234 NOTES ON THE 



MELANERPES ERYTHROCEPHALUS (L.) (406) 



RED-HEADED WOODPECKER. 



In the spring of 1869, I found these birds on the campus of 

 the State University as early as March 14th, and from that 

 time, an occasional one also in a cluster of burr oaks, 

 {Q. illicifolia), on an elevated suburb of the city, until about 

 the first of May, after which they came in greater numbers, 

 and from the tenth to the fifteenth, constructed their nests. 

 They cannot be called a numerous species here, although fairly 

 represented in a good many sections. The date of their first 

 arrival varies exceedingly in different years. From 1858 to the 

 year before mentioned, no local records show them to have come 

 earlier than the twentieth of April, and there was one year 

 when none were seen until the twelfth of May, when they were 

 simultaneously observed at every point with which I had cor- 

 respondence. This unusual delay was not produced by the 

 infelicity of the season, for it was not an exceptionally cold, or 

 a specially late one. The cause remains a mystery to me. 



About the twelfth of May they commence to excavate a hole 

 in a tree, either in the neighborhood of dwellings or in the 

 woods, as the case may require, in which labor the sexes en- 

 gage with great industry and perseverance until the work is 

 done. The hole is about half a yard in depth, and is larger at 

 its extremity, from which to the entrance it is gradually tapered 

 to the smallest capacity practicable for the entrance of the birds. 

 It is without lining of any kind, except a few chips left by the 

 carpenter, and in due time receives five or six very beautiful, 

 clear white eggs. The surface of the eggs is remarkably 

 polished — a characteristic common to the family, I think. 

 The observation of young birds as late as the first of July gives 

 a reasonable presumption that they rear two broods, but this 

 may be from having been robbed of the first nest, or the ex- 

 treme delay of the vernal migration. 



Their habits are so well known that it seems useless to 

 record them here. Like nearly all other members of the 

 family they are under the charge of destroying trees by suck- 

 ing their sap — the most imbecile slander which ever lived half 

 so long. Their mouth parts have not a single adaptation to 

 such a use as that of sucking, yet they may possibly eat the 

 inner bark, or alburnum, in botanical parlance. Still, I do not 

 believe they do even that, for the testimony of abundant ob- 

 servers worthy of our highest confidence is that the boring is 



