LEWIS'S WOODPECKER 231 



those of the California woodpecker. Charles W. Michael (1920) 

 writes : 



Recently we watclied a Lewis Woodpecker making trips back and forth 

 between a Kellogg oak and his home tree, a Cottonwood. He was busy stor- 

 ing away his winter supply of acorns. Occasionally he picked a fallen acorn 

 from the ground; more often he flew into the lesser branches of the oak, and 

 hanging like a great black chickadee he plucked the acorn from the cup. 

 With crow-like flappings, his broad wings carried him back to the dead Cot- 

 tonwood with his prize in his bill. Alighting somewhat below the summit of 

 his tree he would, by a series of flight jumps, come to a certain shattered 

 stub where a fissure formed a vise. Into this he would wedge the acorn. 



With the acorn held firmly in place he would set about cutting away the 

 hull, and strong strokes of his bill would soon split away the shell and 

 expose the kernel. But he was not satisfied in merely making the kernel 

 accessible, he must go on with his pounding until he had broken it into 

 several pieces, and then with a piece in his bill he would dive into the air 

 like a gymnast, drop twenty or thirty feet and come with an upward swoop 

 to perch on the trunk of the same tree. A few hitching movements would 

 bring him to a deep crack that opened into the heart of the tree. Here he 

 would carefully poke away, for future reference, his morsel. Usually the 

 acorn was cut into four parts, involving four such trips, and on the last trip 

 to the vise he would take the empty hull in his bill, and with a jerk of his 

 head, toss it into the air. An examination of the ground beneath the tree 

 disclosed hundreds of empty acorn shells. Holding a watch on the Lewis 

 Woodpecker, we found that he made five trips in five minutes and stored five 

 acorns. 



J. Eugene Law (1929) has published another illuminating paper 

 on this subject, which is well worth reading; he describes in con- 

 siderable detail the woodpeckers' methods in storing the meats of 

 acorns in cracks in poles and indulges in some speculation as to the 

 causes and purposes involved in the habit. 



Herbert Brown (1902) found Lewis's woodpeckers quite destructive 

 to pomegranates and quinces, near Tucson, Ariz. On September 30 

 he counted ten in the pomegranate groves ; "they were mostly feeding 

 on pomegranate fruit. They first cut a hole through the hard sldn 

 of the fruit and then extract the pulp, leaving nothing but an empty 

 shell." Later, on October 13, he says: "Now that the pomegranate 

 crop has been destroyed they have commenced to eat the quinces, of 

 which there are large quantities. On the tops of some of the bushes 

 I noticed that every quince had been eaten into, one side of the fruit 

 being generally eaten away." 



William E. Sherwood (1927) writes: 



On June 16, 1923, while collecting near Imnaha, W^allowa County, Oregon. 

 I frightened a Lewis woodpecker from the top of a fence post where it was 

 evidently having a fe'ast. On top of the post it had left a fresh egg, probably 

 its own; for it was absolutely fresh, of the right size, and unmarked. The 

 shell had been broken into, but the contents not yet extracted. 



In a knothole on the side of the post was an eggshell (of the same kind), 

 and a snail shell which had been broken into. Wedged into the cracks of the 



