Part 26

_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--