A STUDY OF ACQUIRED HABITS 63 



instinct. It would seem as if memory and reason 

 had devised this plan for outwitting winter, the 

 bird's old enemy. 



The red-head is not a grub-eating woodpecker. 

 Though beetles make up a third of his food, 

 their larvae do not form any part of it. Half his 

 food for the entire year is vegetable, and the 

 animal portion is composed principally of beetles, 

 ants, caterpillars, and grasshoppers, which in win- 

 ter time are hidden in snug places, or are dead 

 under the snow. There are few berries in win- 

 ter. The few seedy, weedy plants that stick up 

 above the snow give to the birds the little they 

 have ; but the red-head's vegetable fare is limited 

 at that season and his animal food almost lack- 

 ing. Winter in the North is all very well for the 

 hairy and downy cousins that like to hammer 

 frozen tree-trunks for frozen grubs ; but our 

 red-headed friend does not eat grubs by prefer- 

 ence. Rather than change his habits he will 

 change his boarding-place. So he is a migratory 

 woodpecker, though the woodpeckers are natu- 

 rally home-loving birds, and do not migrate from 

 preference. If, however, he can lay up a store 

 of vegetable or animal food, he can winter in 

 any climate. Hoarding is thus an invention as 

 important to the woodpecker world as electric 

 cars and telephones are to men. The proba- 



