290 MULE-HUNTING EXPEDITION. 
fornian woodpecker (Melanerpes formicivorus), 
evidently of very social habits. They assemble 
in small flocks, climbing rapidly along the rough 
bark of the pitch-pine, rapping here and there, 
with their wedgelike beaks, to scare some drowsy 
insect; inducing it to rush out, to be nipped, or 
speared, with the barbed tongue, ere half-awake; 
others, sitting on the topmost branches of the oaks 
and pines, continually darted off after some fugi- 
tive moth or other winged insect, capturing it 
much in the fashion of the flycatchers. The harsh 
and discordant voice is made up for in beauty of 
plumage. <A tuft of scarlet feathers crowns the 
head, and contrasts brilliantly with the glossy 
bottle-green of the back and neck ; a white patch 
on the forehead joins, by a narrow isthmus of 
white, with a necklet of golden-yellow; the throat 
is dark-green, and the under-parts of a pure white. 
As Ilook over these stores of acorns, I am at 
a loss to think for what purpose the birds place 
them in the holes. In Cassin’s ‘ Birds of America’ 
he quotes from Dr. Heerman and Mr. Kelly’s 
‘Excursions in California.’ Both writers positively 
state that these birds stow away acorns for winter 
provisions, and the latter that he has seen them 
doing it: ‘I have frequently paused from my 
chopping to watch them with the acorns in their 
