Part 27

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.