290 MULE -HUNTING EXPEDITION. 



fornian woodpecker (Melanerpes formicivorus\ 

 evidently of very social habits. They assemble 

 in small flocks, climbing rapidly along the rough 

 bark of the pitch-pine, rapping here and there, 

 with their wedgelike beaks, to scare some drowsy 

 insect ; inducing it to rush out, to be nipped, or 

 speared, with the barbed tongue, ere half-awake; 

 others, sitting on the topmost branches of the oaks 

 and pines, continually darted off after some fugi- 

 tive moth or other winged insect, capturing it 

 much in the fashion of the flycatchers. The harsh 

 and discordant voice is made up for in beauty of 

 plumage. A tuft of scarlet feathers crowns the 

 head, and contrasts brilliantly with the glossy 

 bottle-green of the back and neck ; a white patch 

 on the forehead joins, by a narrow isthmus of 

 white, with a necklet of golden-yellow ; the throat 

 is dark-green, and the under-parts of a pure white. 

 As I look over these stores of acorns, I am at 

 a loss to think for what purpose the birds place 

 them in the holes. In Cassin's ' Birds of America ' 

 he quotes from Dr. Heerman and Mr. Kelly's 

 ' Excursions in California.' Both writers positively 

 state that these birds stow away acorns for winter 

 provisions, and the latter that he has seen them 

 doing it : 'I have frequently paused from my 

 chopping to watch them with the acorns in their 



