beyond uuuiber have the bark literally honeycombed with holes, 

 not only on the smooth boles but up among the branches as 

 far as the eye can reach. In the meadows in the San Gabriel 

 ^Mountains stand hundreds of trees whose bark is pitted almost 

 to the topmost branches. The broad thick plates of bark, 

 framed round with ragged fissures, are studded with holes, 

 sometimes as many as thirty to the square foot. The wood- 

 peckers prefer certain trees, why, it would be difficult to tell. 

 The boles of trees w^ith smooth bark are naturally preferred, 

 and those with fewest branches allow" freest digging. 



This "winged carpenter" is an engaging fellow, unassum- 

 ing in his manner, silent in his movements, and gentlemanly 

 withal in his dark suit with magpie trimmings. You can 

 see him any time throughout the summer running along the 

 boles of the trees hunting for larvae beneath the bark, or you 

 can hear his monotonous tap, tap all through the summer 

 morning as he pecks his way through the bark to the grubs 

 beneath. The holes thus made are shallow conical depressions, 

 quite different from those made for the reception of nuts. 

 These last are from II/2 inches to 2 inches deep and are roughly 

 circular in outline but on section are wilder at the base than 

 at the outlet. With the ripening of the acorns in the autumn 

 the birds are busiest; their harvest has begun and will continue 

 until the nuts are all collected and safely lodged in the pits 

 prepared for them. In the pine belts the acorns gathered are 

 those of Kellog's oak. These the birds gather one by one, 

 seizing them by the larger end and forcing them into the hole, 

 the opening of which barely suffices for the insertion of the 

 nut. As the hole in the pine bark is a little longer than the 

 nut and of greatest width at its base, the nut falls slightly 

 sideways or is by a dexterous twist of the beak fixed obliquely 

 in a manner that makes it simply impossible to remove it by 

 ordinary means. 



In the lower altitudes of the Coast Range, the woodpecker 

 has been compelled by force of natural circumstances to modify 

 his method of storing nuts. Here pine trees do not exist, only 

 oaks, either the live oak (Quercus agrifolia) or the white oak 

 (Q. lobata,) the latter from Encino northwards being in some 

 districts quite abundant. In utilizing the bark of the oak tree 

 for their acorn pits, the woodpeckers naturally prefer the de- 

 caying branches as they are easily worked, but these are 

 normally few so that the birds are compelled to form their 

 storehouses by digging in the bark as they do in the pines. 

 Both the live oaks and the white oaks already referred to 

 yield a large supply of nuts. The Avoodpecker naturally pre- 

 fers the produce of the white oak which is twice the s'ize of 

 the other and of a much sweeter taste, but the digging of 

 lioles for such large nuts is laborious work even for a wood- 

 pecker. The bark of the oak is hard and tough, and the holes 

 are in consequence smaller than those ol)served in tli«^ pine 



