428 THE WHITE-HEADED WOODPECKER. 
conspicuous colors under our interior sun, and claims that the bird gains 
inattention from its very unbirdlikeness. Dr. Merrill, who made a most 
satisfactory study of this species near Fort Klamath in Oregon, regards the 
bird in winter as the very simulacrum of a broken branch strongly shadowed, 
and crowned with snow. 
Concerning its food habits, Dr. Merrill says?: “I have rarely heard 
the Woodpecker hammer, and even tapping is rather uncommon. So far 
as I have observed, and during the winter | watched it carefully, its principal 
supply of food is obtained in the bark, most of the pines having a very 
rough bark, scaly and deeply fissured. The bird uses its bill as a crowbar, 
rather than as a hammer or chisel, prying off the successive scales and layers 
of bark in a very characteristic way. ‘This explains the fact of its being 
such a quiet worker, and, as would be expected, it is most often seen 
near the base of the tree, where the bark is thickest and roughest. It 
must destroy immense numbers of Scolytide, whose larve tunnel the bark 
so extensively, and of other insects that crawl beneath the scales of bark 
for shelter during winter. I have several times imitated the work of this 
bird by prying off the successive layers of bark, and have been astonished 
at the great number of insects, and especially of spiders, so exposed. As 
a result of this, and of its habit of so searching for food, the White-headed 
Woodpeckers killed here were loaded with fat to a degree I have never 
seen equalled in any land bird, and scarcely surpassed by some Sandpipers 
in autumn.” 
The White-headed Woodpecker is a quiet bird in manner and voice. I 
have never heard it utter a sound even in the presence of a nest robber 
but it is said to have ‘“‘a sharp, clear ‘witt-witt’” which it uses after the 
fashion of the Harris Woodpecker, when it flies from tree to tree. The 
bird is quite wary; but when it cherishes suspicions, it flies away com- 
posedly, with no such air of ostentatious offense as Harris indulges on 
occasion. 
The first nest reported from this State was found on July 22nd, 1896, 
in the valley of the Methow, where this Woodpecker is not at all common. 
The entrance showed like a clean-cut augur hole, one and five-eighths inches 
in diameter, driven in a live pine; and was reached conveniently from horse- 
back. Four fresh eggs lay on a bed of chips, some eight inches down, and 
they were remarkable only for a somewhat uniform distribution of sparse, 
black spots,—probably dots of adherent pitch, derived from the chips, and 
soiled to blackness by contact with the sitting bird. 
a. The Auk, Vol. V., 1888, p. 253. 
