78 BULLETIN 174, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



gave them the name of Querulus Woodpeckers, for a close study of their 

 habits gives a very different impression of them. They are, in fact, a most 

 jovial class of birds, being almost contantly engaged in sporting about the 

 tops of tall pines or chasing one another from tree to tree, uttering their 

 peevish sounding notes very frequently when in the best humor. The noise is 

 more noticeable because they congregate in flocks, and it is quite rare to find 

 even a pair v^^ithout other companions. They are also fond of the company of 

 other members of the family and will even associate with the Jays, Blue 

 Birds, or Warblers. This gregarious instinct does not forsake them during 

 the breeding season, for they build in detached communities. The nests are 

 almost always in living pines, often thirty or forty feet from the ground ; 

 thus, as the trunks of these trees are covered with a smooth bark, it is 

 quite difiicult to climb them and, when the nests are reached it is not easy 

 to cut the hard wood, especially as the straight trunks afford no foot-hold. 



In flight, the cockaded woodpeckers resemble the downy but when they 

 alight they strike the object upon which they wish to rest very hard. Like 

 the preceding species, they are also exceedingly agile, moving spirally up the 

 tall tree trunks with great celerity. Although they will occasionally alight 

 near the ground, yet they spend the greater part of their time in the tops of 

 the lofty pines ; in fact, they pass a large portion of their lives there, for they 

 are seldom, if ever, found elsewhere than in the piney woods and they inhabit 

 this kind of woodland even to the extreme southern portion of the main-land 

 of Florida. 



The bird is resident throughout its normal range, although David 

 V. Hembree, of Roswell, Ga., in the very foothills of the Appalachian 

 Range, a lifelong student and collector of birds, writes me, "This 

 bird does not breed in this locality. I have never seen a nest. A few 

 are found here, nearly always males in April or May, and I have 

 always thought them to be migrants or strays from their regular 

 range." 



In common with the other small black and white woodpeckers, 

 this species carries the vernacular name of sapsucker and in the main 

 is not differentiated from the others, although one astute lumberman 

 once said to me: "Speaking of sapsuckers, there is a piney- woods 

 sapsucker which is different from the others, leastways he acts dif- 

 ferent." 



Voice. — The voice is variously described by different observers-— 

 "harsh and discordant," "almost exactly resembling the calls of the 

 Brownheaded Nuthatch," "resembling the yank-yank of a White- 

 breasted Nuthatch," "they have sharp calls more like loud sparrow 

 alarms than woodpecker notes," "resembling the querulous cries of 

 young birds." 



The bird is noisy, and its call notes and scolding notes are to the 

 ear of the writer quite radically different, the scolding note being 

 more prolonged, somewhat rolling in character and lower in pitch. 

 There is a definite nasal character to a note that to that extent does 

 resemble the notes of the nuthatch. The note is quite characteristic 



