EASTERN HAIRY WOODPECKER 21 



longer and larger bill, and by the lateral tail feathers, which are 

 pure white in the hairy and somewhat barred with black in the 

 downy. 



Enemies. — B. T. Gault, in his notes from Marshall County, 111., 

 states : "The hairy woodpecker is now a very rare breeder here owing 

 to the fact that the English sparrow appropriates almost every nest 

 hole as soon as it is excavated. I once saw one of these sparrows 

 enter the hole of one of these birds, take a newly hatched bird out 

 in its bill, flutter for an instant over the water (the nest was in a 

 dead willow snag standing in the overflowed Illinois River bottoms) , 

 and drop the young bird into the water to drown. It then returned 

 into the nest and soon appeared with another newly hatched wood- 

 pecker in its bill. As it fluttered over the water for an instant, my 

 gun cracked and the sparrow died." 



Verdi Burtch (1923) writes: "April 16, 1922, when in a thin wood 

 I heard a female hairy woodpecker making a great fuss as they do 

 when one invades the vicinity of their nest. As I neared the place 

 I saw the nest hole about twenty feet up in an elm stub. About ten 

 feet aw^ay, sitting erect on a limb of another tree, w^as a red squirrel 

 eating something that it held in its fore-paws. My 8-power binoculars 

 showed this to be a naked baby bird, presumably a hairy woodpecker 

 and not more than two or three days old." 



Mr. Shelley (1933) tells of a pair of hairy w^oodpeckers that were 

 twice, in the same season, driven out of their nest by starlings and 

 their eggs destroyed. 



Fall. — The hairy woodpecker has often been said to be a perma- 

 nent resident on its breeding grounds, but this is not strictly true. 

 The species may be present all through the year over much of its 

 range, but there is evidence to indicate a general southward move- 

 ment in fall; the individuals seen in winter are probably not the 

 same as those seen in summer. Moreover, there is a noticeable in- 

 crease in numbers in certain localities in winter. 



Lewis O. Shelley has sent me some full notes on the migration of 

 hairy woodpeckers, as he has observed it near East Westmoreland, 

 N. H., from which I quote as follows: "For four years I have 

 watched, in the autumn months, passing hairies that go through, 

 some dropping down into the valley to feed as they go along, but 

 others passing over the valley from hill to hill (2 miles) without 

 stopping. In passing through, they traverse in general the same 

 route each year. They come from an eastern and continue on in 

 a western direction at an oblique angle to the Connecticut River, 

 which they must cross in the vicinity of Brattleboro, Vt. 



"These migrants usually appear here late in August or early in 

 September and continue to arrive at irregular intervals until late 



