RED-HEADED WOODPECKER 195 



MELANERPES ERYTHROCEPHALUS (Linnaeus) 



RED-HEADED WOODPECKER 



Plates 25-27 



HABITS 



This handsome and conspicuously colored woodpecker enjoys a wide 

 distribution over much of North America, from southern Canada to 

 the Gulf coast, east of the Rocky Mountains, and west of New England 

 and eastern Canada. It is recorded from British Columbia, and is 

 rare in New England. The only one I have seen in southeastern 

 Massachusetts, in 50 years of field work, was chased across the line 

 from Rhode Island before I shot it. Throughout the northern portion 

 of its range, it is a summer resident only, though in mild winters, when 

 food is abundant, it may remain all through winter. 



The red-headed woodpecker is essentially a bird of the open country 

 and not in any sense a forest dweller. I first met this woodpecker in 

 northern New York while on a fishing trip on the St. Lawrence River ; 

 here it was fairly common in open gi'oves of large trees or in groups of 

 scattered trees in open fields, where its brilliant color pattern made 

 it very conspicuous ; it was frequently seen sitting on telegraph poles, 

 fence posts, the dead tops of tall trees, or on dead stubs. Dr. Elon 

 H. Eaton (1914) says of its hamits in that State : "The preferred home 

 of this woodpecker is in open groves and 'slasliings' and 'old burns' 

 and tracts of half-dead forest where the live trees are scattered and 

 dead stubs are in abundance." 



Spencer Trotter (1903) writes: "I first saw the bird on a certain 

 hill-side in Maryland that was grown up with tall white-oaks, not 

 thickly, but open enough for a sheep-pasture, with vistas of close- 

 cropped grass among the gray tree-trunks. In this setting a Wood- 

 pecker winged before me from tree to tree with its strongly contrasted 

 blotches of black, white, and crimson flashing in the sunlight." 



In Florida I have found it most commonly in the large burned- 

 over areas in the pine woods, where numerous dead trees and stubs 

 are left standing; these offer attractive nesting sites and some food 

 supply. But Arthur H. Howell (1932) says: "The red-head is the 

 most domestic of our woodpeckers, living frequently in the heart of 

 populous towns and nesting in telephone poles on village streets. 

 The birds are especially attracted to newly cleared lands, where 

 many dead or girdled trees are left standing. They are common, 

 also, in open pine forests in certain sections, but in other seemingly 

 suitable localities are not to be found." 



Nesting. — As my experience with the nesting habits of the red- 

 headed woodpecker is almost nothing, I shall have to draw on the 



