CONSPICUOUSLY BLACK AND WHITE 369 
can be heard in all directions. It seems to feed entirely 
on such wood worms as attack spruce, pine, and other 
soft-wood timber that has been fire-killed. It never 
attacks a healthy tree, and is far more beneficial than 
harmful. . . . Like the hairy woodpecker, they are per- 
sistent drummers, rattling away for minutes at a time on 
some dead limb, and are especially active during the 
mating season in April. [have located more than one 
specimen by following the sound when it was half a 
mile away... . May 10 I found a male busily at work 
on a pine stump only two and a half feet high and 
eighteen inches in diameter, standing within a few feet 
of the road, and close to a charcoal-burner’s camp. On 
May 25 the cavity was found to be eighteen inches deep 
and was gradually enlarged toward the bottom. The 
four eggs it contained had been incubated four days. 
The female was on the nest, and uttered a hissing sound 
as she left it, and might easily have been caught, as she 
remained in the hole until the stump was struck with 
a hatchet.” } 
Incubation lasts two weeks, and the young remain in 
the nest four to five weeks according to early or late 
hatching. They are fed by regurgitation for the first 
nine days and possibly longer, but adults have been seen 
carrying insects to the nest on the fifteenth day. When 
alighting with food the adult gives a low cooing call and 
is answered by a hissing clatter from the young that can 
be heard at some distance from the nest tree. 
Where this bird occurs in California the local orni- 
1 Bendire. 
24 
