ANIMAL BEHAVIOR, WITH EXAMPLES 239 



birds. It was something of a surprise one day when I found 

 the red-headed woodpecker a more persistent visitor to the 

 hole in the tree than the chickarees.^ I not only learned by 

 this that yellow field corn was a choice diet for these wood- 

 peckers, but I also acquired a knowledge of its feeding habits, 

 that gave me much pleasure to observe. 



On a large, outstretched, dead branch free from bark, near 

 the top of the tree, the woodpeckers found a suitable spot to 

 rest. Here the parent birds came to feed two almost fully 

 grown young in July. As I remember the young, they differed 

 from the parents principally in that their heads were dark 

 instead of red, and were thus easily distinguished. One of the 

 parent birds would fly down to the hole, step inside, and seize 

 a kernel of corn in its bill, then, flying to the dead branch, as 

 I have depicted in the illustration on the foregoing page, it 

 placed the kernel in a little hollow pit. Then the bird would 

 drive the corn into the bottom with several determined strokes 

 of its bill. There were several of these pits which the birds 

 used as mortars. The corn, on being placed in the bottom of 

 them, was then cracked into bits with the chisel-like tip of the 

 bird's beak. Then, removing the pieces they had thus made, 

 piecemeal, they were fed one fragment at a time into the opened 

 mouths of the young, who had, in the meantime, expectantly 

 awaited the parent's action. These young birds would always 

 stand by watching their parents during the process of breaking 

 the corn within the pits, and they often fought each other for 

 positions of advantage. 



It is not sure that the mortars referred to were made especially 

 for the purpose of cracking the corn. In fact, one might be 

 inclined to the theory that possibly these pits were originally 

 produced during the habit of rapping, or in the attempt to 

 make the well-known drumming sound of the males. The 

 holes were mostly placed on the upper side of this particular 

 branch, where I had often seen the male rapping loudly on the 

 limb. That the young birds soon learned to use these pits 

 was evident later, and at the same time they gave a display 

 of the agile manner with which the young redhead can snap 

 up insects on the wing. 



^A name commonly applied to the red squirrel. 



