218 BULLETIN 174, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



says, "one might conclude that an abundance of acorns is not directly 

 responsible for prodigious storing. In a land of plenty the necessity 

 of laying aside stores for future consumption is obviated. It is the 

 barren years that teacli the value of thrift. Intelligence plus experi- 

 ence may well have been the cause of the excessive storing of this 

 year. A few of the more intelligent woodpeckers that were forced 

 last winter to abandon the valley for lack of food are now preparing 

 against the next lean year." 



Claude Gignoux (1921) reports finding almonds stored in the bark 

 of an oak tree on a ranch near Marysville, Calif., as well as in the 

 side of a barn. 



Dawson (1923) says: "A regrettable taste for fruit is occasionally 

 cultivated, but this has not reached economic proportions, save in the 

 case of almonds. Almond orchards thrive best at a very considerable 

 distance from oak groves." 



Although acorns, almonds, walnuts, and pecans constitute nearly 

 53 percent of its food, and much more than that in fall and winter, 

 the California woodpecker eats quite a variety of other food at differ- 

 ent seasons. Prof. F. E. L. Beal (1910) examined the contents of 

 75 stomachs, which contained "22.43 percent of animal matter to 77.57 

 percent of vegetable." Bendire (1895) says: "During the spring and 

 summer its food consists, to a great extent, of insects, including grass- 

 hoppers, ants, beetles, and different species of flies, varied occasionally 

 with fruit, such as cherries, which are carried off whole, apples, figs, 

 and also berries and green corn." 



Mr. Skinner says in his notes: "At times this bird feeds very 

 much like an eastern red-headed woodpecker. On May 9, 1933, one 

 was seen on the trunk of an oak, only 4 feet above ground, making 

 flycatcherlike sallies up under the foliage of the oak. And many 

 times thereafter I saw the birds operating similarly within the foliage 

 itself. In some instances I have seen these woodpeckers dart out 

 from high up in tall yellow pines after passing insects, then gliding 

 back on set wings. Sometimes they do this from tall electric poles, 

 at times going out as much as 50 feet. Since there was every reason 

 to suppose that the bird saw the insect before it started, this speaks 

 well for its keenness of eyesight. At times, these woodpeckers glean 

 insects from the bark of trees. In July, in the Yosemite Valley, hunt- 

 ing the twigs and bark for insects seemed the favorite method of 

 getting food." 



Dr. Joseph Grinnell (1908) saw one of these woodpeckers, in the 

 San Bernardino Mountains, drive a sapsucker away from its borings 

 in an alder and then go "the rounds of the borings" drinking from 

 each. Dr. Harold C. Bryant (1921) saw a California woodpecker 

 robbing a nest of a pair of western wood pewees; he was "calmly 

 perched on the pewee's nest and eating one of the eggs. I could see 



