72 BULLETIN 17 4, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



long intervals did we hear the indescribable short trill characteristic of this 

 bird. Individuals are much restricted in range, foraging along a relatively 

 short line of cottonwoods or wUlows day after day. Once a bird is located, it 

 can usually be found in the same place regularly. When foraging it moves 

 about with very little commotion, and even when drilling for insects works so 

 quietly that only a keen auditor can detect its presence. No matter what the 

 season of the year, a pair of these birds is to be found usually within hearing 

 of each other. The bird's close adherence to deciduous trees makes it more 

 conspicuous and easier to observe in late fall and winter than in the summer- 

 time when the trees are fully leaved out; but even in winter, our experience 

 with the willow woodpecker led us to consider it about the most elusive of all 

 the diurnal birds of the Yosemite region. 



We had always supposed that the rapid series of notes uttered by this species 

 were given only by the adult male and hence constituted a sort of song. But on 

 June 24, 1920, in Yosemite Valley a juvenile male was found, with his head out 

 of a nest hole eight feet above the ground in a dead branch of a live willow, 

 giving every few moments this very series of notes. The large croivn patch of 

 red on this bird established its age and sex clearly. There was every indica- 

 tion that the notes were being given as a food call, 



M. P. Skinner contributes the following note : 



One seen in Sequoia National Park in August was drilling at the bases of 

 willow shoots near a river. It perched lengthwise of the stems. It managed to 

 keep well hidden, but worked industriously and did not change its position 

 much during the short time that I could see it. Later, I caught a glimpse occa- 

 sionally of the woodpecker's red head, although the bird kept hidden most of 

 the time. This reminded me that I had often wondered why red usually marked 

 11 woodpecker's head. Certainly it makes a wonderful recognition mark. In 

 that way it might well be that red on the constantly moving head of the wood- 

 pecker would be of value to the race. 



DRYOBATES BOREALIS (Vieillot) 

 RED-COCKADED WOODPECKER 



Plates 9, 10 



HABITS 



Contributed by Eugene Edmund MunPHBrr 



Introduced to ornithology by Wilson under the name of Picus 

 querulus, the red-cockaded woodpecker is locally common throughout 

 the open pine country of the South Atlantic and Gulf States and 

 extends its range into the pine country of Oklahoma and Missouri. 

 Its preference is very definitely for the open woods, shunning the 

 dense thickets of second-growth pine and the deep recesses of the 

 cypress swamps even when the latter are only a few hundred yards 

 away from its chosen environment. These open pine woods, which 

 abound both in the Austro-Riparian and Carolinian Zones of the 

 South Atlantic and Gulf States, represent not a normal growth of 

 pine forest but an original pine forest modified by the pernicious 



