months, but in no great abundance. If there are no acorns or beechnuts, this bird will be entirely absent in our Michigan forests.”

Robert Ridgway (1881) writes:

Ordinarily this species (Melanerpes erythrocephalus) is decidedly the most numerous of the Woodpeckers in Southeastern Illinois, while during the winter season it is often so excessively common in the sheltered bottom-lands as to outnumber all other species together, and, in fact, is voted a decided nuisance by the hunter, sportsman, or collector, on account of its well known habit of following any one carrying a gun, and annoying him by its continued chatter; at intervals sweeping before him and thus diverting attention. Being at this season always semi-gregarious, while they are of all woodpeckers the most restless and sportive, the annoyance which they thus cause is really no trifling matter.

Evidently, they do not always spend the winter even here, for he says: “In the early part of October, 1879, I paid my usual yearly visit to my old home, and scarcely had arrived at the house ere my father informed me, as a bit of news which he was well aware would both interest and surprise me, that the red-headed woodpeckers had all migrated; that for a number of nights preceding he had heard overhead their well-known notes as they winged their way to some more or less distant region; in short, that the woods that had been their home ‘knew them now no more.’”

Even as far south as South Carolina, according to Arthur T. Wayne (1910): “The controlling influence upon the migration of this species in winter is the presence or absence of acorns of the live and water oaks. If the crop of acorns is large, this woodpecker is abundant during the winter months, but if there are no acorns, the bird is entirely absent, no matter whether the season is mild or severe.”

DISTRIBUTION

Range.--Southern Canada and the United States east of the Rocky Mountains; irregularly migratory in the northern parts of its range.

Breeding range.--The breeding range of the red-headed woodpecker extends =north= to northern Montana (Strabane, Lewistown, Fairview, and Terry); northern North Dakota (Arnegard and Willow City); southern Manitoba (Lake St. Martin and Winnipeg); southern Ontario (Kenora, Cobden, and Ottawa); southern Quebec (Three Rivers and Hatley); and southern New Brunswick (St. John). The =eastern= limits of the range extend from New Brunswick (St. John) south along the Atlantic coast to Florida (Orlando and Fort Myers). =South= through the Gulf coastal regions of Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana; central Texas (Waco); and central New Mexico (Fort Sumner and Albuquerque). =West= to New Mexico (Albuquerque and Santa Fe); central Colorado (Hotchkiss, Golden, Estes Park, and Fort Collins); eastern Wyoming (Laramie and Carey burst); and Montana (Kirby, Billings, Lewistown, and Strabane).

During the summer season the species also has been taken or observed north to southeastern Alberta (Medicine Hat, Big Stick, and Eastend); southern Saskatchewan (Oak Lake, Aweme, and Pilot mound); Quebec (Quebec City); and New Brunswick (Beaver Dam).

Winter range.--The normal winter range of the red-headed woodpecker appears to extend =north= to Oklahoma (Oklahoma City and Okmulgee); northeastern Iowa (National); Illinois (Ohio and Mount Carmel); Tennessee (Nashville and Knoxville); West Virginia (Charlestown and Clarksburg); and southeastern Pennsylvania (Philadelphia). At this season it is never common on the Atlantic coast north of South Carolina (Charleston), but is found from there =south= to southern Florida (Miami). From this point it winters westward along the Gulf coast to Louisiana and probably Texas. The =western= limits of the winter range appear to be central Texas (probably Somerset) and Oklahoma (Caddo and Oklahoma City).

In addition to the winter range above given, it also has been noted casually at this season in eastern Kansas and Nebraska, southeastern South Dakota (Yankton, January 2, 1929, and the winter of 1936-37); North Dakota (Grafton, specimen collected January 24, 1905); Minnesota (frequent in the southern part); Wisconsin (occasional north to Meriden and New London); southern Michigan (Grand Rapids, Lansing, and Detroit); southern Ontario (Coldstream, Toronto, and Kingston); southern Vermont (Bennington); and Massachusetts (Boston).

Migration.--The migrations of the red-headed woodpecker are imperfectly understood, and, as will be noted from the numerous casual winter records, individuals of this species sometimes winter north almost to the limits of the breeding range. This makes difficult the designation of early and late dates of migration. Nevertheless, the following dates may be considered representative of most seasons in that portion of the range where the species is normally migratory:

Spring migration.--Early dates of arrival are: New Jersey--Elizabeth, February 27; New Providence, March 13; Cape May, March 27. Northwestern Pennsylvania--Beaver, April 15. New York--Penn Yan, April 3; West Brighton, April 12; Syracuse, April 14. Connecticut--Fairfield, March 2; Meriden, March 28. Massachusetts--Bernardstown, April 4; Russell, April 21. Vermont--St. Johnsbury, April 19. Maine--Lewiston, May 8; Portland, May 15. Quebec--Montreal, May 7. Ohio--Wauseon, March 7. Michigan--Saginaw, March 9; Sault Ste. Marie, May 22. Ontario--London, March 13; Hamilton, April 15; Toronto, April 26. Wisconsin--Ladysmith, April 23. Minnesota.--Redwing, March 30; St. Cloud, April 1; Hutchinson, April 14. Kansas--Fort Hays, April 11; Bendena, April 13; Harper, April 25. Nebraska--Omaha, April 29; Neligh, May 3; Scribner, May 7. South Dakota--Yankton, April 13; Vermillion, April 29; Sioux Falls, May 4. North Dakota--Jamestown, April 21; Argusville, May 8; Fargo, May 9. Manitoba--East Kildonan, May 6; Aweme, May 19. New Mexico--Glenrio, April 26. Colorado (occasionally winters)--Burlington, May 7; Lamar, May 11; Denver, May 15. Wyoming--Laramie Peak, May 2; Careyhurst, May 15; Torrington, May 17. Montana--Albion, May 19; Fort Custer, May 20.

Fall migration.--Late dates of fall departure are: Montana--Sun River, September 5. Wyoming--Laramie, September 4; Wheatland, September 6; Panco, October 2. Colorado--Greeley, October 1; Denver;, October 21; Boulder County, October 23. New Mexico--Koehler Junction, October 24. Manitoba--Margaret, September 20; Aweme, October 8. North Dakota--Medora, September 18; Wahpeton, September 29. South Dakota--Sioux Falls, September 20; Harrison, September 28; Yankton, October 7. Nebraska--Red Cloud, October 3; Blue Springs, October 4. Kansas--Harper, October 15; Lawrence, October 18; Fort Hays, October 29. Minnesota--Hutchinson, October 20; Minneapolis, October 26. Wisconsin--Prescott, October 10; Reedsburg, October 16; and La Crosse, October 29. Northern Michigan--Sault Ste. Marie, November 15. Ontario--Toronto, September 15; Ottawa, September 18; Point Pelee, October 14. Maine--Skowhegan, October 26. Vermont--Wells River, September 24; Rutland, October 14. Massachusetts--Springfield, October 9; Boston, October 15. Connecticut--Fairfield, October 8; Hartford, October 13. Northern New York--Watertown, October 16; Geneva, October 24; Rochester, November 11. Northwestern Pennsylvania--McKeesport, October 19; Berwyn, November 8; Erie, November 17. New Jersey--Passaic, October 21; Cape May, October 21; Morristown, November 2.

An examination of the banding files in the Biological Survey adds but little information to knowledge of the migrations of this bird. Although it has been banded in fair numbers (more than 1,700 previous to July 1, 1937) the farthest recovery record is only about 80 miles south of the point of banding. There are, however, several cases of return in subsequent seasons to the banding stations.

Casual records.--Records of this species outside its normal range are not numerous. A single specimen was taken in the Chiricahua Mountains, Ariz., in the spring of 1894; one was observed in Salt Lake City, Utah, in June 1874; and one was noted near Fortine, in northwestern Montana, on June 18, 1931.

Egg dates.--Alabama: 12 records, April 20 to July 15; 6 records, May 26 to June 17, indicating the height of the season. Illinois: 19 records, May 9 to July 10; 10 records, May 19 to June 15. Michigan: 16 records, May 9 to August 20; 8 records, May 15 to June 3. New York: 15 records, May 21 to June 19; 8 records, May 26 to June 5. South Carolina: 12 records, May 6 to July 2.

BALANOSPHYRA FORMICIVORA FORMICIVORA (Swainson)

ANT-EATING WOODPECKER

HABITS

The type race of the species is now restricted in its distribution to the region from south-central Texas (Kerr County and the Chisos Mountains) to eastern and southern Mexico. It differs from the other races in the width of the white frontal band, the amount of streaking on the breast and sides, and the amount of yellow in the throat patch, as well as in size. It differs from bairdi and aculeata in having the chest mostly streaked, at least on the median portion, instead of mostly uniform black. The white frontal patch is broader than in angustifrons, and the black band across the female crown is much wider. It is slightly larger than aculeata, and somewhat smaller than bairdi but decidedly larger than angustifrons. Its throat patch is paler yellow than in bairdi and angustifrons.

I cannot find anything of consequence in print relating to the habits of the race, which probably do not differ materially from the habits of the species elsewhere. There are two sets of eggs in the Thayer collection, one of six and one of five eggs, taken in Tamaulipas, Mexico, on April 18 and 22, 1908; in each case the nest is said to have been 20 feet from the ground in a pine. The measurements of these 11 eggs average 26.47 by 19.00 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure =28.1= by 19.0, 26.7 by =19.3=, =25.9= by =18.9= millimeters.

DISTRIBUTION

Range.--Western United States, Central America, and northwestern South America; nonmigratory.

On the Pacific coast the ant-eating woodpecker ranges through the Coast and Sierra Nevada ranges =north= to southwestern Oregon (Cow Creek and Ashland). In the interior it is found =north= to northern Arizona (Hualapai Mountain, Williams, and Grand Canyon); northern New Mexico (Largo Canyon and the headwaters of the Gallina River); and southwestern Texas (Fort Davis and Kerrville). From these regions the species is found =south= through both eastern and western Mexico (including Baja California) and other Central American countries, at least to central Colombia.

Several subspecies of this woodpecker are found only in Central and South America, but three varieties occur regularly in the United States, while two others are confined to Baja California. The true ant-eating woodpecker (B. f. formicivora), which ranges through eastern and southern Mexico, is found also in south-central Texas (Chisos Mountains and Kerrville). Mearns’s woodpecker (B. f. aculeata) occupies the range in Arizona, New Mexico, and western Texas (Fort Davis) south through the Mexican States of Sonora, Chihuahua, and Durango. The California woodpecker (B. f. bairdi) is found in the Pacific coast region from Oregon south to northern Baja California. In this Mexican State the narrow-fronted woodpecker (B. f. angustifrons) is confined to the region of Cape San Lucas, while the San Pedro woodpecker (B. f. martirensis) is found in the northwestern part of the area nearly to the United States border.

Egg dates.--Arizona: 9 records, May 10 to June 10. California: 66 records, April 2 to June 15; 33 records, April 20 to May 15, indicating the height of the season. Second and third broods have been found in September and October. Baja California: 4 records, May 10 to June 3.

BALANOSPHYRA FORMICIVORA BAIRDI (Ridgway)

CALIFORNIA WOODPECKER

PLATE 28

HABITS

The above common name is well chosen, as this is one of the commonest and most conspicuous birds throughout its range in California. Anyone who spends much time afield in the valleys, foothills, and canyons of southern and western California is sure to see this strikingly colored and active woodpecker making itself conspicuous among the oaks and pines; and, where one is seen, there are almost sure to be others, for it is a sociable species.

Referring to the Lassen Peak region, Grinnell, Dixon, and Linsdale (1930) say:

Two environmental factors of seeming importance for the presence of this bird were an available supply of acorns and wood or bark of sorts into which the birds could bore storage holes. As to species of oak, out of the six or more present, our impression remains that no outstanding choice by the woodpeckers was shown. About as many of the birds were seen among the black oaks in the vicinity of Payne Creek P. O., as among the valley oaks around Cone’s. However, tracks of black oaks recurred east of the main mountain mass in the section, as along the upper Susan River and near Eagle Lake, where no California woodpeckers were ever seen by us. To repeat, none of this species of woodpecker was seen by us east of about the western edge of the yellow pine belt (Transition life-zone). * * *

Situations where individuals of this woodpecker were observed are as follows: top of sycamore; dead sycamore stub; in cottonwood; about clumps of fruiting mistletoe; at tips of twigs of large valley oak; in black oak; in blue oak; on dead upper limb of living blue oak; in orchard tree; on isolated digger pine; in large yellow pine; at top of dead incense cedar; on ground at roadside; on fence post; on barn end; on telephone pole.

Courtship.--I first became acquainted with this handsome woodpecker in the Arroyo Seco, on the outskirts of Pasadena, during the winter and spring of 1929, where I often saw these birds busy with their courtship activities in the tops of the tall sycamores. They were flying about among the treetops, making a lot of noise, two males sometimes chasing a female and showing off their brilliant colors, the white spaces in their wings and the white rumps being especially conspicuous; doubtless the red crown and yellow throat, set off by black and white, played an important part in the display. They reminded me of flickers, as they danced on, or dodged around, the branches in playful, showy antics.

Nesting.--Bendire (1895) writes:

In the more southern portions of its range nidification commences sometimes as early as April, and somewhat later farther north. The nesting sites are mostly excavated in white-oak trees, both living and dead, but preferably one of the former is selected in which the core of the tree is decayed. It also nests occasionally in sycamores, cottonwoods, and large willow trees, and more rarely in telegraph poles. Both sexes assist in the excavation of the nesting site, as well as in incubation. The entrance hole is about 1⅗ inches in diameter, perfectly circular, and is sometimes chiseled through 2 or 3 inches of solid wood before the softer and decayed core is reached. The inner cavity is gradually enlarged as it descends, and varies from 8 to 24 inches in depth, usually being from 4 to 5 inches in diameter at the bottom, where a quantity of fine chips are allowed to remain, on which the eggs are deposited.

Milton P. Skinner writes to me: “On May 12, 1933, I found a nest in the main trunk of an almost dead black oak. The opening, 25 feet above the ground, seemed very small and was placed on the southeast side of the tree.

“In the Yosemite Valley, these birds nest in the trunks and large limbs of the Kellogg oaks, and their abandoned holes may be used by pygmy owls another year. As a rule, the California woodpeckers and the pygmy owls show little antagonism toward each other. In spite of this usual custom of nesting in the oaks, most of the birds I saw in the Yosemite were actually in the cottonwoods along the river. After some searching, I found at least one nest there in a short, dead stub of a cottonwood, on July 24, 1933. I saw one bird fly down and feed another that was inside, and then fly away. The hole was about 12 feet above the ground and on the north side of the stub, facing the river and away from the meadow behind it. All the trees in the vicinity were cottonwoods, but there was one oak 150 feet east of the nesting site. There were six other holes in the stub, all on the north side and from 6 to 18 feet above the ground.”

Grinnell and Storer (1924) write:

The more intensive occupancy of the Yosemite Valley during recent years and the operations of the government employees in promptly removing dead but standing trees to be cut up for wood has operated to the detriment of the woodpeckers which seek such trees for nesting holes. So it was no surprise, in May, 1919, to find a number of telephone or electric power poles near Redwood Lane which had been prospected for nesting sites by woodpeckers--the California, to judge from the size of hole and general location. Dearth of suitable natural sites had forced the birds to at least investigate these newly established dead-tree substitutes. With no substitutes at all available, the only result to be logically looked for, as a result of man’s interference with the natural order of affairs, would be the disappearance of woodpeckers. The question arises here as to the justification of the administratiton in so altering natural conditions in National Parks as to threaten the persistence there of any of its native denizens.

Eggs.--The California woodpecker lays ordinarily four or five eggs; six eggs are not very rare; and as many as ten have been found in a nest, probably the product of two females. The eggs vary from short-ovate to elliptical-ovate. They are pure white, with very little or no gloss. The measurements of 52 eggs average 25.98 by 19.78 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure =29.9= by 19.0, 27.9 by =22.6=, =22.0= by 18.6, and 24.38 by =18.29= millimeters.

Young.--The period of incubation is said to be about 14 days, in which both parents assist. Both also help to feed the young. Harriet Williams Myers (1915) made some interesting observations on a late brood of young California woodpeckers, which she found in a hole in a telephone pole, on September 11, between Los Angeles and Pasadena. She says:

In an hour’s watching the birds fed 28 times, the shortest interval being one-half minute, the longest eight. In nine minutes they fed eight times.

On the 15th of the month, when I believe the young must have been about ten days old, they were fed 24 times in 58 minutes. The food given them now was mostly acorns which the adults took from the nearby poles, sometimes digging them out in pieces, and sometimes taking them to the top of a flat pole where they pounded away for some minutes before coming to the nest with their bills stuffed full of the white bits. From this time until the young left the nest they were fed mostly on these acorns.

One of her most interesting observations was that an apparently young bird, presumably a fully grown member of an earlier brood, joined the two parents that were feeding the young in the nest. At one time, this immature bird entered the nest, while the parents were away, apparently for the purpose of being fed by them, and remained there for some time. Meanwhile--

when the adults came to feed they did not go inside but reached over, fed, and flew away. Three times one of them did this, but the fourth time, when the male came, he stood on one side of the hole and I heard him give low, guttural notes. * * * Presently, the truant young, for such he proved to be, appeared in the doorway and, with open mouth, begged for just one bite. * * * But the old bird was unrelenting and stayed in his position by the hole until the bird inside, which was undoubtedly a former nestling, came out and flew onto the wire above, when the adult male went within.

Just to prove that he was not all baby, the former nestling turned in and helped feed. Several times he went into the hole and came directly out, and I might have thought that he was in there in hopes of getting fed had I not distinctly seen a big fly in his bill as he entered. Each time as he bobbed into the hole several white bars showed plainly on the underside of the outer tail feathers. It was this marking of a young bird which convinced me that he was a former nestling. In every other respect he resembled a male California Woodpecker. Once more, during my watching, he slipped into the nest, staying eight minutes before they got him out. The first time it had been twenty minutes.

From the above, and from the observations of Frank A. Leach (1925), to be referred to later, it seems that the California woodpecker often, if not regularly, raises two or even three broods in a season.

Plumages.--The young are hatched naked and blind, but the juvenal plumage is acquired before the young bird leaves the nest. In this plumage the young male closely resembles the adult male and the young female is much like the adult female in general color pattern, but the red of the crown and nape is duller and more or less mixed with dusky or black; sometimes the crown is nearly all black mixed with some scarlet feathers; the colors everywhere are duller, lacking in gloss, and the plumage is softer, less firm; the yellow of the throat is less pronounced; the streaks on the breast are less sharply defined; the tertials and scapulars are tipped with white, and there are narrow white tips on the two outer tail feathers on each side, but these tips wear away during winter, or sooner; there are at least two white spots on each web of the outer tail feather, which are in evidence all through the first year; as the juvenal wings and tail are retained until the next summer molt, birds of the year may be thus recognized; the bill is smaller and weaker than that of the adult. The molt of the juvenal contour plumage begins in August or September.

Adults have a complete annual molt between July and September, mainly in August.

Food.--Some prominent California ornithologists have named this bird the “California acorn-storing woodpecker,” a rather long but very appropriate name, for it designates one of its most characteristic habits and names the largest item in its food supply. W. L. Dawson (1923) has this to say on the subject:

From time immemorial this bird has riddled the bark of certain forest trees and stuffed the holes with acorns. Speculation is still rife as to the cause or occasion or necessity or purpose of this strange practice, but the fact is indisputable and the evidence of it widely diffused. * * *

What he accomplishes the photographs show well enough,--the close, methodical studding of bark or wood of any kind with acorns, chiefly those of live-oaks, over immense areas. The cultures, once started, are wrought upon continuously year by year, as material avails or the colony flourishes. Live-oaks themselves are the commonest hosts, together with the white, or post, oak, and the black oak of the southern counties. After these come sycamore and yellow pine or, more rarely, eucalyptus. Telegraph and telephone poles, gables, cornices, and, in fact, any wooden structure where they are permitted to work, if near the source of acorn supply, may come in for ornamentation. On a small square-sawed telephone pole near Marysville I found sixty acorns (and pecans purloined from a neighboring orchard) imbedded in a space five inches wide and two feet long. At that rate the pole carried some 1500 of these tiny storehouses.

In Tecolote Canyon, west of Santa Barbara, there is a giant sycamore which I count one of the handsomest examples of Carpintero’s workmanship--an unbroken shaft, at least forty feet high and three feet across the inlaid face, covered with a “solid” mass of acorns totalling, say, some 20,000. Strawberry Valley in the San Jacinto Mountains appears to be a paradise for the California Woodpecker. Here majestic oaks (Quercus californica) alternate with still more majestic pines (Pinus ponderosa), the former for sustenance and the latter for storage, and the doughty “California” is probably the most abundant bird in the valley. The boles of the most enormous pines are methodically riddled with their acorn-carrying niches, and in some of the trees the work is carried through from base to crown. In one such tree I estimated that there were imbedded no less than 50,000 acorns.

Dr. William E. Ritter has made an intensive study of this interesting habit of the California woodpecker and has published the results of his observations and theories in three extensive papers (1921, 1922, 1938). There is much food for thought in these scholarly papers, to which the reader is referred, but space here will permit only brief quotations from or references to them. As to whether the hole drilling is injurious to the trees, he says (1921): “Although I have examined many storage pines in widely separated localities, I have never seen anything even suggestive of harm to the trees from the holes. Never, so far as I have noticed, do the holes pierce through into the deeper living layers of the bark.” He noticed that “almost without exception the nuts were inserted tip in and base out, most of them fitting the hole snugly,” having been driven in good and hard, and flush with the surface of the bark, or even countersunken below it; and that “to a certain extent the store holes are made to fit the size of the acorns they are to receive”; this latter point was discovered when he noted that, in a region where the black oak (Quercus kelloggii) predominated, the holes were considerably larger than they were in the live-oak region, the acorns of the black oak being sharply larger than those of the live oak. In some cases the acorns were not driven in flush with the bark, the base being left protruding somewhat and thus leaving them vulnerable to pilfering by rodents and perhaps some birds; in this connection, he says: “Conclusive evidence that nut-eating rodents (squirrels, rats) prey upon the acorns stored by the woodpeckers was first obtained on the present visit. Two trees were found on which the bark immediately around acorn holes had been gnawed by rodents, as unmistakably proved by the tooth marks. The acorns were gone from some of these holes, but not from all, thus showing that the marauders had failed in some of their efforts.”

Summarizing his first paper, he makes the following statements:

As to hole drilling: While the holes are made expressly for the reception of acorns, many holes are probably made which are never used, holes are made at seasons of the year when there are no acorns to store, and large numbers of perfectly serviceable holes seem to be abandoned even in localities where both birds and acorns are abundant, and new holes are being made.

As to the storing business itself: While this is of distinct service to the food necessities of the woodpeckers, the instinct sometimes goes wrong to the extent of storing pebbles instead of acorns, thus defeating entirely the purpose of the instinct. Again, large numbers of acorns are sometimes stored, the use of which is so long delayed that the acorns become wholly or largely unfit for food, and this in places where the bird population seems normal. Finally, acorns are sometimes stored in such fashion as to make them easy prey for marauding rodents, when with some definite foresight and a little more work such exposure could easily be largely avoided.

In his second paper (1922), after further observations, he states:

My previous surmise that the birds are more interested in the grubs contained in the acorns than in the acorn meats has not been substantiated. What I could make out while in camp among them, by watching them gather and eat their breakfasts, was to the effect that good uninhabited acorns were chiefly used. Again and again birds were seen to pick nuts from the top-most branches of the black oak, fly with them in their beaks to some approximately horizontal surface of a large limb on a pine or another oak, make the surface aid them somehow (I never could see exactly how, as the “breakfast tables” were, of course, all on the upper surfaces of the limbs, and too high for my vision) in breaking and tearing open the nuts. Apparently cracks and chinks in the table top serve as holders for the acorns while they are being opened and eaten. This is indicated by the fact that dead and partly decayed trees or parts of trees were mostly used. I saw no indication of the feet being used in handling the nuts. The litter on the ground under the dining trees, consisting of shell fragments and lost bits of meat, indicated grubless nuts almost entirely. This result as to the use of mast is in agreement with Beal’s examination of the stomach contents of our woodpecker.

Charles W. Michael (1926), in the Yosemite Valley, made the interesting discovery that the California woodpecker has been known to learn by experience and to show some intelligence in its acorn storing. For a number of years when acorns were abundant no extensive storing was done, yet the woodpeckers lived in the valley all winter. Then came a lean year, with no acorn crop, when no storing could be done; and that winter the woodpeckers were forced to leave the valley for lack of food. The following year there was a bountiful crop of acorns, and the woodpeckers, having learned by experience, were busy filling up their storehouses. “From the above observations,” he says, “one might conclude that an abundance of acorns is not directly responsible for prodigious storing. In a land of plenty the necessity of laying aside stores for future consumption is obviated. It is the barren years that teach the value of thrift. Intelligence plus experience may well have been the cause of the excessive storing of this year. A few of the more intelligent woodpeckers that were forced last winter to abandon the valley for lack of food are now preparing against the next lean year.”

Claude Gignoux (1921) reports finding almonds stored in the bark of an oak tree on a ranch near Marysville, Calif., as well as in the side of a barn.

Dawson (1923) says: “A regrettable taste for fruit is occasionally cultivated, but this has not reached economic proportions, save in the case of almonds. Almond orchards thrive best at a very considerable distance from oak groves.”

Although acorns, almonds, walnuts, and pecans constitute nearly 53 percent of its food, and much more than that in fall and winter, the California woodpecker eats quite a variety of other food at different seasons. Prof. F. E. L. Beal (1910) examined the contents of 75 stomachs, which contained “22.43 percent of animal matter to 77.57 percent of vegetable.” Bendire (1895) says: “During the spring and summer its food consists, to a great extent, of insects, including grasshoppers, ants, beetles, and different species of flies, varied occasionally with fruit, such as cherries, which are carried off whole, apples, figs, and also berries and green corn.”

Mr. Skinner says in his notes: “At times this bird feeds very much like an eastern red-headed woodpecker. On May 9, 1933, one was seen on the trunk of an oak, only 4 feet above ground, making flycatcherlike sallies up under the foliage of the oak. And many times thereafter I saw the birds operating similarly within the foliage itself. In some instances I have seen these woodpeckers dart out from high up in tall yellow pines after passing insects, then gliding back on set wings. Sometimes they do this from tall electric poles, at times going out as much as 50 feet. Since there was every reason to suppose that the bird saw the insect before it started, this speaks well for its keenness of eyesight. At times, these woodpeckers glean insects from the bark of trees. In July, in the Yosemite Valley, hunting the twigs and bark for insects seemed the favorite method of getting food.”

Dr. Joseph Grinnell (1908) saw one of these woodpeckers, in the San Bernardino Mountains, drive a sapsucker away from its borings in an alder and then go “the rounds of the borings” drinking from each. Dr. Harold C. Bryant (1921) saw a California woodpecker robbing a nest of a pair of western wood pewees; he was “calmly perched on the pewee’s nest and eating one of the eggs. I could see the white and the yolk of the egg on the woodpecker’s bill, as he raised his head. After watching for some time, I attempted to frighten the robber away, but experienced considerable difficulty in doing so. When he finally left the nest the pewees continued to dart at him, to drive him farther away. Soon one of the pewees, apparently the female, returned to the nest, picked up an eggshell and flew off with it. I was unable to see what she did with it. In half a minute she returned and began incubating the remaining eggs.”

Behavior.--The California woodpecker flies in true woodpecker fashion, an undulating flight, interspersed with long dips during which the wings are partly closed and somewhat pressed against the sides of the body; during the rises the wings are flapped, displaying the black and white markings conspicuously; there is an upward sweep before alighting. Grinnell and Storer (1924) say: “When alighting on a tree trunk, these birds assume a vertical posture, head out, tail appressed to the bark. They move up by a hitching process--head in, tail out; up; tail in, head out. If a bird perches on a small horizontal branch, his position is more likely to be diagonal than directly crosswise. If a bird alights on the square top of a fence post, he seems ill at ease and soon backs over the edge into a more woodpecker-like posture.”

Mr. Dawson (1923) writes: “A most characteristic flight-movement is an exaggerated fluttering wherein progress is at a minimum and exercise at a maximum. In this way, also, they ascend at acute angles, sometimes almost vertically. With this movement alternates much sailing with outspread wings, and certain tragic pauses wherein the wings are quite folded.” A similar flight is thus described by Grinnell, Dixon, and Linsdale (1930) as follows: “Individual woodpeckers were often seen making a kind of flight the object of which we did not determine. A bird would fly in a nearly vertical direction from its perch for three meters or more and then commence an irregular swooping flight, finally coming back to the original perch.”

M. P. Skinner says in his notes: “In many of their ways, motions, and mannerisms these birds strongly resemble the red-headed woodpeckers of Eastern United States. Often they are very quiet and remain motionless in one position for many minutes at a time. They are as apt to perch crosswise as lengthwise of a horizontal, or nearly horizontal, limb. At times, they hop along a limb, or the cross-arm of an electric pole, while their bodies are turned a little sideways. Although one exhibited the usual woodpecker habit of nervously jumping down backward, and swaying from side to side, so as to be seen first on one side of his dead stub and then on the other, he was really noticeably quiet and motionless most of the time. One was seen in the Yosemite Valley on the under side of a cottonwood twig, clinging there with his back down.”

Bendire (1895), on the other hand, says: “It is one of the most restless Woodpeckers I know of, and never appears to be at a loss for amusement or work of some kind, and no other bird belonging to this family could possibly be more industrious.” This was my impression of it, as well as the opinion of others.

Henry W. Henshaw (1921) evidently considered this woodpecker playful, for he writes: “In searching for the motives underlying the storing habit of the California Woodpecker we should not lose sight of the fact that the several acts in the process, the boring of the holes, the search for the acorns, the carrying them to the holes and the fitting them in, bear no semblance to work in the ordinary sense of the term, but is play. I have seen the birds storing acorns many times, and always when thus engaged they fill the air with their joyous cries and constantly play tag with each other as they fly back and forth. When thus engaged they might not inaptly be likened to a group of children at play.”

California woodpeckers are well known to be sociable birds and to live more or less in communities or loose colonies, where food conditions are favorable. But a most remarkable story of apparently communal nesting is told by Frank A. Leach (1925). On February 2, 1922, he discovered these woodpeckers excavating a nest in a wooden trolley pole at Diablo, Calif. He estimated that they must have started work on this hole about the middle of January and thinks that it was some time near the latter part of April before it was finished. On March 1, he “saw two go in one after the other. Both appeared to be working on the inside. Two other birds on the pole showed interest in the work by remaining there and taking an occasional peep into the hole.” On April 3, there were “from four to six woodpeckers about the place all day. On one occasion saw three go into the hole. Heard digging while they were inside.” On April 17, he saw “three birds go into the cavity and soon after heard two of them working. Four other birds were on the pole, one looking into the hole.”

The above extracts from his notes, made at frequent intervals and often for several days in succession, would seem to indicate that at least two, and possibly three, pairs of woodpeckers assisted in the excavation of that nest, but evidently their work was not very efficient, as the time involved was unusually long. The same cooperative behavior continued during incubation of the eggs and the feeding of the young, several different birds working in relays; and this continued during the rearing of three broods of young that season. He says that “in the case of the second brood, on eight different occasions I saw three different old birds feed the young ones in the nest, and at one time I witnessed a fourth one delivering food to them.”

Referring to the third brood, he says:

In the large oak tree standing so near the trolley pole that some of its outer branches nearly reached the pole, there were almost always from six to eight mature woodpeckers, all of which seemed to be interested in the welfare of the nestlings in the pole. I repeatedly saw three of them feed the youngsters, and on two occasions noted four different old birds perform this parental service. I was satisfied from the actions of the birds that a majority of the flock, if not all of them, participated in the care of the young woodpeckers. * * *

For others than the parent birds to feed the young was a custom that was not confined to this group or flock at the trolley pole. At about the time the young were leaving that nest, I discovered another nest in a large oak tree situated about a quarter of a mile distant from the pole, where I found from one to five old birds, and possibly more, very busy feeding the nestlings.

Major Bendire (1895) remarks: “The California woodpecker is by far the most social representative of this family found within the United States, and it is no unusual occurrence to see half a dozen or more in a single tree. It is also a well-disposed bird, and seldom quarrels or fights with its own kind or with smaller species; but it most emphatically resents the thieving propensities of the different jays, magpies, and squirrels, when caught trespassing on its winter stores, attacking these intruders with such vigor and persistency that they are compelled to vacate the premises in a hurry.”

According to some other observers, its behavior toward other species is not always as friendly as it might be. M. P. Skinner writes to me: “Once I found a California woodpecker and a California jay peaceably perched in the top of a dead cottonwood. But at other times I have noted much fighting between these woodpeckers and the jays, with the woodpeckers apparently able to hold their own. On May 1, 1933, at old Fort Tejon, I saw a California woodpecker make a vicious dive at a plain titmouse that was clinging to the bark on the trunk of an oak. On May 31 I saw one make a dive at an Arkansas kingbird on a fence and drive it away. In May 1933 I found a pair of house finches that had attempted to nest in a cavity high up in a dead stub of a black oak. When I appeared, I found a California woodpecker throwing out the straws and other nest material. The two finches were only a foot or two distant, but they made no attempt to save their home, although it is probable that they were scolding. Old acorn stores in the same stub indicated that some woodpecker had an earlier claim to that stub than the finches had.”

Howard W. Wright (1908) says:

January 18, while collecting at Newhall, California, I wounded a Lewis woodpecker. The bird was able to fly to another tree, and I noticed that some California woodpeckers in a nearby tree became very much excited. As the Lewis woodpecker lit on the tree trunk four California woodpeckers attacked him evidently with the intent of driving him off. The Lewis started for another tree but a California flew at him from in front, and they both fell in the struggle that ensued. At this the other California woodpeckers, which were joined by a few more, set up a violent chattering and when I ran up, to my amazement I found that the Lewis had hold of the California by the skull, two of its claws entering the latter’s eyes and the other two entering the skull in front and behind. The Lewis woodpecker was dead and the California so nearly so that it died while I was removing the former’s claws.

Voice.--Mr. Skinner says in his notes: “In May, at least, these woodpeckers are sometimes noisy while calling to their mates. One gave a ringing cleep-ep, cleep-ep call on May 25, 1933. It was somewhat similar to a flicker’s call.” Ralph Hoffmann (1927) says: “When a bird lights on a pole or limb already occupied, there is always mild excitement, fluttering of the wings, bowing and scraping, and always a lively interchange of harsh calls, like the syllables chák-a, chák-a, chák-a chak, dying off at the end.” W. L. Dawson (1923) gives the following interpretations of its notes: “A jeering, raucous voice, * * * Jacob, Jacob, Jacob; * * * Kerack Kerack;” and “chaar chaar tchurrup.”

Field marks.--The California woodpecker is conspicuously marked and need not be mistaken for anything else from any angle. When flying away, it looks like a black bird with an extensive white rump and with a white patch in each wing; when flying over or when perched facing the observer, the white abdomen and the broad black band across the chest are distinctive; if near enough, the color pattern of the head is easily seen.

Prof. Ritter’s extensive book (1938) on the California woodpecker appeared while this bulletin was in press.--EDITOR.

BALANOSPHYRA FORMICIVORA ANGUSTIFRONS (Baird)

NARROW-FRONTED WOODPECKER

HABITS

The Cape region of southern Baja California is the home of this subspecies. It is a well-marked race, which Ridgway (1914) describes as “similar to B. f. formicivora, but wing averaging much shorter, bill relatively larger, white frontal band decidedly narrower, lower throat usually much more strongly yellow, white area on proximal portion of remiges smaller, and the adult female with black area on crown much narrower.”

William Brewster (1902) says of its haunts:

This woodpecker, which seems to be confined to the Cape Region proper, is exceedingly abundant throughout the pine forests on the higher mountains south of La Paz and common in many places in the oaks at the bases of the mountains and among their foot-hills, ranging downward, according to Mr. Belding, to an elevation of about 700 feet. Mr. Frazar found it most numerous on the Sierra de la Laguna, during the last week of April and the first week of May. After that its numbers decreased perceptibly. It began breeding on this mountain the first week in June, but the breeding season was not at its height until the middle of that month. * * *

Only one specimen was seen at Triunfo during the last two weeks of June, but the bird was common and presumably breeding at Pierce’s Ranch in July. At the latter place it fairly swarmed in December, the resident colony being probably augmented by large numbers of winter visitors from La Laguna, where Mr. Frazar found only a few birds lingering in late November and early December. Along the road between San José del Cabo and Miraflores it was seen in considerable numbers on November 15, and three were observed in some evergreen oaks at Santiago on November 23.

Nesting.--There is a set of four eggs in the Thayer collection, apparently the same set referred to by Mr. Brewster, collected by M. Abbott Frazar in the Sierra de la Laguna, on June 3, 1887; the nest is described as 10 feet up in a dead pine stump; the entrance measured 1¾ inches in diameter, and the cavity was 18 inches deep. The measurements of these 4 eggs are =24.13= by 19.05, 22.61 by =19.56=, =22.61= by 19.30, and 23.88 by =18.80= millimeters.

The food and general habits of this woodpecker do not seem to differ materially from those of the species elsewhere. It has similar acorn-storing habits, for Mr. Frazar found “many dead pines literally stuffed full of acorns.”

BALANOSPHYRA FORMICIVORA ACULEATA (Mearns)

MEARNS’S WOODPECKER

PLATE 28

HABITS

Along our southwestern border, from Arizona, New Mexico, and western Texas southward over northwestern Mexico to Durango, we find this race of ant-eating woodpecker. It was separated, named, and described by Dr. Edgar A. Mearns (1890a) as follows: “General size and coloring intermediate between M. formicivorus and M. formicivorus bairdi; throat less yellow than in either of them; bill shorter, more slender, and less arcuate than in either of the other forms of M. formicivorus; white striping of chest more than in the Pacific coast form, less than in formicivorus.”

He says of its haunts (1890b): “A very common resident through the pine belt, breeding plentifully. I have found it as high as the spruce forests, but never in them. It is essentially a bird of the pines, only occasionally descending to the cottonwoods of the low valleys. The oaks which are scattered through the lower pine zone supply a large share of its food.”

Henry W. Henshaw (1875) writes: “This woodpecker was first observed when we neared Camp Apache, and, so far as my own observations go, its range in Arizona is coincident with that of the oaks, the acorns of which appear to constitute a very important item in its bill of fare. We noticed it to the southward in every locality where oaks were found in sufficiently large groves to afford it at once a place of shelter and an inexhaustible source whence to draw food.”

Harry S. Swarth (1904), writing of the Huachuca Mountains, Ariz., says: “A most abundant summer resident in the lower parts of the mountains; a few winter here but they are scarce during the cold weather. I saw but two or three during February and the early part of March, about the middle of March they began to arrive in numbers, and by April 1 were most abundant. Primarily a bird of the oak woods they seldom venture into the higher parts of the mountains, breeding almost entirely below 6,000 feet.”

Courtship.--We found this woodpecker quite common on the steep slopes of the Huachuca Mountains in May 1922, especially in the vicinity of Ramsay Canyon, between 5,000 and 6,000 feet elevation. They were usually seen in the open groves of tall pines mixed with oaks. A tall dead pine seemed to be one of their favorite resorts for their courtship displays, which were both showy and noisy. They reminded me of flickers as they dodged about the branches, chasing each other and displaying their conspicuous markings.

Nesting.--I have the records of four sets of eggs, all taken in the Huachuca Mountains but in a variety of nesting sites. There are two sets in the Thayer collection; one, containing six eggs, was taken on May 10, 1897, from a hole 8 inches deep in the dead limb of a sycamore, 30 feet from the ground; the other set of five eggs was taken on June 1, 1902, from a cavity 10 inches deep in an ash stump, 20 feet from the ground. A set of three eggs, in my collection, was collected by O. W. Howard on May 31, 1901; the nest was 6 feet above ground in a dead oak stump. Frank C. Willard took a set of five eggs on May 31, 1899, from a cavity 15 inches deep, 35 feet up in a large dead pine stub.

Eggs.--Mearns’s woodpecker evidently lays three to six eggs. Major Bendire (1895) mentions a set of ten eggs, taken by F. H. Fowler, which were “evidently the product of two females.” The eggs are pure white, of course, and vary from short-ovate to rounded-ovate, with only a slight gloss. The measurements of 20 eggs average 24.07 by 18.91 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure =26.8= by =17.8= (a long narrow egg), 23.9 by =20.8=, and =22.4= by 19.5 millimeters.

Plumages.--Mr. Swarth (1904) writes:

About July 1 the young birds begin to make their appearance so like the adults in general appearance that it is difficult to distinguish between them. The young of both sexes usually have the entire crown red, as in the adult male, but of a duller color, more of a brick red; but one young female secured has the red area very limited and coming to a point behind, so as to form a small, triangular shaped patch on the crown. Of seventeen specimens collected in the Huachucas, three show, more or less distinctly, white markings on the outer tail feathers. In one of these, an adult female, the marks consist of indistinct white spots, mostly on the inner web. The other two, juvenile females, have the outer feathers distinctly, though irregularly, barred with white for about half their length.

Food.--The food of this woodpecker is evidently similar to that of other races of the species. Dr. Mearns (1890b) remarks: “Its habit of industriously hoarding food in the bark of pines, and in all sorts of chinks and hollows, is well known. These stores are the source of unending quarrels between this woodpecker and its numerous pilfering enemies; and I have laid its supplies under contribution myself, when short of provisions and lost from the command with which I had been traveling, by filling my saddlebags with half-dried acorns from under the loose bark of a dead pine.”

Behavior.--Mrs. Bailey (1928) says: “An odd habit of the woodpeckers was happened on by Mr. Ligon in the Black Range. At dark, on March 15, 1913, seeing a bird enter a hole about eight feet up in an oak he closed it after it, and in the morning when he returned was surprised to find six birds in the one hole. As the woodpeckers do not nest until the last of May, and then in high dead pines, it was, of course, a night roost.”

Ed. S. Steele (1926) tells the following story:

I was camping in a pine forest not many miles from Reserve, N. Mex., accompanied by a small English terrier. In front of my tent stood a large dead pine, near the top of which there were a number of holes, evidently the homes of four pairs of Ant-eating Woodpeckers (Balanosphyra formicivora aculeata). A gray tassel-eared squirrel came scampering along, and was at once spied by the dog, which gave chase. The squirrel ran up the dead tree mentioned above, to be instantly assailed by the woodpeckers. Their constant cries and their sharp bills made things so uncomfortable for the squirrel that it ran down the tree to within a few feet of the dog, who sent him scampering to the top again with his eight antagonists constantly flaying him.

About this time there was a swish of wings, and a sharp-shinned hawk (Accipiter velow) darted like a streak among the woodpeckers. For an instant it seemed that one of them was doomed, but by a small margin it managed to escape, and in an instant they had all darted to cover among the green boughs of surrounding trees. All was quiet for a few brief seconds, when the woodpeckers returned to the attack, except one which perched on the topmost bough of a near-by tree, as guard or lookout, watching for the hawk. The other seven took up the fight with the squirrel.

In a few minutes the hawk again appeared on the scene, the guard gave a shrill call of warning, and all the woodpeckers were under cover before their enemy could reach them. The hawk, then, finding the birds on their guard, left and did not return. The terrier soon abandoned the tree, and the squirrel hurried down and scampered away; the woodpeckers quickly quieted down and went peacefully about their home affairs. I believe that the birds recognized in the squirrel a danger to their eggs or young.

BALANOSPHYRA FORMICIVORA MARTIRENSIS Grinnell and Swarth

SAN PEDRO WOODPECKER

HABITS

The acorn-storing woodpecker of the Sierra San Pedro Martir, northwestern Baja California, has been separated and described by Grinnell and Swarth (1926) under the above name, to which they have added the long common name “San Pedro Martir acorn-storing woodpecker.” Its distinguishing characters are given as follows:

Most nearly like B. f. bairdi. Distinguished from that species primarily by shorter wing, and by slightly shorter and notably weaker, more slender bill; also by average differences in head markings as set forth below. * * *

The relatively feeble bill of this bird, as compared with that of the upper California bairdi, is the most conspicuous character of this subspecies. In bill structure it is closely similar to B. f. aculeata, of Arizona.

The character of the head markings in the female is suggestive again of aculeata, the red area being usually more nearly square, as in that form, rather than shorter than wide, as in bairdi. The white frontal band averages slightly narrower than in bairdi, an approach toward the condition in angustifrons, of the Cape San Lucas region. The yellowish white (more dilutely yellow than in bairdi) U-mark on the lower throat in both sexes averages very much narrower in our specimens of martirensis than in a large series of bairdi usually only about half the width of the former as in the latter. This we are not quite confident of as a real character, in that there is a chance that “make” of specimen (whether or not the skin of the throat was stretched) affects the width of the white band. * * *

In character of the markings on the feathers of the breast there is no departure from the condition in bairdi. The upper breast is broadly and solidly black, the black band not penetrated posteriorly with white streaks to such an extent as in aculeata and angustifrons.

The range is given as, “so far as now known, only parts of the Sierra San Pedro Martir, in northern Lower California, between latitudes 30° and 31°30″; altitude 5,800 to 7,200 feet; life-zone mainly Upper Sonoran (live-oak association), but also Transition locally or sporadically.”

The eggs are similar to those of other races of the species. The measurements of 12 eggs average 26.19 by 18.35 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure =25.1= by =19.4=, =19.0= by 18.5, and 22.8 by =16.8= millimeters.

ASYNDESMUS LEWIS (Gray)

LEWIS’S WOODPECKER

PLATE 29

HABITS

My first impression of this curious and interesting woodpecker was of a large, black bird that looked more like a crow than a woodpecker and that flew with the strong, steady flight of a crow or a jay, with none of the undulations common to so many woodpeckers. I made the same comment the second time I saw it, and am interested to see that the same impressions were made on many others.

It is essentially a bird of the more open country and among scattered large trees, rather than of the heavily forested regions. S. F. Rathbun writes to me of its haunts in western Washington: “In this section of the State are many tracts of land commonly known as ‘old burns.’ At one time all were forested, then later they were swept by fire and in some instances more than once; but even now, on many, still stand the scarred and blackened trunks of what formerly were large, tall trees; and it is in or about these unattractive places that this woodpecker is more apt to be found, although by no means is it restricted to them.”

Major Bendire (1895) says: “I have rarely seen Lewis’s woodpecker in deep forests; far more frequently just on the outskirts of the pines, in juniper groves on the table-lands bordering the pines, as well as in the deciduous timber along streams in the lowlands, and occasionally even in solitary cottonwoods or willows, near some little spring, in the drier sagebrush-covered flats, miles away from the nearest forest.”

Winton and Donald Weydemeyer (1928) say that in northwestern Montana it is--

a common summer resident throughout most of the Transition zone. It occurs most regularly in mixed broadleaf and conifer woods in river valleys, and in open forests of yellow pine along the foothills. It rarely ranges into the higher mountains, although we observed one individual in a Canadian zone forest of lodgepole pine and alpine fir, at an altitude of 6,160 feet. In cut-over or burned woods, it ranges to a higher elevation than in virgin forests.

In the eastern part of the county, this woodpecker is most common around farms and slashings, and in the more open woods of fir, larch, and yellow pine. Near Libby, in the western part, it seems to prefer creek-bottom woods of aspen, spruce, and cottonwood.

Johnson A. Neff (1928) says that his “acquaintance with this exotically brilliant woodpecker began in the mountains of Colorado, and even now the thought of it calls to mind that bleak, wind-blown area at an elevation of 8,500 feet, where these birds were very much at home in the dead trunks of spruce and hemlock that had once covered the mountains with living verdure.”

Nesting.--Mr. Rathbun says in his notes: “In western Washington this woodpecker nests in June. Almost invariably the excavation for its nesting place is in a dead tree, the trunk of which is more or less blackened by fire, and this may be one reason why the bird is partial to the old burns. The tree may be one of several scattered about, or, infrequently, somewhat isolated. But in any event, this woodpecker shows a liking for a good-sized tree, broken off at quite a height, the outside of which has been charred or blackened by the flames. We have found many of its nesting places, and among these was one we shall not forget. In this case, the tree was a very large one, was broken off at a height of about 175 feet, and, as usual, had its outer surface burnt. Not far below its top was the entrance to the nest of a pair of these woodpeckers. Because it was so high it could be distinctly seen only by the use of glasses, but often we had noticed one of the birds enter it or come out of it. This nesting place was used for a number of years, and when it was in use we have gone out of our way more than once just to see these woodpeckers; for the top of the tree was used as a lookout station by the pair of birds, from which at times one or both would sail into the air after a flying insect.”

Major Bendire (1895) says that--

it is by no means as particular in the choice of a nesting site as the majority of our Woodpeckers. Shortly after arriving on their breeding grounds a suitable site is selected for the nest, and not infrequently the same excavation is used for successive years. In most cases the nesting sites are excavated either in the tops of tall pines or in dry cottonwoods, and in tall rotten tree trunks, occasionally in partly decayed limbs of sycamores, oaks, and less frequently in junipers and willows. The nests, as a rule, are not easily gotten at, and quite a number are practically inaccessible, varying in height from 6 to fully 100 feet from the ground.

* * * [At Camp Harney, Oreg.] these birds nested mostly in junipers. * * * The junipers which are selected for nesting sites were invariably decayed inside, and after the birds had chiseled through the live wood, which was usually only from 1 to 2 inches thick, the remainder of the work was comparatively easy; the same site, if not disturbed, was occupied for several seasons, and in such the inner cavity was much deeper, some being fully 30 inches deep and generally about 4 inches wide at the bottom. The entrance hole varies from 2 to 2½ inches in diameter, and when this is made by the birds it is always perfectly circular; but occasionally a pair will take advantage of an old knot hole, if it and the cavity it leads to are not too large.

The Weydemeyers (1928) say that in northwestern Montana this species exercises a wide range of selection for nesting trees; of four nests that they record, two were in larch stubs, one in a dead cottonwood, and one in a live yellow pine; these nests were in the Transition Zone at elevations between 2,000 and 3,100 feet.

Ed. S. Currier (1928) found Lewis’s woodpeckers nesting in what he called “colonies,” near Portland, Oreg.; in each of two dead cottonwoods, less than a mile apart, he found three occupied nests all on the same day.

Eggs.--Bendire (1895) says:

From five to nine eggs are laid to a set; those of six or seven are the most common, but sets of eight are not very rare; I have found several of that number, and a single set of nine.

The eggs of Lewis’s woodpecker vary greatly in shape and also in size. They are mostly ovate or short ovate in shape, but an occasional set is decidedly rounded ovate, while others are elliptical ovate; the shell is close grained and, in most cases, dull, opaque white, without any gloss whatever. Some sets, however, are moderately glossy, but scarcely as much so as the better-known eggs of the red-headed woodpecker, and none are as lustrous as the eggs of the flicker.

The measurements of 58 eggs average 26.22 by 19.99 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure =30.48= by 21.34, 26.67 by =24.38=, and =23.37= by =17.27= millimeters.

Young.--Major Bendire (1895) says of the young:

Both sexes assist in incubation, and this lasts about two weeks. The young leave the nest about three weeks after they are hatched, and are readily tamed. I kept a couple for several days, but they had such enormous appetites that I was glad to give them their liberty, as they kept me busy providing suitable food. They were especially fond of grasshoppers, but also ate raw meat, and climbed everywhere over the rough walls of my house. A considerable share of the food of these birds is picked up off the ground, and they appear to be much more at home there than woodpeckers generally are. The young are fed on insects, and I believe also on berries; I have seen one of these birds alight in a wild strawberry patch, pick up something, evidently a strawberry, fly to a tree close by in which the nest was situated, and give it to one of the young which was clinging to the side of the tree close to the nesting site.

Plumages.--The young Lewis’s woodpecker is hatched naked and blind, but the juvenal plumage is acquired before the young bird leaves the nest. In fresh juvenal plumage the red “face” of the adult is replaced by black or dusky, though a young bird taken on July 22 shows some red mixed with the black in this area; the bill is small and weak; the crown and occiput are dull brownish black, without any greenish luster; the silvery-gray nuchal collar of the adult is wholly lacking; the under parts are mostly dull pale gray or dull grayish white, more or less suffused on the central breast and abdomen with dull red or orange-red; the whole plumage is softer and more blended in texture. Dr. J. A. Allen (Scott, 1886) says of some young birds that he examined: “The back and upper surface of the wings are bronzy green nearly as in the adult, with, however, in addition, broad bars of steel-blue on the scapulars and quills. These bars are especially prominent on the secondaries and inner vanes of the primaries, and are seen also in some specimens on the rectrices. The steel-blue edging the outer vanes of the quill feathers in the adult is absent; and the inner secondaries and longest primaries are tipped more or less prominently with white.”

This juvenal plumage is worn through the summer and into September, when the molt into the first winter plumage begins with a sprinkling of the silvery, bristly feathers appearing on the breast and in the collar, with the increase of red in the “face,” and with metallic-green feathers showing on the head. This molt is apparently prolonged and is not finished until early in winter, when young birds and adults are practically alike. Adults have a complete annual molt late in summer and fall; I have observed it as late as October 12.

Food.--Referring to the food of Lewis’s woodpecker, Major Bendire (1895) writes:

In summer its food consists mainly of insects of different kinds, such as grasshoppers, large black crickets, ants, beetles, flies, larvæ of different kinds, as well as of berries, like wild strawberries and raspberries, service berries and salmon berries, acorns, pine seeds, and juniper berries, while in cultivated districts cherries and other small fruits enter into its daily bill of fare. Here, when common, it may occasionally do some little damage in the orchards, but this is fully compensated by the noxious insects it destroys at the same time. In localities where grasshoppers are abundant they live on these pests almost exclusively while they last. Mr. Shelly W. Denton tells me he noticed this Woodpecker gathering numbers of May flies (Ephemera) and sticking them in crevices of pines, generally in trees in which it nested, evidently putting them away for future use, as they lasted but a few days. It is an expert flycatcher, and has an extremely keen vision, sallying forth frequently after some small insect when this is perhaps fully 100 feet from its perch.

On this latter subject, Mr. Rathbun writes to me:

Lewis’s woodpecker is an expert at catching insects on the wing. When in this act, its perch is some vantage spot, such as the top of a dead tree or a bare limb in the open. Here it sits motionless, except to turn its head from side to side on the lookout for its prey; and when this is seen, the bird glides from its resting place to make a capture. On one occasion for more than an hour, we watched a pair of these woodpeckers seize flying insects, and in that length of time not less than 35 were taken. Through our field glasses we kept a close watch on the birds and soon learned from their actions when an insect was sighted, thus it was easy for us to anticipate its capture, and in not a single instance was a failure made by either of the birds. Once, a light puff of air changed the course of the insect just at the time it was about to be taken, but the woodpecker made a quick turn upward at the same time, dropped its legs straight down, and neatly made the take. When busy catching insects on the wing, this bird leaves its perch by easy wing beats or a long, slow, graceful glide; then, after its prey is caught, rises in its flight and, quickly wheeling, returns to its lookout station.

But, as if not content with hunting insects after the manner of a flycatcher, sometimes this bird mingles with the swallows as they hawk over the ground. On one occasion in summer, as we came to a very open pasture, we noticed numbers of barn and cliff swallows in flight over it after insects, and in company with them was a pair of Lewis’s woodpeckers. Back and forth over the meadow flew these dark birds, busy in an attempt to catch flying insects, and their actions as they flew were in marked contrast to those of the graceful swallows. Although we watched the woodpeckers for more than half an hour, throughout that time neither one alighted; and when we left the place both still coursed busily above the field.

About one-third of the food of Lewis’s woodpecker consists of acorns. It shares with the California woodpecker the interesting habit of storing acorns, though its method of storing them is quite different, for it seldom, if ever, makes the neat round holes to fit the acorns, so characteristic of the other species; and its stores of acorns are never so extensive, so systematic, or so conspicuous as those of the California woodpecker. Charles W. Michael (1926) writes:

Recently we watched a Lewis Woodpecker making trips back and forth between a Kellogg oak and his home tree, a cottonwood. He was busy storing away his winter supply of acorns. Occasionally he picked a fallen acorn from the ground; more often he flew into the lesser branches of the oak, and hanging like a great black chickadee he plucked the acorn from the cup. With crow-like flappings, his broad wings carried him back to the dead cottonwood with his prize in his bill. Alighting somewhat below the summit of his tree he would, by a series of flight jumps, come to a certain shattered stub where a fissure formed a vise. Into this he would wedge the acorn.

With the acorn held firmly in place he would set about cutting away the hull, and strong strokes of his bill would soon split away the shell and expose the kernel. But he was not satisfied in merely making the kernel accessible, he must go on with his pounding until he had broken it into several pieces, and then with a piece in his bill he would dive into the air like a gymnast, drop twenty or thirty feet and come with an upward swoop to perch on the trunk of the same tree. A few hitching movements would bring him to a deep crack that opened into the heart of the tree. Here he would carefully poke away, for future reference, his morsel. Usually the acorn was cut into four parts, involving four such trips, and on the last trip to the vise he would take the empty hull in his bill, and with a jerk of his head, toss it into the air. An examination of the ground beneath the tree disclosed hundreds of empty acorn shells. Holding a watch on the Lewis Woodpecker, we found that he made five trips in five minutes and stored five acorns.

J. Eugene Law (1929) has published another illuminating paper on this subject, which is well worth reading; he describes in considerable detail the woodpeckers’ methods in storing the meats of acorns in cracks in poles and indulges in some speculation as to the causes and purposes involved in the habit.

Herbert Brown (1902) found Lewis’s woodpeckers quite destructive to pomegranates and quinces, near Tucson, Ariz. On September 30 he counted ten in the pomegranate groves; “they were mostly feeding on pomegranate fruit. They first cut a hole through the hard skin of the fruit and then extract the pulp, leaving nothing but an empty shell.” Later, on October 13, he says: “Now that the pomegranate crop has been destroyed they have commenced to eat the quinces, of which there are large quantities. On the tops of some of the bushes I noticed that every quince had been eaten into, one side of the fruit being generally eaten away.”

William E. Sherwood (1927) writes:

On June 16, 1923, while collecting near Imnaha, Wallowa County, Oregon, I frightened a Lewis woodpecker from the top of a fence post where it was evidently having a feast. On top of the post it had left a fresh egg, probably its own; for it was absolutely fresh, of the right size, and unmarked. The shell had been broken into, but the contents not yet extracted.

In a knothole on the side of the post was an eggshell (of the same kind), and a snail shell which had been broken into. Wedged into the cracks of the post were several insects (some of them still alive) of the two species commonly known as “salmon flies” and “trout flies.” On the ground at the foot of the post were several snail shells, a green prune (picked into), and several cherry seeds with stems attached.

Johnson A. Neff (1928) has much to say about the economic status of this woodpecker, mainly in Oregon. A few quotations from his paper will serve to show the vast amount of damage to the fruit grower that it does in sections where it is abundant, mainly in summer and fall. He says that Prof. Beal (1911) “mentions one case in Washington wherein the birds tore the paper at the corners of packed boxes of apples left in the orchard over night, picking into every apple within reach, and necessitating the repacking of every box attacked.”

S. D. Hill wrote to Mr. Neff:

In some sections and seasons they will destroy carloads of fruit, especially in orchards near timber. I have known them to do 50 percent damage to a pear crop in the Peyton district on upper Rogue River. Jackson Gyger, Ashland, wrote: “In 1924 the loss on Spitz and Delicious apples was about 75 percent, on Newtowns about 15 percent; Bosc and Anjou pears about 10 percent. The loss on trees near oak timber was nearly 100 percent. This season (1925) due to hunting them every day the loss was possibly 50 percent less. I bought $18.00 worth of ammunition to combat them this year. One man can not keep them out of a seven acre orchard, as they will work on one end while you are scaring them out of the other.”

Mr. Neff goes on to say:

These complaints can not be over-looked, for stomach analyses show only the volume of fruit eaten, not the percentage of fruit damaged per tree, nor the real loss to the orchardist. * * *

In Oregon, although it sometimes becomes a nuisance in the small fruit plantings of various areas, it centers its destructive activities in the Rogue Valley; there it flocks in the greatest abundance. * * *

In this area there can be no question of the objectionable status of the Lewis woodpecker. If the birds would consume each fruit injured, there would be little complaint of their taking the quantity which probably would satisfy them. They are restless and energetic, however, and always attacking fresh fruit, which with one stroke of the bill is ruined for commercial use. If one allows only one bite to each fruit, some of the stomachs studied would have contained the samples of as high as two bushels of fruit. In the restricted areas mentioned the Lewis woodpecker is a pest.

Behavior.--Lewis’s woodpecker seldom indulges in the undulating flight so common to other woodpeckers, though it sometimes swings in a long curve in a short flight from tree to tree. Its ordinary, traveling flight is quite unlike the flight of other members of the family; it is strong, direct, and rather slow, with steady strokes of its long, broad wings. At first glance one would hardly recognize it as a woodpecker, for its flight and its appearance are more suggestive of a crow, a Clarke’s nutcracker, or a jay. But it is far from clumsy in the air, and its skill in catching insects on the wing demonstrates is mastery of the air in flight. It also indulges in some rather remarkable aerial evolutions, which one would hardly expect from a member of the woodpecker family. On this subject, Robert Ridgway (1877) writes:

In its general habits and manners this beautiful species resembles quite closely the eastern Red-headed Woodpecker (M. erythrocephalus), being quite as lively and of an equally playful disposition. Some of its actions, however, are very curious, the most remarkable of them being a certain elevated flight, performed in a peculiar floating manner, its progress apparently laborious, as if struggling against the wind, or uncertain, like a bird which had lost its course and become confused. At such a time it presents the appearance of a Crow high in the air, while the manner of its flight is strikingly similar to that of Clarke’s Nutcracker (Picicorvus columbianus). * * * After performing these evolutions to its satisfaction, it descends in gradually contracting circles, often to the tree from which it started.

Herbert Brown (1902) evidently saw a similar flight, of which he says: “In flight they have little or none of that laborious undulating movement so common to its kind, but in action and flight they seem possessed of peculiarities supposed to belong to birds of a totally different family. Today not less than fifty of them were circling through the air, at an elevation of about 500 feet, with all the ease and grace of the Falconidae. Not a stroke of the wing was apparent. * * * Those high in the air were sailing in great circles. They kept it up indefinitely and had the appearance of being so many miniature crows. When sailing they appear to open their wings to the fullest extent possible.”

Mr. Neff (1928) states that “these birds love the hottest sunshine, and are commonly found perched in the tiptop of some tall partly-dead tree, whence they can scan the air for insect food. They rarely sit vertically upright on a branch as do most other woodpeckers, but perch cross-wise with ease. They seldom climb up the trunk or branches, although perfectly capable of doing so, and are rarely heard tapping.” They perch occasionally on wires, an uncommon habit with other woodpeckers.

Major Bendire (1895) observes: “On its breeding grounds Lewis’s woodpecker appears to be a stupid and rather sluggish bird; it does not show nearly as much parental affection as most of the other members of this family, and is much less demonstrative. It is not at all shy at such times, and will often cling to some convenient limb on the same tree while its eggs are being taken, without making the least complaint.”

Voice.--Bendire (1895) says: “It is by far the most silent woodpecker I have met, and, aside from a low twittering, it rarely utters a loud note. Even when suddenly alarmed, and when it seeks safety in flight, the shrill ‘huit, huit’ given on such occasions by nearly all of our woodpeckers is seldom uttered by it. Only when moving about in flocks, on their first arrival in the spring and during the mating season, which follows shortly afterwards, does it indulge in a few rattling call notes, resembling those of the Red-shafted Flicker, and it drums more or less, in a lazy sort of way, on the dead top of a tall pine, or a suitable limb of a cottonwood or willow.”

Ralph Hoffmann (1927) writes: “For a great part of the year the Lewis woodpecker is a silent bird, uttering not even a call note, but in the mating season it utters a harsh chirr and a high-pitched squalling chee-up, repeated at rather long intervals. Adult birds utter near the nest a series of sharp metallic cries like the syllable ick, ick, ick, which when rapidly repeated become a rattle. The young in the nest utter the usual hissing sound of young woodpeckers.”

Field marks.--Lewis’s woodpecker should be easily recognized. At a distance it appears likes a black bird, the back and the upper and lower surfaces of the wings being black, with no conspicuous white showing anywhere, and with a crowlike flight, broad wings and black tail. At short range, the greenish sheen of the back may glisten in the sunlight, and the silvery gray collar and pinkish underparts may be seen, as well as the gray upper breast and perhaps the red face.

Fall.--This woodpecker seems to be a highly migratory species. From the northern parts of its range it disappears almost entirely during winter; and throughout its entire range it is given to extensive wanderings, being very abundant in certain localities during fall and winter in certain seasons and at other seasons entirely absent. The species is highly gregarious in fall, wandering about in large flocks in search for suitable food supplies.

Mr. Rathbun tells me that this woodpecker is found in Washington from April to about November and occasionally is seen in winter, and says: “In this part [western] of the State the fall migration of this bird seems to begin early in September. Once, very early in the month, on our arrival at a lake not far from Seattle, we noticed a large number of these woodpeckers in three or four deciduous trees along the shore. Occasionally, a few of the birds would make short flights after insects in the air, but by far the larger number were more or less inactive and appeared to be resting, as some remained motionless where perched. And when one did change its position, it did this in a listless manner. Our arrival at the lake was rather late in the afternoon, and from the actions of the birds as a whole we gained the impression that they must have made quite an extended flight that day on their movement southward. On several other occasions in September we have seen this woodpecker as it was migrating. In each case a good many were in company, though rather loosely associated. And once, moving in a southerly direction with them for a very brief time, were numbers of nighthawks, swallows, and Vaux’s swifts flying around for insects.”

Mr. Neff (1928) writes:

This species, more than all its kin, moves in flocks in autumn. After the nesting season it gathers into flocks of from 10 to 300 or more. In such numbers it drops down into the fruit districts of southern Oregon and of northern California, and disaster results. * * *

On August 29, the writer, accompanied by Mr. Richardson, made a trip to Lake of the Woods, Klamath County. Just south of Ashland a few scattered individuals were seen. As the Cascade summit was approached many were seen in the open fields and meadows. In the flats near the lake, and in the open meadows near Rainbow Creek, numbers were found feeding on the mountain huckleberries. Returning to Ashland on September 1, huge flocks of these birds could be seen moving steadily toward the lower Valley. * * *

On September 7, also, the growers in the vicinity of Medford reported the arrival of the first birds there. Flocks were present until September 19, when almost every bird in the area disappeared. A few scattering individuals were left in various foothill areas, but these left during November. The areas in which they wintered so abundantly during the 1924-5 season were totally deserted during the 1925-6 season, and not until spring did they return to this area.

Herbert Brown (1902) states that Lewis’s woodpeckers appeared in large numbers, during the fall of 1884, in the Santa Cruz Valley, Ariz., the first he had seen there for 20 years. He saw the first one on September 28 and ten on the 30th. They were very abundant at times during October but disappeared at intervals. They were last seen on November 16.

Winter.--W. E. D. Scott (1886) says of its winter habits in Arizona:

About my house it generally appeared about the 20th of September, and some years was very abundant. It stays as late as April 20, and then is not seen again till fall, though I have seen the species in the pine region above me late in the spring. In 1884, there was an unprecedented abundance of the species throughout the entire region under consideration. They came in countless numbers about the ranches, both on the San Pedro and near Tucson. Arriving early in September, they did great injury to the fruit crops raised in these regions, and I heard much complaint of them. In the oak woods they were equally abundant, living almost altogether on acorns, but spending much of the warmer portion of the day catching insects on the wing, very much as any of the larger flycatchers do, only that on leaving the perch of observation or rest, the flight is much more prolonged than in the flycatchers that I have seen.

Lewis’s woodpeckers sometimes remain in winter, in small numbers, as far north as the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia. According to Suckley and Cooper (1860), they are “constant winter residents” near Fort Dalles on the Columbia River. Of their winter habits, Suckley writes:

They seem in winter to be semi-gregarious, flying singly, yet still keeping more or less in each other’s company. Their flight at this season is high and very erratic, resembling much, in its characteristic peculiarities, that of the swallow On warm days they keep up a lively chattering noise, unlike, in character, that of any other woodpecker that I have heard. During the cold season they are so shy that it is difficult to shoot them, as at the least alarm they betake themselves to the tops of the highest trees in the vicinity. They at that season subsist principally upon the larvae of insects, found in the cracks and fissures of the “red pine” of the country. I dissected a specimen killed at Fort Dalles, January 9, 1855, finding the coats of the stomach (gizzard) very thick and muscular, its cavity filled with the white larvae of insects, together with fine gravel.

DISTRIBUTION

Range.--Western United States, southwestern Canada, and northwestern Mexico; migratory in the northern areas.

Breeding range.--Lewis’s woodpecker breeds =north= to southern British Columbia (Courtenay, Okanagan Landing, and Arrow Lake); Montana (Fortine, Flathead Lake, and Great Falls); and southwestern South Dakota (Elk Mountains). =East= to southwestern South Dakota (Elk Mountains); southeastern Wyoming (Laramie Hills and Laramie); eastern Colorado (Boulder, Denver, Colorado Springs, Boone, and Rouse Junction); and New Mexico (Bojuaque and Sacramento Mountain). =South= to southern New Mexico (Sacramento Mountain); Arizona (San Francisco Mountain and Fort Whipple); and southern California (Paso Robles). =West= through the coast ranges of California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia (Victoria, Comox, and Courtenay).

Winter range.--On the Pacific coast the species is resident =north= to the Columbia River (Portland and The Dalles, Oreg.) and is found =south= at this season to northern Baja California (Catavina and Guadalupe Valley). During two different winters these woodpeckers were recorded wintering in southern British Columbia (Alowna in 1920-21, Vernon in 1928-29, and Summerland 1928-29).

In the Rocky Mountain region it winters =north= to north-central Colorado (Boulder and Denver) and is found =south= to central Texas (San Angelo); southern New Mexico (Guadalupe Mountains); and northern Sonora (5 miles southwest of Nogales, Ariz.).

Spring migration.--At neither season is the migratory movement extensive, but the following early dates of arrival in the northern parts of the breeding range may be considered typical: Wyoming--Wheatland, April 15; Laramie, May 5; Yellowstone Park, May 14. Montana--Fortine, April 27; Big Hole River, May 1; Corvallis, May 6. Washington--Grand Dalles, April 23; Prescott, April 26; Tacoma, April 27. British Columbia--Okanagan Landing, April 20; Arrow Lakes, April 28; Sumas, May 3.

Fall migration.--The following are late dates of departure in autumn: British Columbia--Arrow Lakes, October 16; Kelowna, October 23; William Head, November 23. Washington--Prescott, September 18; North Dalles, October 10; Yakima, October 29. Montana--Columbia Falls, September 9; Missoula, September 17; Gold Creek, September 21. Wyoming--Laramie, September 24; Careyhurst, September 26; Wheatland, October 4.

Casual records.--Lewis’s woodpecker has been taken on several occasions at points east of its normal range. Among these records are Alberta, Castor, May 7 and 9, 1924; Big Hay Lake, October 12, 1930; and Lesser Slave Lake, May 22, 1928; Saskatchewan, one specimen at Herschel on September 23, 1914, three in the Qu’Appelle Valley, one from near Eastend on September 19, 1915, two in the same vicinity on September 24, 1929, and two in the summer of 1931; North Dakota, a specimen was taken at Neche, on October 13, 1916, and one was noted at Grafton on October 10, 1926; Nebraska, recorded at Long Pine during the winter of 1898-99; Kansas, a specimen at Ellis on May 6, 1878, and another near Lawrence on November 7, 1908; eastern Oklahoma, one was carefully observed near Tulsa on December 24, 1922; Iowa, recorded at Sioux City from November 28, 1928, to April 7, 1929; Illinois, one recorded from Chicago on May 24, 1923, and another from Argo on May 14, 1932; and Rhode Island, a specimen collected at Mount Pleasant, near Providence, on November 16, 1928.

Egg dates.--California: 19 records, April 18 to June 10; 10 records, May 3 to 28, indicating the height of the season. Colorado: 30 records, May 8 to August 6; 15 records, June 2 to 20. Oregon: 18 records, May 17 to June 24; 9 records, May 30 to June 10. British Columbia: 6 records, May 31 to June 15.

CENTURUS CAROLINUS (Linnaeus)

RED-BELLIED WOODPECKER

PLATES 30, 31

HABITS

This showy and noisy woodpecker enjoys a wide distribution throughout much of the eastern half of the United States, except the most northern and northeastern States. Throughout much of this range, it is one of the commonest and most conspicuous of the woodpeckers. Arthur H. Howell (1932) writes: “In Florida, red-bellied woodpeckers are found chiefly in hammocks, groves, and wet bottomland timber, less commonly in the pine woods and the cypress swamps. * * * These woodpeckers are not particularly shy, and they often visit dooryards and orchards.” In Texas, according to George Finlay Simmons (1925), its favorite haunts are “heavily timbered bottom lands or swampy woods; open deciduous or mixed coniferous woodlands with very large trees; heavy woods of oak and elm along river and creek bottoms; shade trees and dead trees in town.” Major Bendire (1895) says: “Throughout the northern portions of its range it prefers deciduous or mixed forests to coniferous, but in the south it is apparently as common in the flat, low pine woods as in the oak hammocks. Newly cleared lands in which numbers of girdled trees still remain standing are favorite resorts for this as well as other species.”

Nesting.--Bendire (1895) writes:

Birds that migrate from the northern portions of their range usually arrive on their breeding grounds rather early, sometimes by March 20, and shortly afterwards preparations for nesting are commenced. A suitable site is readily found in the decayed top of some tree, or in an old stump, near a stream along the edges of a pasture, or close to some road, and less often farther in the center of a forest. Deciduous trees, especially the softer wooded ones, such as elms, basswood, maple, chestnut, poplar, willow, and sycamore, are preferred to the harder kinds, such as ash, hickory, oak, etc. In northern Florida they nest frequently in pines. Several excavations are often found in the same tree in which the nest is located, and occasionally the same site, with slight repairs, is used for more than one season. * * *

Both sexes assist in excavating the nesting site, as well as in incubation, which lasts about fourteen days. The sites selected are usually from 5 to 70 feet from the ground, and resemble those of our Woodpeckers in every respect, averaging about 12 inches in depth. It takes from seven to ten days to excavate a nest, and frequently the birds rest a week afterwards before beginning to lay; an egg is deposited daily, and from three to five are usually laid to a set, rarely more.

Mr. Howell (1932) says that in Florida “almost any kind of a tree will satisfy the birds for a nesting site, but a partly decayed stub seemingly is preferred. Where cabbage palms occur, a dead stub of that tree is often chosen, and cavities in oaks, cypresses, pines, and other trees are frequently utilized, the nesting hole being anywhere from 5 to 70 feet from the ground, usually, however, under 40 feet. Nesting begins in April and continues until June.” The only nest I ever examined in Florida was found on April 25, 1903, on one of the Bowlegs Keys, in the Bay of Florida; it was placed in a dead branch of a black mangrove; the cavity was about 14 inches deep and contained four fresh eggs.

Mr. Simmons (1925) says that in Texas this woodpecker nests in “dead limbs of stumps of hackberry, Chinaberry, cedar elm, pecan, and American water elm trees, particularly the rotten, shaky, skeleton upper-parts of living hackberry trees in backyards, or in telegraph poles along city streets and alleys.” In a small village in Texas I once found a nest containing three eggs in a fencepost near one of the houses.

Various observers have given quite different measurements of the nesting cavity. Mr. Simmons (1925) says: “Entrance, diameter 1.75 to 1.96. Cavity, depth 10 to 12; widest diameter near bottom (3 above eggs) 5.25.” William H. Fisher (1903) found a nest in Maryland in which “the opening measured 2 by 2¼ inches and it was 5 inches from the outer edge of the hole to the back wall.”

Charles R. Stockard (1904) located a nest in Mississippi, of which he says:

In the spring of 1900 a nest of this species was located in a dead cottonwood tree which stood in an open pasture. The nest was a burrow fifteen inches deep with a perfectly circular entrance about forty feet above the ground. A set of five eggs was taken from it on April 24. The entrance being small it was found necessary to cut it larger so as to admit my hand. Twenty-three days later the same nest contained a second set of five eggs, slightly incubated. The enlarging of the entrance evidently had no ill effect except for the fact that the burrow had been deepened several inches, probably to prevent an extra amount of light on the floor of the nest. These birds seem to gauge the depth of their excavations more by the amount of light admitted than from any instinct to dig a certain distance. For example, burrows that had their entrance just below a limb or were situated in shady woods were noticed, as a rule, to be shallower than those located in exposed fields or on the sunny side of the tree.

Bayard H. Christy (1931) describes a nest found in Pennsylvania as follows:

The hole was in the top of a great primeval white oak, standing in the bottom of a wooded ravine and at the edge of a neglected clearing, in southern Beaver County. I had discovered it a month or six weeks before, attracted by the calls of the bird. The hole was drilled in a dead and vertically standing bough about eight inches in diameter, in the very centre of the crown of the oak, and was, I should say, about eighty feet above the ground; it was drilled in the northern side of the bough, and beneath the talus of a branch which had died and fallen away, leaving a knot-hole a few inches above. The woodpeckers’ hole was newly cut, and the bark around and beneath it had been trimmed by use or by design, so that the region about formed a tawny patch upon the grey of the bough.

S. A. Grimes (1932) mentions four cases that have come under his observation, in which red-bellied woodpeckers have occupied old nests of red-cockaded woodpeckers in Florida. F. M. Phelps (1914) mentions another similar case.

Eggs.--The red-bellied woodpecker lays three to eight eggs, usually four or five. It is a persistent layer; if the first set is taken, it will lay a second set within a week or two, generally in the same nest. Mr. Stockard (1904) reports his experience with a pair that laid four sets of eggs, 19 eggs in all, and all in the same nest.

Bendire (1895) says that “the eggs are white, mostly ovate in shape; the shell is fine grained and rather dull looking, with little or no gloss, resembling in this respect the eggs of Lewis’s woodpecker more than those of the red-headed species.” I have seen eggs that are elliptical-ovate in shape, and decidedly glossy; eggs that have been incubated for some time become more glossy than when first laid. The measurements of 50 eggs average 25.06 by 18.78 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure =27.00= by 19.79, 25.15 by =23.62=, =23.00= by 18.70, and 23.11 by =16.76= millimeters.

Young.--The period of incubation is said to be about 14 days. Both sexes assist in this and in the feeding and care of the young. In the more northern portions of its range, probably only one brood is reared in a season, but in the South this woodpecker is said to raise two and sometimes three broods.

Plumages.--Like other woodpeckers, the young are hatched naked and blind, but the juvenal plumage is acquired before the young leave the nest. In this the young male closely resembles the adult female, but the colors are duller, the barring is less distinct, and the white bars are suffused with brownish white; there are indistinct dusky shaft streaks on the chest and little or no red on the abdomen, which, if present, is more orange or yellowish; there is no clear red on the head, but the gray crown is sometimes suffused centrally with dark red mixed with the gray; the hind neck is often suffused with pinkish or yellowish. The juvenal female is similar to the young male, but the top of the head is darker gray, or dusky, and there is less reddish or yellowish suffusion anywhere. The juvenal plumage is apparently worn through the first fall; I have seen it as late as December 20, but Forbush (1927) says that it is shed between August and October. In the first winter plumage, there is an advance toward maturity, young males acquiring more red on the crown and occiput, and young females on the latter. There is probably a more or less continuous molt during winter, or a partial prenuptial molt in early spring, by which young birds become practically indistinguishable from adults. Adults have a complete postnuptial molt late in summer and early in fall.

Food.--Bendire (1895) says:

Its food consists of about equal proportions of animal and vegetable matter, and it feeds considerably on the ground. Insects, like beetles, ants, grasshoppers, different species of flies, and larvae are eaten by them, as well as acorns, beechnuts, pine seeds, juniper berries, wild grapes, blackberries, strawberries, pokeberries, palmetto and sour-gum berries, cherries, and apples. In the South it has acquired a liking for the sweet juice of oranges and feeds to some extent on them; but as it always returns to the same one, until this ceases to yield any more juice, the damage done in this is slight. It has also been observed drinking the sweet sap from the troughs in sugar camps. The injury it commits by the little fruit it eats during the season is fully atoned for by the numerous insects and their larvae which it destroys at the same time, and I therefore consider this handsome Woodpecker fully worthy of protection.

An examination of 22 stomachs by Professor Beal (1895) showed: “Animal matter (insects) 26 percent and vegetable matter 74 percent. A small quantity of gravel was found in 7 stomachs, but was not reckoned as food. Ants were found in 14 stomachs, and amounted to 11 percent of the whole food. Adult beetles stand next in importance, aggregating 7 percent of all food, while larval beetles only reach 3 percent. Caterpillars had been taken by only 2 birds, but they had eaten so many that they amounted to 4 percent of the whole food. The remaining animal food is made up of small quantities of bugs(Hemiptera), crickets (Orthoptera), and spiders, with a few bones of a small tree frog found in 1 stomach taken in Florida.”

The red-bellied woodpecker eats some corn, which it has been seen to steal from corncribs and from bunches of corn hung up to dry. Various berries have been recorded in its food, besides those mentioned above, mulberries, elderberries, bayberries, blueberries, and the berries of the Virginia creeper, cornel, holly, dogwood, and poison ivy, also the seeds of ragweed and wild sarsaparilla, hazelnuts, and pecans. N. M. MCGuire (1932) saw one feeding at the borings of a yellow-bellied sapsucker on a sugar maple tree, driving the latter away; he “would fly at the Sapsucker, causing him to dodge around a limb in order to keep out of the way.”

Dr. B. H. Warren (1890) first called attention to the orange-eating habit of the red-bellied woodpecker in Florida, where it is called the “orange sapsucker” or “orange borer.” He found on inquiry that these birds often destroyed large numbers of oranges when they were ready for picking and that “they damaged the orange trees by boring holes in them and sucking the sap.” He collected 26 of these woodpeckers in one orchard, 11 of which had “fed to a more or less extent on oranges.”

William Brewster (1889) saw a red-bellied woodpecker eating the pulp of a sweet orange at Enterprise, Fla. He says that it attacked the orange on the ground, pecking at it in a slow and deliberate way for several minutes. On examining the orange he found it to be decayed on one side. “In the sound portion were three holes, each nearly as large as a silver dollar, with narrow strips of peel between them. The pulp had been eaten out quite to the middle of the fruit. Small pieces of rind were thickly strewn about the spot. Upon searching closely I discovered several other oranges that had been attacked in a similar manner. All were partially decayed, and were lying on the ground. I was unable to find any on the trees which showed any marks of the Woodpecker’s bill.”

Certainly the habit of eating fallen and partially decayed oranges does no injury to the orange groves, but D. Mortimer (1890) tells a different story:

While gathering fruit or pruning orange trees, I frequently found oranges that had been riddled by this woodpecker, and repeatedly saw the bird at work. I never observed it feeding upon fallen oranges. It helped itself freely to sound fruit that still hung on the tree, and in some instances I have found ten or twelve oranges on one trees that had been tapped by it. Where an orange accidentally rested on a branch in such a way as to make the flower end accessible from above or from a horizontal direction the Woodpecker chose that spot, as through it he could reach into all the sections of the fruit, and when this was the case there was but one hole in the orange. But usually there were many holes around it. It appeared that after having once commenced on an orange, the woodpecker returned to the same one repeatedly until he had completely consumed the pulp, and then he usually attacked another very near to it. Thus I have found certain clusters in which every orange had been bored, while all the others on the tree were untouched.

The red-bellied woodpecker shares with other species, formerly included in the genus Melanerpes, the habit of storing acorns, nuts, insects, and other articles of food for future use. Ben. J. Blincoe (1923) writes:

The red-bellied woodpecker is a heavy feeder on beech and oak mast. In the early fall its incessant “Cha-cha-cha” was a familiar sound in the beech woods about Cherry Hill. I never observed it in the act of storing beech mast though on numerous occasions red-bellied woodpeckers were seen carrying beechnuts to a considerable distance from the trees from which they were secured. Very likely many of these nuts were wedged in cracks or crevices for future use. However, in the fall of 1913, a red-belly was seen storing the acorns from a Chinquapin Oak (Quercus acuminata) which stood over the wood-pile at Cherry Hill. The acorns were carried, one at a time, to fence posts ranging from twenty-five to three hundred yards distant from the oak tree, and were generally wedged in a crack in the post, usually near the top. One acorn was placed in a cavity caused by decay, and laid loosely on the rotten wood. As far as my observations went, but one acorn was placed in a single post

While Mr. Blincoe was shelling walnuts, he saw one of these woodpeckers carry off the shells, and apparently eat the remaining meat out of them. Several times he saw one stealing corn from his corncrib or flying off with cherries from a tree in his garden and sometimes carrying them to a fence post to eat. Again he watched one eating a hole in an apple, and “found that the apple on which it had been working bore a decayed spot near the stem and just at the edge of it, but entirely in the solid part of the apple, was a hole about half an inch across, and three-quarters deep. The bottom of this cavity contained several tiny holes, markings made by the woodpecker’s mandibles. In the early winter, frequently, a red-belly would be seen feeding on an apple that remained on the tree, though decayed and practically dried up.”

Lester W. Smith writes to me that it seems to be a habit of the red-bellied woodpecker in Florida to store away insects and other food. “After digging into and capturing an insect, I see it fly to a small hole, commonly in the trunk of the cabbage palmetto, and place the insect in it. At a hole 5 feet from the ground I found a male carolinus inserting the badly mutilated body of a cockroach. A large portion of his catches or finds he seems to prefer to hide away. A tree of small, late tangerines was visited almost daily during the latter half of May, and sections of the pulp, taken from fruit torn open by the mockingbird, were carried off and hidden in various places. On June 3 I saw carolinus go to the base of banana leaves, take out a section of pulp, and fly away with it. Examination showed other pieces similarly hidden, some with ants on them.”

M. P. Skinner (1928) says: “Although other woodpeckers carry off and store bits of food, the red-bellied woodpeckers appear to do it more than any others in the Sandhills. These birds are rather easily attracted to artificial feeding stations, especially if suet be offered them. They will eat nuts and bread crumbs, also, but not as greedily.”

Behavior.--Mr. Skinner (1928) writes: “In flight, these woodpeckers are apt to progress step by step from tree to tree. In this respect, and in that it is undulating, their flight is much like that of other woodpeckers. In approaching a perch, the red-bellied woodpeckers usually glide and sweep up to it with the impetus already gained. * * * These woodpeckers work and hammer on the trunks of trees, on the boles of oaks, on boles high up in live or blasted pines, and on both living and dead limbs, usually working up, but working down also if they want to, using a peculiar partly-sidewise drop downward.”

Voice.--Mr. Simmons (1925) gives the following elaborate interpretations of the various calls of this noisy bird:

In fall and winter, a soft scolding chuh; chuh-chuh; chow-chow; cherr-cherr; or chawh-chawh. At other seasons, a variety of calls: a slow, harsh crer-r-r-r-r-r rrrrrr or chur-r-r-r-r rrrrrr; a noisy charr-r-r or chawh-chawh; a rather slow, regular chuh-chuh-chuh-chuh-chuh, sometimes uttered in a series of a dozen or more as rapidly as the syllables can be plainly pronounced; a very rapid chuck-a-chuck-a-chuck-a-chuck-a-chuck-a-chuck-a-chuck-a; a slow, harsh sherr, cherr, cherr or crerr, crerr, crerr, crerr, crerr; an alarmed cha-cha-cha; at intervals, a loud, bold, running, connected koo er-r-r-r; qu er-r-r-r-r; qui er-r-r-r-r; or k-r-r-ring, uttered with a distinct rolling of the r’s; in the nesting season, an additional whicker.

Bendire (1895) says: “The Red-bellied, like the majority of our Woodpeckers, is a rather noisy bird. Its ordinary call note resembles the ‘tchurr, tchurr’ of the red-headed very closely; another sounds more like ‘chawh, chawh,’ and this is occasionally varied with a disagreeable creaking note, while during the mating season peculiar, low, mournful cooing sounds are sometimes uttered, which somewhat resemble those of the Mourning Dove.”

Various other observers have given somewhat similar descriptions of some of the above interpretations. When I first saw this woodpecker, many years ago in Florida, climbing up the trunk of a cabbage palmetto, its rolling notes sounded to me like those of a tree toad, as heard before a rain.

Field marks.--The red-bellied woodpecker is so conspicuously marked that it could hardly be overlooked. It is a medium-sized woodpecker, about the size of the hairy; the entire back and rump are conspicuously barred transversely with black and white; the wings are spotted or barred with white; the under parts are uniform gray, except for the inconspicuous reddish tinge on the abdomen; in the male the entire crown and nape are brilliant scarlet, and a large patch of the same color adorns the nape of the female.

Winter.--The migrations of this woodpecker are, apparently, not so extensive or so regular as those of most migratory birds; they seem to consist more of irregular wanderings and to depend more on the abundance of the food supply. The species occurs, in small numbers at least, more or less irregularly in winter even in the northern portions of its range. There is, however, usually a general southward movement in fall, which greatly increases its abundance in the Southern States in winter. William H. Fisher (1897) says of its winter occurrence in Maryland: “I have only met with about half a dozen individuals outside of Somerset County, but there, for the last fourteen years, in either November, December or January, I have found them to be very abundant. According to my observations, they prefer the low, swampy woodlands and clearings, only occasionally being found in the isolated tree in the field.”

W. E. Saunders tells me that it was formerly quite common in southern Ontario and came regularly to the feeding stations in winter; evidently some of these birds did not migrate. On the other hand, Audubon (1842) says: “In winter I have found the red-bellied woodpecker the most abundant of all in the pine barrens of the Floridas, and especially on the plantations bordering the St. John’s river, where on any day it would have been easy to procure half a hundred.” And C. J. Maynard (1896) writes: “I found the red-bellied woodpeckers quite abundant in winter in the piney woods which border the plantations on the Sea Islands off the Carolinas but as I proceeded south, their numbers increased and in Florida, they fairly swarmed, actually occurring in flocks. They accompany the cockaded woodpeckers in the piney woods and also associate with the yellow-bellies in the swamps and hummocks; in fact, it is difficult to remain long in any portion of Florida where there are trees, without hearing the discordant croak of these woodpeckers and I even found them on the Keys.”

DISTRIBUTION

Range.--Chiefly the Eastern United States, casual west to Arizona and Colorado; nonmigratory.

The range of the red-bellied woodpecker extends =north= to southeastern Nebraska (Lincoln and Nebraska City); southeastern Minnesota (St. Peter and Minneapolis); southern Michigan (Grand Rapids, Howell, and Plymouth); and southern Ontario (Coldstream, Toronto, and Twin Lakes). =East= to southeastern Ontario (Twin Lakes); western New York (Canandaigua, Potter, and probably Ithaca); southern Pennsylvania (Fulton County); eastern Maryland (Marydel and Church Creek); Virginia (Dismal Swamp); North Carolina (Mattamuskeet Lake and Orton); South Carolina (Columbia and Frogmore); Georgia (Savannah, Cumberland Island, and Blackbeard Island); and Florida (New Smyrna, Eldred, Cape Florida, and Upper Matecumbe Key). The =southern= limits extend westward along the Gulf coast to eastern Texas (Giddings and Austin). =West= to eastern Texas (Austin, Cameron, and Waco); Oklahoma (Caddo, Norman, and Arnett); eastern Kansas (Harper, Wichita, and Manhattan); and southeastern Nebraska (Lincoln).

Although not a migratory species, there appears to be some retreat from the northern parts of the range, particularly during severe winters.

Casual records.--Red-bellied woodpeckers have been taken or observed on numerous occasions in New Jersey and eastern New York (including Long Island). The northernmost records on the Atlantic seaboard are several from Massachusetts, among which are the following: Springfield, May 13, 1863; Newton, November 25, 1880; Cohasset, May 28, 1881; and Clinton, July 17, 1896. One was noted at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, on August 29, 1920; two were reported from Yankton, S. Dak., on April 14, 1923; one was seen in Monroe Canyon, Sioux County, northwestern Nebraska (date?); in Colorado, a specimen was taken at Fountain in 1873 and another at Limon in May 1899, while one was seen at Greeley in 1895 and another at Yuma on October 1, 2, and 3, 1906. According to Ridgway (1914), the species is “accidental in Arizona (Fort Grant),” but no information is available to indicate the authority for this statement.

Egg dates.--Alabama: 9 records, April 17 to July 11. Florida: 20 records, April 10 to June 20; 10 records, April 16 to May 13, indicating the height of the season. Illinois: 8 records, April 1 to June 3. Texas: 8 records, April 8 to July 9.

CENTURUS AURIFRONS (Wagler)

GOLDEN-FRONTED WOODPECKER

HABITS

The golden-fronted woodpecker is found, in suitable localities, from central Texas southward to the Valley of Mexico. It is not, however, evenly distributed, being common in certain regions that suit its requirements and entirely absent from other types of surrounding country. For example, E. M. Hasbrouck (1889) says: “In the single locality in Eastland County where they are found, they may be said to be fairly common, but outside of an area of twenty-five square miles they are unknown in the County. * * * This section of country presents peculiar characteristics; the timber is entirely of post-oak, and the ground more or less thickly covered with ‘shinnery,’ and differs from the surrounding country in that the tops of the trees were affected some years ago with a blight, and now this entire area is one mass of dead-topped trees, and this is what apparently suits the present species.”

George F. Simmons (1925) says of its haunts in the Austin region: “Mesquite forests with large trees, and mesquite flats; partial to large timber near mesquite growth, particularly among post oak and mixed oaks on gravel uplands, and in pecan groves on open and semi-open bottoms.”

D. B. Burrows (Bendire, 1895) says that, in Starr County, on the lower Rio Grande, “the golden-fronted woodpecker is a common resident species in this locality, and much more abundant than Baird’s woodpecker, the only other variety that I have found here. They may be found wherever there is a growth of trees sufficiently large to afford nesting places, but are most numerous in the river bottoms where there is a heavy growth of old mesquite timber.”

Nesting.--Major Bendire (1895) writes: “Nidification commences sometimes in the latter part of March, but usually not much before the middle of April; both sexes assist in this labor, and it takes from six to ten days to excavate a proper nesting site; both live and dead trees are used for this purpose, as well as telegraph poles and fence posts; the holes are rarely over 12 inches deep, and are situated at no great distances from the ground, mostly from 6 to 25 feet up.” As to its nesting in Starr County, he quotes from Mr. Burrows: “The nest is by preference made in the live trunks of large trees, usually the mesquite, but sometimes in a dead stump or limb, the same cavity being used year after year, and it is quite a rare thing to see a fresh excavation. The nesting season begins in April, and most of the nests contain fresh eggs by May 10. I took a set of six eggs from a cavity in a live mesquite tree, the opening being but 2 feet 9 inches from the ground, but usually they are placed from 8 to 20 feet up.” And H. P. Attwater wrote to him that “near San Antonio, Texas, where the golden-fronted woodpecker is a common resident, it nests in all kinds of tall live timber, pecan, oak, and large mesquite trees being preferred, but telegraph poles furnished favorite sites here also. A line running out of San Antonio to a ranch nine miles distant was almost destroyed by these birds; they came from all sides, from far and near, and made fresh holes every year, sometimes as many as five or six in a single pole. Here it also nests occasionally in artificial nesting sites, like bird boxes, etc., in yards and gardens.”

My only experience with the nesting habits of this woodpecker was in Cameron County, Tex., where we found this noisy and conspicuous bird quite common in the trees about the ranches. On May 24, 1923, we found two nests quite near the buildings on a well-kept Mexican ranch and collected two sets of four fresh eggs; one was about 8 feet up in an anaqua tree and the other about 12 feet from the ground in a willow.

Eggs.--The golden-fronted woodpecker lays four to seven eggs to a set, usually four or five. The eggs are pure white and vary from ovate to short or rounded-ovate, with very little or no gloss when fresh.

The measurements of 59 eggs average 25.82 by 19.50 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure =28.45= by 20.07, 27.94 by =20.83=, =22.86= by 17.78, and 25.91 by =18.03= millimeters.

Young.--Major Bendire (1895) says: “Incubation lasts about fourteen days, and both sexes share this duty. * * * It is probable that two broods are occasionally raised in a season, as there are sets of eggs in the collection taken in June, and two of these in the latter part of this month.” But Mr. Simmons (1925) says “probably only one brood.” Both parents assist in the care of the young. In summer and fall the young may be seen traveling about with their parents in family parties, but they separate before winter.

Plumages.--Probably the young are hatched naked and blind, as with other woodpeckers, and the juvenal plumage is acquired before the young bird leaves the nest. The young male, in juvenal plumage, is similar to the adult male but is everywhere duller, with the markings less clearly defined; the red crown patch is smaller and consists of somewhat scattered red feathers; there is usually more or less indistinct dusky barring on the forehead, which is duller yellow than in the adult; the yellow of the hind neck is paler and duller; the chest is usually more or less streaked with dusky, and the yellow on the abdomen is paler. The young female is similar to the young male but without any red on the head, the yellow band on the hind neck paler, and the under parts all paler. This juvenal plumage is apparently worn all through fall and early winter; I have seen it as late as January 5; but probably a protracted molt during fall and winter produces a gradual change into a plumage that is practically adult. Adults have a complete postnuptial molt late in summer and fall, mainly in August and September, according to what few molting specimens I have seen.

Food.--Bendire (1895) says: “Their food consists of insects of various kinds, such as beetles, ants, grasshoppers, also larvae, acorns, Indian corn, and different kinds of wild berries and fruit. Considered from an economic point of view, this woodpecker certainly does more good than harm, and the only thing that can be said against it is that in certain localities where it is common it may make itself more or less of a nuisance by injuring telegraph poles.” In this connection, George B. Sennett (1879) makes the following interesting remark: “The numerous holes which I observed the previous season in the telegraph poles, and which I inferred might be nests of Woodpeckers, I found to be excavations made by the birds in search of a large species of borer that works in the dry wood.”

Roy W. Quillin writes to me that “this species has an odd habit of placing shelled mesquite beans in the nesting holes. I have not yet found any reason for this which seemed plausible.”

Behavior.--In general habits and behavior, the golden-fronted woodpecker is much like the red-bellied woodpecker, to which it is closely related; and it reminded me also of our more familiar red-headed woodpecker. It is a lively, active, noisy bird, being much in evidence wherever it is found. It loves to perch for many minutes in the dead top of some tall tree or on some telegraph or telephone pole, where it can obtain a good outlook. Mr. Burrows (Bendire, 1895) says: “During the fall and winter they may be found traveling about from place to place in pairs, and are easily located by the call note, which somewhat resembles that of the red-bellied woodpecker, the habits of the two birds being in many respects quite similar. In the spring, when nesting, they become very noisy, and when approached, utter their alarm note with great vigor. I have never known this species to drum on a dead limb, as most of the other woodpeckers do. When searching for food they may be seen very diligently at work near the base of old trees, among the thick bushes, or even on the ground.”

Voice.--Mr. Simmons (1925) says that this bird is “extremely noisy,” and describes its notes as “a harsh, rapid, scolding chuh-chuh-chuh-chuh-chuh-chuh-chuh; a metallic whah-whah; a loud, long-drawn sk-k-k-k-ah-er-r-r-r or tcher-r-r-r, tcher-r-r-r; a short check, check-check. Both this species and the red-bellied woodpecker have the same chow, chow, chow, chow call; however, there is a striking difference in the tone; the call of the Red-bellied Woodpecker may be imitated by completely filling the mouth with air and keeping the lips pushed well forward, while that of the golden-fronted woodpecker--choogh-choogh--is best given by pulling the lips back tightly, tautening the vocal cords, and making a hoarse, croupy noise in the throat, since the bird at times sounds as if it had a bad cold.”

Mr. Hasbrouck (1889) writes: “Their note is peculiar, combining the ‘chirp, chirp’ of carolinus with a certain shrillness and accent of their own, while the call note, either flying or at rest, is similar to that of M. erythrocephalus and at the same time not unlike that of Colaptes auratus. While their notes once learned are readily recognized, still it takes not a little practice to distinguish between a red-head in one tree and the gold-front in the next, or between a gold-front and a flicker when both are on the opposite side of a ravine and hidden from view; and I have more than once shot carolinus even when morally certain it was what I wanted.”

Field marks.--The golden-fronted woodpecker might easily be confused with the red-bellied woodpecker, for they are often found in the same general region, and both have the back and wings barred with black and white; but all the lower part of the rump is white, instead of barred, in the golden-fronted and the gray under parts are tinged with yellow, instead of red; the male red-bellied has the whole upper part of the head, from forehead to hind neck, bright scarlet, and the female has an extensive patch of red on the posterior half of the upper head; whereas the male golden-fronted has a much smaller patch of red on the crown, a yellow forehead, and an orange-yellow band on the hind neck; and the female golden-fronted has no red on the head at all. The voice is said to be more distinctive than the color pattern.

Enemies.--Mr. Quillin writes to me: “While this species is still fairly abundant in southern Texas, it was much more plentiful ten or more years ago. Because of the damage the birds wrought to telephone and telegraph poles, the various concerns owning such property secured passage of a law placing all woodpeckers on the unprotected list. This done, they gave section crews of the railroads shotguns, and the killing was on in earnest. Hunters and others helped, and the result has been a marked decrease in the ranks of this species. The killing, or controlling still continues. However, pressure is now being brought to place the birds back on the protected list, and this will be done sooner or later. There is no getting around the fact that the birds did cause considerable damage. In this species we have a woodpecker which for centuries had been pecking into hard mesquite trees. Along came the soft pine poles and these same birds immediately literally ate them up. I have seen 16 holes, three of which were deep enough for nesting sites, in one small pole, not over 10 inches in diameter.”

DISTRIBUTION

Range.--North-central Texas south to Central Mexico; nonmigratory.

The golden-fronted woodpecker ranges =north= to central Texas (San Angelo and Dallas). =East= to Texas (Dallas, Giddings, Cuero, Corpus Christi, and Brownsville); Tamaulipas (Matamoros, San Fernando, Ciudad Victoria, and Tampico); southeastern San Luis Potosi (Valles); Hidalgo (Ixmiquilipam and Tula); and the Federal District of Mexico (near Mexico City). =South= to the Federal District of Mexico (near Mexico City); Michoacan (Querendero, Morelia, and Patzcuaro); and Jalisco (Ocotlan and Guadalajara). =West= to Jalisco (Guadalajara); Zacatecas (Calvillo, Aguas Calientes, and Chicalote); northwestern Durango (Boquilla, Sestin, and Rosario); eastern Chihuahua (Julimes); and central Texas (Eagle Pass, Fort Clark, Kerrville, and San Angelo).

Egg dates.--Texas: 66 records, March 30 to June 29; 33 records, April 24 to May 17, indicating the height of the season.

CENTURUS UROPYGIALIS UROPYGIALIS Baird

GILA WOODPECKER

PLATES 32-34

HABITS

In the desert regions of our southwestern borders, this gay little woodpecker is one of the commonest, noisiest, and most conspicuous birds, always much in evidence, and always seeming to protest, in whining tones, the intrusion of strangers. Its center of abundance seems to be on the great desert mesas of southern Arizona, where the infertile soil is scantily covered with a scattered growth of creosote bushes, low mesquites, an occasional cholla or barrel cactus and dotted with single specimens or little groups of the giant cactus, or saguaro. But it is also common in the river bottoms, covered with a heavier growth of mesquite, and in the canyons of the foothills among the cottonwoods, willows, and sycamores. It ranges from an elevation of 2,500 feet on the mesas up to 4,000, or even 4,500, feet in the canyons and foothills.

In this region, it is a dominant species and a very useful neighbor, even if unintentionally, for the many species of birds and small mammals for which it provides homes. M. French Gilman (1915) puts it very well as follows:

Were it not for the Gila woodpecker (Centurus uropygialis) what would become of the several species of birds that use already prepared cavities for their domiciles? In some cases these tenants do not even await the pleasure of the excavators, but take forcible possession. In holes excavated by Gila woodpeckers there may regularly be found nesting the elf owl, ferruginous pigmy owl, ash-throated flycatcher, and Arizona crested flycatcher. Occasionally a cactus wren makes use of the handy hollow, and once I saw one occupied by a Lucy warbler. A big “rough-neck” scaly lizard frequents the holes when not too high in the cactus, and in two holes in willow trees I found snakes. It is not pleasant to insert one’s hand and have a big lizard or snake crawl up the arm to escape. Rats and mice are sometimes found in the deserted holes, especially if the tree be much decayed and with cracks and hollows connecting holes at different heights in the tree or branch. So these woodpeckers may be considered among the class of innocent or unintentional benefactors.

In addition to the species mentioned by Mr. Gilman above, we found saguaro screech owls, desert sparrow hawks, and western martins nesting in the old holes made by woodpeckers. Some of these holes were doubtless made by Mearns’s gilded flickers, perhaps those that were used by the larger species, as this woodpecker is fairly common in the same region and nests regularly in the saguaros. These old holes make ideal nesting sites, for the sap of the cactus hardens around the excavations, making them fairly permanent nesting boxes; I have seen these gourd-shaped pockets still persisting in fallen saguaros, where the pulp had all rotted away, leaving only the skeleton ribs of the dead giant.

Nesting.--While collecting with the late Frank C. Willard in southern Arizona in 1922, we examined seven occupied nests of the Gila woodpecker. The first of these was found on May 17, at Fairbank, in the valley of the San Pedro River; the nest was a cavity 15 inches deep in a dead branch of a cottonwood, 15 feet above ground. Five days, May 19 to 23, were spent in Pima County, in the vicinity of Tucson, between the mesquite forest in the valley of the Santa Cruz River and the southern end of the Santa Catalina Mountains. Two nests were found in the mesquite forest on May 19, both in mesquite trees, one 20 and one 25 feet from the ground; one contained only a single fresh egg and the other held a brood of young. We had an interesting experience here the next day. While crossing the forest, I saw a Gila woodpecker fly out from what I supposed was its nesting hole, about 15 feet up in a mesquite stub; the bird made such a great fuss about it that I felt sure that we had a set of woodpecker’s eggs within easy reach, and I called Mr. Willard to investigate it. He climbed the stub and chopped out the hole, while the woodpecker was flying about, scolding us and showing the greatest concern. But, much to our surprise, he pulled out an elf owl and three unmistakable elf owl’s eggs. I killed the owl and shot the woodpecker, which still seemed much interested; and, on skinning and sexing both specimens, I found that the woodpecker was a male and the owl a female. We were naturally much puzzled to figure out the relationship between the two birds and their interest in the nest. But, since reading Mr. Gilman’s remarks, quoted above, that sometimes the woodpecker’s tenants “do not even await the pleasure of the excavators, but take forcible possession,” it has occurred to me that probably this was a case in point. The owl may have appropriated the finished burrow of the woodpecker, and the latter was trying to evict an unwelcome tenant.

The remaining four nests found in this vicinity, and one found by Mr. Willard on June 11, were all in saguaros on the desert mesa; the heights from the ground varied from 16 to 20 feet; and the cavities varied in depths from 15 to 20 inches; there was one set of five eggs, two nests held four and one three eggs; and in one nest were two young and an addled egg.

Referring to the nesting habits of this woodpecker in the vicinity of the Gila River, in Arizona, Mr. Gilman (1915) writes:

Nesting sites in this locality are restricted to giant cactus (Cereus giganteus), cottonwood and willow, as they are the only suitable material for a nest excavation. More nests are found in the giant cactus, as these plants are more numerous than the others, and more “peckable,” though the willows and cottonwoods along the river and the canals are well patronized when sufficiently decayed. Of the nests I examined I should say that fifty per cent were in the cactus, and the rest equally divided between the other trees mentioned. * * *

As to the size of the holes in the cactus as compared with those in cottonwood and willow, I found no appreciable difference. I expected the holes in the cactus to average a little larger owing to possible greater ease in excavating but the difference was too slight to be sure of in measuring. Of eighteen holes measured, the average diameter was 1.95 inches; the largest was 2.25 inches and the smallest 1.87 inches. The deepest hole was 16 inches, with the entrance 2 inches in diameter. The shallowest one was 9 inches, with entrance a little less than 2 inches in diameter. The average depth of holes measured was a little more than 12 inches. Many of the holes were not exactly circular, there being a difference of from ⅛ to nearly ½ inch between the long and short diameter if it be allowable to use the term in that way. Usually the nest hole runs straight in for a short distance before turning downward, the distance seemingly depending on the texture of the wood. In one case the hole went straight back for nine inches before turning downward. It was in a big cottonwood stump, and the bird excavated horizontally until decayed wood was reached, when the hole turned downward. This was an extreme case, as the depth horizontally is usually about three inches. In the giant cactus it varies according to the diameter of the trunk, the smaller the trunk the less distance before turning downward. * * *

The same nest hole is used more than one season, both in cactus and other locations. In 1913 I found a nest in a big cottonwood stump containing young. The next year it had young again, and I cut into it to measure the hole and count them.

Frank C. Willard (1912) says: “I think it is their habit to dig fresh holes after raising their brood of young. These fresh holes are not occupied that year but are made use of the next year when the sap has had a chance to dry and form the hard lining which coats the inside of all the cavities. I have found but one fresh hole occupied as a nest.” Bendire (1895) also says that “most of their nesting sites are used for several years in succession; in fact, I doubt very much if a freshly excavated hole in a giant cactus is fit to nest in the same season. Both sexes assist in excavating the nesting site.”

In the heavily incrusted nest cavity in a giant cactus, the eggs lie on the bare, hard floor of the nest, there being no chips to furnish a soft bed.

In addition to the trees mentioned above, the Gila woodpecker has been found nesting more rarely in oaks and palo-verdes.

Eggs.--The Gila woodpecker lays three to five eggs, three or four being much oftener found than five. The eggs are pure white and not very glossy when fresh, but sometimes quite glossy when heavily incubated; they vary from ovate to elliptical-ovate and are sometimes quite pointed. The measurements of 52 eggs average 25.14 by 18.56 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure =27.43= by 18.80, 26.6 by =20.1=, =22.86= by 17.27, and 23.9 by =16.6= millimeters.

Young.--Incubation is said to last about two weeks, and is probably shared by both parents. Mr. Gilman (1915) writes:

It is not easy to determine just what food the young in the nest are given, but insects play a prominent part, as I have seen them frequently carried to the young. Fruit is also used, as I watched one parent carry ripe Lycium berries several times to the nest; after emerging from the hole she would halt at the entrance each time and “lick her chops.” * * *

The young are fed by the parents for a long time after leaving the nest, and they are regular little beggars. One pair stayed around our house for several months, and became quite tame. They were missed during the breeding season but soon came back with three youngsters to share the good things found on the bird tables in the yard. The young, though as large as their parents, would flutter their wings and sit with open beak as though the old ones told them to “open your mouth and shut your eyes,” etc. The old ones would try to get them to eat watermelon placed on the tables, but the babies would not be shown; the parents had to put it in their mouths. They followed the parents from perch to perch, begging for food until I expected to see them chastised. The pair in question stayed with the three juvenals until they had them broken to eat for themselves, and then left. After a proper interval they came back with two more young ones, thus indicating that a second brood is sometimes raised. The abundant supply of food may have been a determining factor in the number of broods raised.

Plumages.--The nestlings are naked and blind at first but become fully clothed in the juvenal plumage before leaving the nest. The young male, in juvenal plumage, is much like the adult male, but the colors are generally paler, the head and under parts grayer, the barring on the upper parts less distinct, and the white bars are suffused with brownish buff; the red patch on the crown is smaller and often consists of only a few red feathers; and the bill is somewhat smaller and weaker. The young female is like the young male but has no red on the head. I have been unable to trace the postjuvenal molt, but young birds in the following spring are apparently like the adults. Adults have a complete postnuptial molt in August, September, and October.

Food.--Major Bendire (1895) says: “Its food consists of insects of various kinds, such as ants, beetles, grasshoppers, and larvæ, and in season largely on the sweet, fig-like fruit of the sahuaras, the giant cactus, and also, to a considerable extent, on the viscous berries of a species of mistletoe which is commonly found on most of the larger cottonwoods, oaks, and mesquite trees in these regions. These sticky, whitish-looking berries are a favorite food of many Arizona birds.”

Mr. Gilman (1915) writes:

The food, of this woodpecker is varied, nearly everything being grist that comes to his mill. He pecks around decayed and dying trees as well as green ones, and presumably get the insects usually found and eaten by such birds. The giant cactus is pecked into very frequently, and I believe some of the pulp is eaten. The small punctures made are not enlarged, and in some cases quite an area is bitten into. The fruit of the giant cactus is eaten as long as it lasts, and the berries of the Lycium are also freely eaten. The Gila woodpecker frequents corn fields, and pecks through the husks into the ears of corn. The birds may peck in at first to get a worm, but it is a case similar to the discovery of roast pig as portrayed by Lamb. They alight on the ground and feed upon table scraps thrown to chickens, three of them being regular morning visitors, star boarders, to a pen of chickens I fed. They are very fond of peaches and pears, and volubly resent being driven from a tree of the fruit. They peck holes in ripening pomegranates and then the green fruit beetle helps finish the fruit They relish grapes, both white and colored, and will spear one with their bill and carry it to a convenient crevice where it may be eaten at leisure. On bird tables I have tried them with various articles of food and found very little that they rejected. They would not eat cantaloupe at all but were regular watermelon fiends, eating it three times a day and calling for more. They did not care for oranges, and I had no success in trying to teach them to eat ripe pickled olives. I tried the olive diet on them because two Mocking-birds in our yard learned to eat this fruit. Meat, raw and cooked, was eaten, and they ate suet greedily. Their favorite cut of beef was the T-bone steak and we always left some meat on the bone for them. They picked it clean, and if a new supply was slow in coming the softer parts of the bone were devoured. * * * Mr. Frank Pinkley, custodian of the Casa Grande Ruins told me of a pair of these woodpeckers that stayed around his home and became quite tame, coming into the shed to drink from a can of water. He said they got into the habit of sucking the eggs in the chicken house, or at least pecking into them and eating of the contents. * * *

The Indians store corn in the ear on the flat tops of their houses and sheds, * * * and each home has one or more of woodpecker retainers or pensioners hanging about most of the time. This corn provides an abundant and sure source of food, and the birds make the most of it. I have never seen any indication of food-storage on the part of the Gila woodpecker, as with the California Woodpecker, for they live in a claw-to-beak fashion. They peck at a kernel until it comes off the cob, when it is carried to a post or tree and placed firmly in a crack. Here it is pecked to pieces and eaten. They seem never to swallow a kernel whole but always break it up.

W. L. Dawson (1923) says that this woodpecker indulges in “a systematic search for birds’ eggs, especially those of the Lucy warbler, yellow warbler, and Arizona Least Vireo. In case of the first-named, the eggs are devoured in spite of the most emphatic protests of the tiny parents; but eggs of Cardinal, Cooper Tanager and Towhee must be obtained by stealth.”

A. H. Anderson (1934) writes:

In the Tucson, Arizona, area a gall-insect (Pachypsylla venusta) frequently attacks the leaves of the hackberry tree (Celtis reticulata). The galls form on the leaf petiole, becoming from a quarter to half an inch in diameter. During the winter the outer shell hardens like a nut.

I have often seen the Gila woodpeckers tear the galls loose from the twigs and, flying to a fence post, proceed to chisel out the contents. The hard gall is wedged into a crack on the post and then opened by repeated hammering. Around the base of one fence post I counted nearly 300 empty shells. Sometimes cracks in nearby trees are used. At one time five of these woodpeckers were seen in a single tree, all of them feeding on the galls.

Behavior.--The Gila woodpecker is not only the most abundant woodpecker, in fact one of the most abundant birds, in the region it inhabits, but it is more conspicuous, noisier, and more active than any of its neighbors. It is always much in evidence, always protesting the intrusion of a stranger, and shows the greatest concern when its nest is approached, especially if it has young. It is a close sitter and will often remain in the nest hole to peck viciously at an investigating hand; while the nest is being robbed, it flits nervously about, scolding vociferously with all the vile epithets it can muster. As to its behavior with other species, Mr. Gilman (1915) writes:

This woodpecker has not the best disposition in the world, for he is very quarrelsome and intolerant. He fights his own kin and all the neighbors that he dares. He, or she, is a great bluffer however and when “called”, frequently side-steps, subsides, or backs out entirely. I saw one approach a Bendire Thrasher that was eating, and suddenly pounce on him. He had the thrasher down and I was thinking of offering my friendly services as a board of arbitration, when the under bird crawled from beneath and soon gave the woodpecker the thrashing of his career. Several times I have seen the woodpeckers start to attack Bendire and Palmer thrashers, but they were always bluffed or beaten at the game. With the Bronzed Cowbirds it is a drawn battle, sometimes one and then the other backing down. Most other birds, such as Cardinals, Abert Towhees, Dwarf Cowbirds and Cactus Wrens do not attempt to assert their rights, but always take a rear seat. But when it is woodpecker versus woodpecker it seems not to be a case of “Thrice armed is he who hath his quarrel just”, but rather, “Four times he who gets his blow in fust”.

I had two bird tables about twenty feet apart, and frequently one woodpecker might be peacefully assimilating watermelon, when another one would come hurrying up and make a dive at him, causing a retreat to the other table. Frequently the new-comer would then follow and drive him from the second table. He seemingly would rather fight than eat if another was eating at the same time. One day I saw him, or her, I forget which, hanging to the edge of the table busily eating steak, when another one perched on the table and made a vicious stab at him. He dodged backward clear under the table, though retaining his hold, and then bobbed up again, just like the Punch and Judy show. The attack was renewed, and the dodging as well, but this time he did not “come back”. Another day one of them was at work on a piece of melon when one of his fellows came and perched on the end of the table. The diner made a pass at the new comer, and seizing him by the feathers of the neck held him suspended over the end of the table for a few seconds.

Voice.--Major Bendire (1895) says: “Its ordinary call note, sounding like ‘dchürr, dchürr,’ can be heard in all directions in the spring; when flying from one point to another it usually utters a sharp, shrill ‘huit’ two or three times, resembling the common call note of the Phainopepla, and which may readily be mistaken for it. It is also more or less addicted to drumming on the dead tops of cottonwood, sycamore, and mesquite trees.”

Mr. Gilman (1915) writes:

As a neighbor, the Gila Woodpecker is permanently on the map, and is afraid neither of being seen nor heard. He is much in the public ear with a variety of notes and calls. His sociable conversational notes somewhat resemble those of the California Woodpecker but are shriller. In such of his notes as are directed at humanity there is a peevish complaining tone, especially if closely approached when feeding on fruit or some other delicacy. In such cases there is only one term that exactly describes his attitude and utterances, and that is the phrase “belly-aching.” In fact all of his talk at us has a distinctly “colicky” tone and one feels like giving him something to whine about. His ordinary call slightly resembles that of the Flicker but is not quite so loud; altogether he is quite a conversationalist.

Field marks.--The Gila woodpecker should be easily recognized as a medium-sized woodpecker, about the size of a hairy woodpecker, with a grayish-brown head, neck, and under parts and a back narrowly barred with black and white; in flight a white patch shows in the wing and basal half of the primaries, and the black and white barring on the central tail feathers is rather conspicuous; the red crown patch of the male is conspicuous only at short range.

Fall.--This woodpecker is apparently somewhat given to wandering in fall and spring, for W. E. D. Scott (1886) says that he does not see it about his house, at an elevation of 4,500 feet in Pinal County, Ariz., in summer, but that it is rather common there in fall and spring.

DISTRIBUTION

Range.--Southwestern United States and western Mexico; nonmigratory.

The range of the Gila woodpecker extends =north= to extreme southern Nevada (Clark County); southern Arizona (Sacaton, Rock Canyon, and Tombstone); and southwestern New Mexico (Red Rock and probably Gila). =East= to New Mexico (probably Gila); eastern Sonora (Fronteras, Boca de Huachy, and Nuri); southwestern Chihuahua (Batopilas); western Durango (Chacala); and western Zacatecas (Calvillo). =South= to southwestern Zacatecas (Calvillo); and Jalisco (Guadalajara, Santa Ano, and Rio Ameca). =West= to Jalisco (Rio Ameca); Nayarit (Tepic and San Blas); southwestern Sinaloa (Escuinapa, Labrados, and Mazatlan); Baja California (Cape San Lucas, Santa Margarita Island, San Ignacio, Rosario, San Quintin, Las Palmas, and the Alamo River); southeastern California (Calexico, probably Brawley, Palo Verde, and Needles); and southern Nevada (Clark County).

This species has been separated into three geographic races, or subspecies. Typical C. u. uropygialis is the form found in that part of the range lying in the United States, and this race also is the one found in the western mainland of Mexico. The cardon woodpecker (C. u. cardonensis) is found in the northern part of Baja California south to about latitude 28° N. Brewster’s woodpecker (C. u. brewsteri) occupies the cape district of Baja California north to San Ignacio and including also Santa Margarita Island.

Egg dates.--Arizona: 26 records, April 7 to May 30; 13 records, May 5 to 25, indicating the height of the season. Baja California: 10 records, April 21 to June 2.

CENTURUS UROPYGIALIS CARDONENSIS Grinnell

CARDON WOODPECKER

HABITS

In describing and naming this race, Dr. Joseph Grinnell (1927a) says:

In its main characters similar to Centurus uropygialis uropygialis, but general coloration much darker: whole head (except for red patch on crown) and anterior lower surface strongly tinged with snuff brown rather than pale drab; and white barring on closed wings, tail, dorsum, rump, flanks, and lower tail coverts, narrower, leaving the black-barring correspondingly broader. Similar to C. u. brewsteri, but size larger, and coloration darker, in the same respects though not to quite so great a degree as shown in comparison with uropygialis. In other words, the new form differs from both the previously known races in the deeper brown tinge of the head and lower surface and in the greater degree of predominance of black over white in the barring.

He says of its range: “So far as now known, only the giant cactus (cardon) association in the northern section of the Lower Californian peninsula, from about latitude 30° to latitude 31°. Life-zone, Lower Sonoran.” The 1931 Check-list extends the range northward “along the western rim of the Colorado Desert to about latitude 32°.”

A. W. Anthony (1895a) says of the haunts of this woodpecker in Baja California: “The range of this species along the Pacific slope is exactly coextensive with that of Cereus pringlei, becoming common with that cactus a short distance below Rosario and seldom if ever being seen at any distance from the shelter of its mighty branches. At the mission, where the cardons were very large and abundant, to within a short distance of the mesquite thickets, this Woodpecker delighted in making frequent forays into the lesser growth, spending hours in hammering on the mesquite trunks and hunting through their branches, always beating a precipitate retreat to the cactus on the hillsides above at the first sign of danger.”

I can find nothing further of consequence published on the habits of the cardon woodpecker, which doubtless do not differ materially from those of its Arizona relative.

The eggs are similar to those of the Gila woodpecker. The measurements of 11 eggs average 23.59 by 18.30 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure =25.6= by 18.1, 24.5 by =19.8=, =21.9= by 17.8, and 22.1 by =17.3= millimeters. Griffing Bancroft has a still larger egg, which measures 26.4 by 21.8 millimeters.

CENTURUS UROPYGIALIS BREWSTERI Ridgway

BREWSTER’S WOODPECKER

HABITS

In the Cape region of Baja California, we find this local race, which Ridgway (1914) describes as “similar to C. u. uropygialis but smaller, with relatively (often absolutely) larger bill, bars on back, etc., averaging decidedly narrower (the white ones about 1.5-2 mm. wide), black bars on lower rump and upper tail-coverts narrower or more numerous, and white bars on lateral rectrices as well as black ones on inner web of middle rectrices narrower.”

William Brewster (1902) says: “In the Cape Region the Gila Woodpecker has apparently much the same distribution as Dryobates lucasanus. Neither Mr. Belding nor Mr. Frazar found it in the higher mountains, but both note its abundance throughout the low country, and Mr. Frazar obtained many specimens at Triunfo which is within the lower edge of the oak belt.”

Griffing Bancroft (1930) referred the woodpeckers of this species that he found breeding in central Lower California to this southern race. Probably they are intermediate between this and cardonensis. He says of it:

The most abundant bird of its order, ranging throughout the territory examined. It is to be found in the suburban gardens of Santa Rosalia, among the palms of San Ignacio, and everywhere through the desert cactus belt. Its favorite choice of a home is a site high in a candelabra cardón; but it will also nest, even when not driven by necessity, in palms and tree yucca.

Its breeding season is quite long, fresh eggs being found from the latter part of April until well into June. The number laid is irregular. About half the sets are of two, but there are four’s and even five’s. Sixteen eggs taken in the vicinity of San Ignacio average 24.0 by 18.9 mm.

The birds are quite tame and often cannot be flushed. More than once, on opening cavities, we have lifted an adult from eggs or young, or even from an empty hole. Repeatedly a bird has been seen flying into a nest, either to feed young or to go onto eggs, while people were standing at the foot of the tree. When their homes are being examined the birds often approach within a few feet to voice their protests. Such fearlessness is unusual on this desert.

COLAPTES AURATUS AURATUS (Linnaeus)

SOUTHERN FLICKER

PLATE 35

HABITS

The type name auratus is now restricted to the flickers of the South Atlantic and Gulf States, from North Carolina to southern Florida and central Texas north to extreme southern Illinois and Indiana, southeastern Missouri, and southeastern Kansas, because the above Linnaean name was based on birds described by Catesby, which belonged to the smaller southern race.

The habits of the southern flicker are so similar to those of the northern flicker that the following account given for the northern race will serve very well for both. It is a common bird, widely distributed and well known throughout its range. In Florida we found it rather partial to open, burned-over tracts in the flat pine woods, nesting in the charred stumps, but it was also common in more open country in thinly settled regions, where we often found it nesting in isolated trees or dead stubs of palmettos or pines.

W. J. Erichsen (1920) says of its haunts in Chatham County, Ga.: “Wherever there are areas of cut-over lands on which remain an abundance of dead trees this species will be found in large numbers. At all seasons it exhibits a preference for open pine barrens, but, particularly during the breeding season, is occasionally met with about the edges of swamps if they contain suitable nesting sites. It is abundant on all of the wooded islands, particularly Ossabaw island, where I observed it in large numbers in May, 1915. Here it is oftenest seen in the woods close to the salt marsh or adjoining the beach, apparently not frequenting in any numbers the more heavily forested interior of the island.”

Nesting.--Capt. H. L. Harllee writes to me that southern flickers raise two broods in a season in South Carolina and are not very particular as to their nesting sites. They nest in holes of their own excavation in dead trees of many species, 3 to 100 feet from the ground, either in thick woods or in a lone dead tree in an open cultivated field; they also nest in natural cavities in trees. He found one pair of these birds nesting in a hole made by fire in an old burned-out stump; the cavity was about two feet deep and eight inches in diameter; “the opening was slightly arched over with grass growing around it; a small quantity of pine straw was the only lining.”

Arthur H. Howell (1932) says: “The nests are placed in pines, oaks, cabbage palms, or other trees, at heights varying from a few feet to 60 feet above the ground. At Ponce Park, in May, 1925, I observed a Flicker using a hole in a palmetto pile under the dock on the shore of the Halifax River, only 2 feet above the salt water at high tide. Nicholson found a nest 12 inches above the ground in a sawed-off stump of a palmetto on a ditch bank.”

Alexander Sprunt, Jr. (1931), mentions a concentration of hole-nesting birds in a tree in a yard in Beaufort, S. C.; the tree measured only 20 feet in height and contained nests of two pairs of flickers, and one nest each of crested flycatcher, screech owl, and downy woodpecker. “All five cavities were contained in a radius of ten feet, and four were within six feet of each other.”

A. F. Ganier (1926) writes:

While in the suburbs of Chattanooga, Tennessee, last spring, I noticed a Flicker engaged in what appeared to be a hopeless task in the way of nest excavation. An iron water tank, supported by steel columns forty feet high, was fed by a large iron pipe through its bottom, and, to keep this pipe from freezing in winter, it had been encased with a plank shaft two feet square that was filled with cedar sawdust. Our friend Colaptes auratus had evidently sounded the boards, and, sensing easy digging, had drilled a hole in the middle of one side about thirty feet up. When espied, he was enthusiastically pitching out quantities of sawdust, which I presume caved in about as fast as he dug, but during the half hour I was engaged near by there was no let up in the work. About a month later I was again in the vicinity and made it a point to go by the tank. On the ground below the hole was at least a bushel of sawdust, and in a few minutes I had the pleasure of seeing a Flicker enter the hole with food in its mouth, presumably to feed the young that had come to reward his perseverance.

Eggs.--The southern flicker lays five to ten eggs, ordinarily, but shares with its northern relative its reputation as a prolific egg layer; it will continue to lay again and again after being robbed, as many as 30 or 40 eggs and often three or four sets. The eggs are similar to those of the northern flicker, except for a slight difference in size. The measurements of 44 eggs from South Carolina average 28.57 by 22.01 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure =30.15= by =24.56= and =24.13= by =20.32= millimeters. These seem to run larger than eggs from farther north.

In all other respects, the habits of the southern flicker are similar to those of the species elsewhere, with due allowance for the difference in environment. Two items of interest, however, are worth quoting. Charles R. Stockard (1904) writes from Mississippi:

On April 18 a burrow of a Flicker containing only one fresh egg was found. The egg was not disturbed. When visiting the nest again on April 28 a flying squirrel was found in possession. On my arrival the bird was at the entrance of the burrow peering in at the intruder. It was supposed that the squirrel was eating the eggs, but on examining the nest it was found to contain one spoilt egg. The squirrel had then probably been in possession for the ten days since the nest was observed, so the bird had been unable to enter and lay. * * * The Flicker must then have remained about her nest for this length of time, and as soon as the squirrel was removed she again took charge. On visiting the nest May 5, seven days later, it contained seven fresh eggs and the old one that had been left. * * * This was undoubtedly a case of discontinuous laying unless she had dropped her eggs on the ground while the squirrel was occupying the nest.

Mrs. Sanford Duncan (1932), of Nashville, Tenn., tells an interesting story of a flicker that was captured by a bullsnake. She heard a great commotion among the birds in her yard and went out to investigate the cause of the excitement. “The Flickers were leading the battle, dashing and darting at a bundle of something on the ground. Closer inspection with field glasses showed it was a snake, all tied up in a curious knot. He was too big for me to attack with the hoe I had, so I shot into the ‘bundle’ with a shotgun. As if by magic the snake flung himself into the air and fell, straightened out, over five feet long, and disclosed a full-grown Flicker that he had wrapped himself around many times. The Flicker was still alive, but died very shortly, probably from the gunshot that killed the bullsnake.”

Lester W. Smith writes to me that he watched a southern flicker digging white grubs out of a lawn and killing them by repeated blows and shaking; meantime a loggerhead shrike was attempting to rob the flicker of its prey.

DISTRIBUTION

Range.--North America, chiefly east of the Rocky Mountains, and from the limit of trees south to the Gulf coast.

Breeding range.--The breeding range of the flicker extends =north= to Alaska (Circle); northwestern Mackenzie (probably Fort McPherson, Fort Anderson, McVicar Bay, Fort Rae, and Hill Island Lake); northern Saskatchewan (Reindeer Lake); northern Manitoba (probably Lake Du Brochet and Fort Churchill); Ontario (Lac Seul and probably Moose Factory); Quebec (probably Fort George, probably Lake Mistassini, Godbout, and Mingan Island); and Labrador (Cartwright). From this northeastern point the range extends =southward= through Newfoundland, along the Atlantic coast to Key West, Fla. The =southern= limits of nesting are the Gulf coasts of Florida and Alabama, thence in the interior to Louisiana (St. Francisville and Genoa); and Oklahoma (Okmulgee and Norman). =West= to Oklahoma (Norman); central Kansas (Harper, Hay, and Stockton); Nebraska (Red Cloud, Alda, and Chadron); eastern Wyoming (Midwest and Newcastle); Montana (Terry, Fairview, and Great Falls); Alberta (Morrin, Henry House, and Lesser Slave Lake); northwestern British Columbia (Telegraph Creek and Atlin); Yukon (Caribou Crossing and Selkirk); and eastern Alaska (Circle). This species, more or less crossed with the red-shafted flicker (Colaptes c. collaris), also is found occasionally in eastern Colorado (Hallvale, Denver, and Fort Morgan).

Winter range.--During the winter season the flicker is found with more or less regularity =north= to southeastern South Dakota (Yankton, Vermillion, and Sioux Falls); southern Minnesota (Hutchinson and Minneapolis); southern Wisconsin (North Freedom and Milwaukee); southern Michigan (Kalamazoo, Jackson, Ann Arbor, and Detroit); southern Ontario (Plover Mills, Hamilton, and Toronto); New York (Rochester, Syracuse, and Rhinebeck); and rarely Maine (Waterville). From this point it is found =south= along the Atlantic coast to southern Florida (St. Lucie and Fort Myers). The southern limits of the winter range are found on the Gulf coast from Florida (Fort Myers) to Texas (Brownsville). =West= to Texas (Brownsville, San Antonio, San Angelo, and Abilene); central Oklahoma (Norman, Oklahoma City, and Tonkawa); Kansas (Wichita and rarely Hay); Nebraska (Red Cloud and North Loup); and southeastern South Dakota (Yankton). It also has been taken or observed at this season north to southern Saskatchewan (Eastend); Quebec (Montreal); New Brunswick (St. John); and Nova Scotia (Bridgetown).

The range as outlined is for the entire species, of which two subspecies are currently recognized. The typical form, known as the southern flicker (C. a. auratus), is found from southern Florida and Texas north to southeastern Kansas, southeastern Missouri, southern Illinois and Indiana, and North Carolina. It probably is nonmigratory. The rest of the range is occupied by the northern flicker (C. a. luteus).

Spring migration.--Early dates of arrival in regions north of the winter range as outlined, are: Nova Scotia--Wolfville, March 26; Halifax, April 7. New Brunswick--Scotch Lake, April 5; Grand Manan, April 12. Quebec--Quebec City, April 27; Godbout, May 2; Paradise, June 5. North Dakota--Fargo, March 29; Charlson, March 30; Grand Forks, April 2. Manitoba--Winnipeg, March 30; Alexander, April 14; Raeburn, April 15. Saskatchewan--Eastend, April 3; McLean, April 3. Wyoming--Cheyenne, April 7; Laramie, April 12. Montana--Great Falls, April I; Terry, April 4; Jackson, April 14. Alberta--Banff, April 4; Flagstaff, April 13; Edmonton, April 17. Mackenzie--Fort Simpson, May 4; Fort Reliance, May 2. Alaska--Fairbanks, April 25; Fort Yukon, May 1.

Fall migration.--Late dates of fall departure are: Alaska,--Wrangell, October 11; Craig, October 21. Mackenzie--near McVicar Bay, September 10; Great Slave Lake, September 11; Fort Simpson, October 16. Alberta--Lac La Biche, September 25; Glenevis, October 2; Calgary, October 10. Montana--Bozeman, September 24; Saskatchewan--Eastend, October 14. Manitoba--Alexander, October 22; Aweme, October 27. North Dakota--Arlington, October 19; Argusville, October 21; Fargo, October 21. Northern Michigan--Sault Ste. Marie, October 24. Quebec--Montreal, November 25. New Brunswick--St. John, November 5; Scotch Lake, November 22. Nova Scotia--Wolfville, November 19.

The records of flickers that have been banded and subsequently recovered throw much light upon the migrations of this species. In the files of the Biological Survey there are long series of cases where birds banded at their nests in the northern parts of the breeding range (Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Michigan, New York, and Massachusetts) have returned to the same point one to four years later. These birds probably all belonged to the subspecies luteus. Similarly, similar data also are available for areas (Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Florida) within the range of C. a. auratus, which probably is nonmigratory.

Definite migrations of individual banded birds are indicated by the records of flickers banded in Saskatchewan and recovered in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas; banded in Missouri and recovered in Texas; banded in Iowa and recovered in Louisiana; banded in South Dakota and recovered in Arkansas and Oklahoma (4); banded in Illinois and recovered in Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas (2), and Louisiana (3); banded in Indiana and recovered in Mississippi; banded in Michigan and recovered in Arkansas and Louisiana; banded in Ohio and recovered in Alabama and Mississippi; banded in Pennsylvania and recovered in Georgia; and banded in Nova Scotia and recovered in North Carolina.

Casual records.--In southern British Columbia a specimen was collected at Sumas on April 8, 1903, and two were seen at Vernon on December 26, 1906; a specimen was taken at Orcas Island, Wash., on October 15, 1907; one was collected at Blaine, Oreg., on November 3, 1921; and one was taken at Cliff Spring, Nev., on September 29, 1931. There are several records for California as follows: Furnace Creek, April 12, 1917; St. Geronimo, December 18, 1893, and January 14, 1895; Point Lobos, December 14, 1934; Los Angeles, February 20, 1901; San Diego, December 4, 1931; and Eldridge, January 4, 1913.

At least four occurrences well north of the breeding range in Alaska have been recorded: St. George Island, fall of 1904; Cape Etolin, September 14, 1927; Wainwright, a specimen in 1924; and Cape Halkett, in the fall of 1927.

A specimen was collected on Okpatok Island in Hudson Strait in October 1882, one was taken in Sandwich Bay in August 1908, and a specimen has been reported from Cape Wolstenholme on the Ungava Peninsula. The species also has been recorded from Bermuda where at least one specimen was collected in 1871.

Egg dates.--Arctic America: 6 records, June 3 to 16. Florida: 18 records, March 25 to July 18; 9 records, April 16 to May 18, indicating the height of the season. Illinois: 22 records, April 30 to May 30; 11 records, May 13 to 21. Michigan: 16 records, April 17 to June 24; 8 records, May 12 to 30. New York: 15 records, May 13 to June 15; 8 records, May 25 to 29.

COLAPTES AURATUS LUTEUS Bangs

NORTHERN FLICKER

PLATE 36

HABITS

I can remember as clearly as if it were only yesterday my boyish, enthusiastic admiration for this beautiful bird, though it was between 50 or 60 years ago that my father first showed me a freshly killed flicker. I was simply entranced with the softly blended browns, the red crescent on the head, the black crescent and bold spotting on the breast, and, above all, with the golden glow in the wings and tail. Few birds combine such charming colors and pleasing contrasts. I have never lost my admiration for it, and still consider it one of nature’s gems.

It, and its close relative, the red-shafted flicker, together are widely distributed over nearly all the wooded regions of North America. Consequently it is widely known and over most of its range is a common and familiar species. Its prominence and popularity are attested by the long list of vernacular names by which it is locally known. Franklin L. Burns (1900), in his monograph of the species, lists 123 such names; and later he adds nine more, bringing the list up to 132 names. These are far too many to be quoted here, and many of them are “very local or very slight orthographical or cacographical variants.” I have always loved our local name “partridge woodpecker,” suggestive of my boyhood days, when flickers, meadowlarks, and robins were considered legitimate game. But now the name yellow-shafted flicker seems appropriate to distinguish it, from the red-shafted flicker.

The haunts of the flicker are almost everywhere in open country or lightly wooded regions; it can hardly be called a forest-loving species, though I have often found it nesting in more or less extensive deciduous woods; its favorite haunts during the summer seem to be in the rural districts among the farms, orchards, and scattered woodlots; it seems to be at home, also, in villages and small towns, and even in some of the smaller cities, where spacious grounds and gardens provide suitable surroundings. In fall and winter it is more apt to wander about in open woodlands, fields, and meadows or seek shelter in coniferous woods or swamps.

Spring.--Although many flickers remain all winter in the Northern States, there is a decided spring migration of the great bulk of northern-bred birds that have wintered in the Southern States. These birds gather in flocks during the late winter, and the northward movement starts with the first mild weather, the migration being largely performed during the night. Mr. Burns (1900) says that at Berwyn, Pa., the forerunners, consisting of solitary old males, appear “as early as Feb. 2 or as late as April 6, according to the promises of the season, correlating in a measure with the date at which the first frog is heard peeping. * * *

“It becomes common soon after the hardy willow has unfolded its leaves, and about the time the fragrant spicewood blossoms, when the ants, spiders and beetles become active once more, and just in the height of the arbutus season. The northward movement is far from being steady or regular, being largely governed by weather conditions; Mr. Burns calculates from his mass of data that the average distance traveled daily is about 12 miles, varying according to season and weather conditions from 7 to 48 miles per night. It is absolutely certain that it does not move steadily night after night, but only as the weather permits or necessitates and its physical condition allows.”

Flickers often migrate in companies of considerable size, in loose, scattered flocks, noisy and active, flying from tree to tree and calling excitedly. Their arrival is announced by the loud challenge-call, given from the top of some tall tree, wicker, wicker, wicker, or wake-up, wake-up, wake-up, as the male challenges his rivals or invites his prospective mate to join him in courtship. This, one of the most welcome sounds of early spring, is indeed a call to “wake up,” for all nature is awakening, buds are swelling on the trees, verdure is appearing in the woods and fields, the early flowers are beginning to blossom, the hylas are peeping in the warming pools, insects are becoming active, and the songs of the early birds announce that spring is here. Another spring sound soon strikes our ears, a loud, far-reaching, vibrant sound, the long, almost continuous roll of the flicker’s drumming, another challenge-call, a preliminary of the courtship performance; at frequent intervals, often repeated over a long period in early morning, he beats his loud tattoo on some hollow, resonant limb.

Courtship.--The courtship of the flicker is a lively and spectacular performance, noisy, full of action, and often ludicrous, as three or more birds of both sexes indulge in their comical dancing, nodding, bowing, and swaying motions, or chase each other around the trunk or through the branches of a tree. From the time of Audubon to the present day, many observers have noted and described the curious antics of this star performer. But I prefer to quote first from some extensive notes recently contributed by Francis H. Allen, as follows: “The courtship of the flicker is an elaborate and somewhat puzzling performance. Two birds face each other on the branch of a tree or cling side by side, though at a little distance apart, on the trunk, and spread their tails and jerk their heads about in a sort of weaving motion, frequently uttering a note that is peculiar to this performance, a wick-up or week-up. The head motion is a series of backward jerks with the bill pointing up at an angle of perhaps 60° and the head at the same time swinging from side to side. Sometimes a short, low wuck is uttered from time to time during the performance. These bouts occur not only between male and female, but frequently between two males or two females.

“In April 1934, for more than a week I saw a trio of flickers about my house. Invariably the two females went through courtship antics together, while the male fed on the ground nearby, apparently completely indifferent to them. One of the females was much more active than the other, which usually kept a stiff pose with head drawn in, only occasionally responding with feeble head-waggings. At no time did the active female use any other display than the head-wagging, and there was never any suggestion of combat or intimidation.

“A year later, 1935, the flickers near my house behaved differently. In the afternoon of April 24, the two males were singing loudly and frequently in the woods, about an eighth of a mile away and at some distance apart. By singing I mean, of course, the prolonged laughing call of wick-wick-wick, etc. Presently they stopped singing, and one flew toward the other, stopping about halfway. Very soon the other joined him, and a long period of posturing and wick-up-ing ensued. Both birds had the black mustaches of the male. The posturing was the regular ‘weaving’ of the head and the fanning of the tail. The notes, after the first at least, were much subdued in tone. There were frequent intervals of quiet. The birds kept close together most of the time, often with heads only two or three inches apart, or perhaps less. They flitted about frequently, sometimes clinging to the trunk of an oak, sometimes perched on a horizontal branch, and once or twice they alighted on the stems of underbrush. After a long period of posturing, they met in a momentary tilt, and presently there was another clash after more posturing, then a third clash, and after that they separated. The same bird was the aggressor in at least two of the clashes. As often in such encounters, the attacked bird stood his ground and the attacker veered off. It was very mild warfare, if it was really serious at all.

“Two days after the bout of the two males, I saw two females engaged in the dance in one of our pear trees. It lasted only a few minutes, and I heard no notes. Not long after the dance of the two females a prolonged ‘sexual flight’ took place. It lasted five or ten minutes, as nearly as I could tell, with a few short intervals of resting. I could at no time determine the sexes of the two birds thus engaged, but occasionally a snatch of faint song was heard (wick-wick-wick), and I assume that they were male and female. They flew rather slowly and kept only a few feet apart. It was evident that the spacing was intentional and that the pursuer made no attempt to catch up with the other. The flight covered a territory of several acres. It was a graceful and interesting performance.

“I supposed at the time that this sexual flight indicated that the affair was completed, but later that afternoon I several times saw a male and two females together, the females posturing and wick-up-ing, the male motionless. The females showed no enmity toward each other and did not face each other, as the males of two days before did. They kept rather farther apart. At one time a second male appeared and stayed about for a time, but he disappeared, apparently without becoming a serious factor in the situation.

“Three days later a pair of flickers, male and female, were feeding peacefully together on the lawn in the morning and in the afternoon, and I judged that the marital arrangements of at least two of my flickers had been completed.”

More active courtship on the part of a female flicker is thus described in some notes from Lewis O. Shelley: “On April 24, coincident with a male flicker’s message from the elm stub, a female and a second male appeared. All three were later in the cherry tree by our garden, perched on branches some three feet apart. The female took the initiative in the following activities and, perched crosswise of the branch, often bobbed and ducked up and down, then crosswise of the branch jerked to left, right, left, right, head cocked erect and with tail fully spread. At times the males, less actively, did likewise, but for the most part perched noncommittally, silent and still, giving but few calls. At one time, after the female had displayed intermittently several times, and when the males had been still for some five minutes, she sidled up to the nearest male and again displayed with much wing-fluttering and tail-spreading and sidewise twitchings; then the same to the other male who flew when her actions of bobbing and bowing face to face commenced. Not to be outdone, or so affronted, she flew after him, then the second male followed.”

C. W. Leister (1919) noticed an aerial courtship evolution of the flicker, of which he says: “When first noticed, he was about fifty feet from the ground and ascending in peculiar, bumpy, and jerky spirals. This was maintained until a height of about 350-400 feet was reached, when, after a short pause, a reverse of practically the same performance was gone through. The Flicker (Colaptes auratus luteus), for as such he was identified by this time, then alighted in a cherry tree, just above a female that we had previously failed to notice, and completed the performance by going through his more familiar courting antics.”

A recrudescence of the amatory instinct is sometimes seen in fall. On September 22, 1933, a clear, warm morning, a pair of flickers, male and female, were watched for some time as they performed their courtship dance on the top of one of my chimneys, where there might have been some warmth remaining from a fire that had since died out. They danced around on all four sides of the chimney, always facing each other, both of them bowing and swaying the head and neck, or whole body, from side to side, with the neck extended and the bill pointing almost straight upward. Sometimes they stopped for a few seconds, holding the upright posture, or one performed while the other posed. There was no wing or tail display that I could see. Lewis O. Shelley tells me that he has seen flickers in courtship display while the young were just leaving the nest.

Nesting.--Soon after mating is accomplished the choice for a nesting site is made, and often the selection is made during courtship, especially if a nesting cavity of the previous year is to be used. Probably the female usually makes the final decision, though there is some evidence to indicate that in many cases the male selects the site and persuades his mate to accept it.

Miss Althea R. Sherman (1910) made some very thorough studies of the nesting habits of the northern flicker at National, Iowa, in some boxes so arranged on her barn that she could observe the home life of the birds at close range. The male and the female had been occupying two different boxes as roosting places, and the eggs were laid in the box occupied by the male, from which it became evident “that the male bird chose the nesting place, and persuaded his mate to lay her eggs there, even when she was inclined to nest elsewhere, and when she had a box quite as good as his.”

Often the male “stakes out his claim,” so to speak, in the vicinity of an old nest, where, during the courtship period, he utters his loud mating call for several days, or even weeks, before the female answers the invitation. Then, after mating is accomplished, his chosen mate may or may not accept his choice of a nesting site. The desirability of the nesting site may in such cases influence the female’s choice of a mate, for she is as much interested in having a comfortable and safe home as in choosing a handsome husband.

Having chosen the site, the pair set about repairing the old cavity or excavating a new one, at which both birds work diligently for anywhere from a week to three weeks, depending on the conditions they find. Mr. Shelley tells me that, in his experience with several nests, the nesting cavity is completed from a week to a fortnight before the eggs are laid. The chips are usually, but not always, carried away to some distance from the nest tree, but often chips are merely scattered about the base of the tree. William Brewster (1936) gives the following account of rather peculiar behavior of a flicker while excavating its nest:

Found a Flicker at work excavating a hole in an apple-tree in Bensen’s orchard. I was passing the tree within six feet when I heard a low tapping, accompanied by a continuous muffled whining sound. Turning, I at once saw the bird’s tail projecting from the hole, which was not over five feet above the ground. For a minute or more the pecking and whining continued uninterruptedly, the tail wriggling violently the while. Evidently the bird had carried in the hole to just that point where she had less room to work than she had had before or would have afterwards. In other words, she had just about reached the point where the entrance hole must begin to be expanded into a chamber and to turn downward. It seemed to me that the whining sound expressed rage or impatience. Perhaps it was the Flicker’s form of swearing!

The northern flicker seems to show no very decided preference for any one species of tree in its choice of a nesting site, though I believe it does prefer a dead tree, or a dead stub on a living tree, or a tree that has a soft or partially decayed heart. It has always seemed to me that in New England we find more nests in large apple trees in old orchards than elsewhere, the nest being excavated in the main trunk, or large upright branch, at no great height from the ground. Such trees may have a hard outer shell, but the interior is often more or less soft. Old orchards are becoming scarce in my vicinity, which forces the flickers to look elsewhere. Next in importance here as a common nesting site is the trunk or stub of a dead white pine tree. Mr. Burns (1900) mentions one dead pine “perforated with 25 or 30 holes, most of which were in use at one time or another.” He lists, as favorite trees in the Middle and Eastern States, “apple, sycamore, oak, butternut, cherry, elm, chestnut, maple, poplar, beech, ash, pine, hickory, etc.” In Pennsylvania, he says that J. Warren Jacobs has “found the sycamore to be the favorite, with the apple and maple second, the beech and locust third, oak and cherry fourth, and all other varieties fifth.”

Mr. Burns continues: “From Ohio westward the apple orchard is a favorite with the poplar, willow, maple, oak, elm, walnut, cottonwood, etc., more or less resorted to, according to availability. It very seldom nests in a living coniferous tree, though it has been known to nest in a living red cedar and in dead hemlocks and spruces.”

Telegraph, telephone, and other tall poles, as well as fenceposts, are favorite nesting sites in the prairie regions and other parts of the West, where trees are scarce. Frank L. Farley writes to me that in the timbered country of northern Alberta, “where there are many suitable nesting trees and stubs, the telephone and telegraph poles are frequently used for nesting. These poles are usually cedar and it is assumed that the birds prefer these for nesting, because of the ease with which they can excavate.”

Flickers quite often nest in boxes erected for that purpose and in buildings, much to the annoyance of the owners. I have frequently seen nests in icehouses; these have double walls, the intervening space being filled with sawdust; the birds drill through the outer walls and make their nests in the sawdust. The cornices and walls of many buildings on the farms, as well as the towers of churches and schoolhouses, are perforated, and the eggs laid on the beams or boarding within. Mr. Burns (1900) records the following interesting case:

Mr. Burke H. Sinclair found a nest containing eggs in the garret of the town high school. The birds obtained entrance to this large three-story brick building by means of a displaced brick. As in all infloored lofts it consists of nothing but the parallel rafters, with attached lath and plaster, which forms the ceiling of the room below. This frail floor is about ten inches below the entrance hole, and the nest was situated about one foot from and directly in front of the entrance. The place had evidently been used for several years, there being at least a peck of wood chippings, some fresh, but a large quantity old and discolored with age. The nest was placed between two of the parallel rafters and composed of these chippings, being about six inches thick by eighteen inches in diameter. This material had been all cut from the rafters on the floor and the roof overhead.

A number of other unusual nesting sites have been recorded. F. A. E. Starr tells me of a nest that “was in an old stump two feet high; the six eggs were on a bed of rotten wood at ground level.” Dr. Jonathan Dwight, Jr. (1893), reports a nest that he found on Prince Edward Island; the “nest with fully fledged young was examined in the top of a hollow fence post. No excavation had been made by the bird, and the young were entirely exposed to the weather.” Flickers occasionally nest in natural cavities in trees, where no excavation is needed beyond enlarging the opening, if necessary, or cleaning out the interior. Ned Hollister (1918) reports that a pair of flickers and a pair of house wrens nested in holes in an old stump in a lion’s cage in the National Zoological Park in Washington. Mr. Burns (1900) writes: “It has been found breeding far out on the prairie in an old wagon hub, surrounded by weeds; also in barrels, and one instance of an excavation of the regulation size in a hay stack is on record; another nested in a crevice of an unused chimney for several years; and stranger yet it has been found more than once occupying Kingfisher’s and enlarged Bank Swallow’s burrows.”

The haystack nest is reported by Major Bendire (1895), on the authority of William A. Bryant, of New Sharon, Iowa, as follows:

On a small hill, a quarter of a mile distant from my home, stood a haystack which had been placed there two years previously. The owner, during the winter of 1889-’90, had cut the stack through the middle and hauled away one portion, leaving the other standing with the end smoothly trimmed. The following spring I noticed a pair of yellow-shafted flickers about the stack showing signs of wanting to make it a fixed habitation. One morning a few days later I was amused at the efforts of one of the pair. It was clinging to the perpendicular end of the stack and throwing out chipped hay at a rate to defy competition. This work continued for nearly a week, and in that time the pair had excavated a cavity 20 inches in depth. The entrance was located 8½ feet above ground, and was 2½ inches in diameter and dug back into the stack for 6 inches, where it turned sharply downward and was slightly enlarged at the bottom. On May 28 I took a handsome set of seven eggs from the nest, the eggs lying on a bed of chipped hay. The birds lingered about the stack and by June 14 had deposited another set of eggs. * * * I never could quite understand the philosophy of their peculiar choice of this site, as woodland is abundant here. A well-timbered creek bottom was less than half a mile distant, while large orchards and groves surround the place on every hand.

Kumlien and Hollister (1903) and J. A. Farley (1901) record instances of flickers nesting on hay; in each case the birds bored a hole through the walls of a barn and laid their eggs in a hollow in a pile of hay near the entrance hole. William Brewster (1909) published an account of a flicker’s nest on the open ground, found by some ladies on Cape Cod and seen by him. Beside a sandy road, “fully a quarter of a mile from the nearest house and bordered on both sides by dense woods of pitch pines, the ladies found five eggs of the Flicker lying together in a hollow in the ground within a few feet of the deeply rutted wagon track.” The nest “was a circular, saucer-shaped depression, measuring 21¼ inches across the top, by 3 inches in depth. Dry yellowish sand mixed with fine gravel and wholly free from vegetation of any kind, living or dead, formed its bottom and the gently sloping sides, as well as the surface of the level ground about it for two or three yards in every direction, but a little further back there were weeds and grasses growing sparingly, in slightly richer soil.” Photographs of two nests similarly located may be seen in Bird-Lore, volume 18, page 399, and