The Red-headed Woodpecker as a Pennsylvania and 

 New Jersey Bird 



BY SPEKCER TROTTEB. 



This bird has always been associated in my mind witli some 

 rare days of the year when cool winds are wandering through 

 summer woods; days full of bright sunshine and redolent of the 

 coming autumn. I first saw tlie bird on a certain hill-side in 

 Maryland that was grown up with tall white-oaks, not thickly, 

 but open enough for a sheep-jiasture, with vistas of close-cropped 

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

 winged before me from tree to tree with its strongly contrasted 

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

 That was in the early seventies, and on that hill-side a spell 

 was cast that has worked its subtle charm through all the years. 



So was it when my life began; 



So is it now I am a man; 



So be it when I shall grow old. 



For a number of years I continued to find the Red-headed 

 Woodpecker a fairly abundant bird in the farm lands close to 

 the cities of Philadelphia and Baltimore, especially during the 

 fall. It was conspicuous at times among the tall trees that 

 crown the hills along the Schuylkill above the Girard Avenue 

 Bridge. In late years it has disappeared from the immediate 

 vicinity of the city, and I do not recall having seen it about its 

 old haunts in the nearer parts of the park for the past twenty 

 years. In the more remote farming districts, however, it is still 

 fairlj' common, though never at any time or in any place an 

 abundant species like the Flicker or the Downy Woodpecker. I 

 have picked up a curious bit of folk-lore concerning the bird, a 

 belief that the Red-headed Woodpeckers when unusually num- 

 erous in autumn presage a winter of great sickness. I have 



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