KED-HEADED WOODPECKER 207 



south-west wind heading nearly south and at an elevation of sixty to eighty yards. 

 Rather more than half of them were immature birds but the old and young were 

 not segregated. I was hunting ducks at the time and counted forty-eight wood- 

 peckers passing in a little more than two hours. They apparently came from 

 Ontario and probably crossed Lake Erie by way of Point Pelee and Bass Island 

 which would make the flight over water only about nine miles. It was interesting 

 to note that each successive group of birds followed exactly the same route over 

 the marshes although those that had gone before were well out of sight. 



Winter. — The red-headed woodpecker is generally considered to be 

 a migratory species throughout the northern portion of its breeding 

 range, but its movements seem to depend almost entirely on the 

 abundance or scarcity of its winter food supply, mainly acorns and 

 beechnuts; when these nuts are available in considerable quantities, 

 tliis woodpecker is to be found in reasonable numbers witliin its sum- 

 mer range in the northern States. When Dr. C. Hart Merriam (1878) 

 referred to it as remaining occasionally in northern New York, Lewis 

 County, in winter, some of his ornithological friends were skeptical. 

 He says : 



I therefore wrote to my friend, Mr. C. L. Bagg, asking him to send me a lot 

 of red-headed woodpeckers as soon as possible, and in a week's time received 

 a box containing over twenty specimens, — all killed in Lewis County and when 

 the snow was three feet deep ! This was proof positive. Notes kept by Mr. 

 Bagg and myself during the past six years show that they were abundant here 

 during the winters 1871-72, 1873-74, 1875-76, and 1877-78 ; while they were rare 

 or did not occur at all during the winters of 1872-73 and 1876-77. Their absence 

 was in no way governed by the severity of the winters, but entirely dependent 

 upon the absence of the usual supply of beechnuts. While the greater portion of 

 nuts fall to the ground and are buried beneath the snow far beyond the reach of 

 the woodpeckers, yet enough remain on the trees all winter to furnish abundant 

 subsistence for those species which feed on them. ♦ * * 



During the autumn the scattered pairs for several miles around usually con- 

 gregate in some suitable wood, containing a plenty of beech-trees, and here spend 

 the long cold winter in company, chattering and chasing one another about 

 among the trees to keep warm, and to help while away the time. "Coe's woods," 

 in this immediate vicinity, has long been famous as the great winter resort for 

 the red-headed woodpeckers of the neighborhood, and it is certainly the most 

 suitable place for their purposes to be found for many miles around. This piece 

 of woods, not over an eighth of a mile in extent, contains, besides hundreds of 

 beeches {Fagus ferruginea), a large number of elms {Vlmus americana), and 

 white ash-trees (Fraxinus americana) of great size, most of the tops of which are 

 now dead. What more favorable location than this woods could a woodpecker 

 desire? Here they have beechnuts in abundance and a bountiful supply of 

 dead limbs and tree-tops far above the reach of the small charges commonly 

 used by bird-collectors. 



James B. Purdy (1900) says that "the presence of the Red-headed 

 Woodpecker {Melanerpes erythrocephalus) during the winter months 

 in Michigan does not depend upon the temperature, but entirely upon 

 the food supply, viz. : the crop of acorns and beechnuts which precedes 

 the winter. If these nuts are plenty, the red-headed woodpeckers will 



