BIRDS OF THE PAPAGO SAGUARO NATIONAL MONUMENT. 49 



is the phrase "belly-aching." In fact, all of his talk at us has a distinctly 

 " colicky " tone and one feels like giving him something to whine about. His 

 ordinary call slightly resembles that of the flicker, but is not quite so loud; 

 altogether he is quite a conversationalist. 



This woodpecker frequents houses and yards, and with slight encourage- 

 ment comes regularly for food, not hesitating to call loudly for it if breakfast 

 be much delayed. The Indians store corn in the ear on the Hat tops of their 

 houses and sheds, and each home has one or more of woodpecker retainers or 

 pensioners hanging about most of the time. This corn provides an abundant 

 and sure source of food, and the birds make the most of it. I have never seen 

 any indication of food storage on the part of the Gila woodpecker as with the 

 California woodpecker, for they live in a claw-to-beak fashion. They peck at 

 a kernel until it conies off the cob, when it is carried to a post or tree and 

 placed firmly in a crack. Here it is pecked to pieces and eaten. They seem 

 never to swallw the kernel whole, but always break it up. They seem to be 

 allotted on the ratio of a pair of birds to a home, and it is but rarely that 

 more than two are seen at the same corncrib. During the breeding season they 

 are shyer and are not seen around the homes very much ; but when the young 

 are grown they " bring them out " and present them, as it were. 



The food of this woodpecker is varied, nearly everything being grist that 

 comes to his mill. He pecks around decayed and dying trees as well as green 

 ones, and presumably gets the insects usually found and eaten by such birds. 

 The giant cactus is pecked into very frequently, and I believe some of the 

 pulp is eaten. The small punctures made are not enlarged, and in some cases 

 quite an area is bitten into. The fruit of the giant cactus is eaten as long as 

 it lasts, and berries of the lycium are also freely eaten. The Gila woodpecker 

 frequents cornfields and pecks through the husks into the ears of corn. The 

 birds may peck in at first to get a worm, but it is a case similar to the discovery 

 of roast pig as portrayed by Lamb. They alight on the ground and feed upon 

 table scraps thrown to chickens, three of them being regular morning visitors 

 star boarders to a pen of chickens I fed. They are very fond of peaches and 

 pears and volubly resent being driven from a tree of the fruit. They peck 

 holes in ripening pomegranates and then the green fruit beetle helps finish 

 the fruit. They relish grapes, both white and colored, and will spear one with 

 their bill and carry it to a convenient crevice, where it may be eaten at leisure. 

 On bird tables I have tried them with various articles of food and found very 

 little that they rejected. They would not eat cantaloupe at all, but were 

 regular watermelon fiends, eating it three times a day and calling for more. 

 They did not care for oranges, and I had no success in trying to teach them 

 to eat ripe pickled olives. I tried the olive diet on them because two mocking- 

 birds in our yard in California learned to eat this fruit. Meat, raw and cooked, 

 was eaten, and they ate suet greedily. Their favorite cut of beef was the 

 T-bone steak, and we always left some meat on the bone for them. They 

 picked it clean, and if a new supply was slow in coming the softer parts of the 

 bone were devoured. This T-bone steak diet, however, was prior to the balloon 

 ascension of beef. The bone was always nailed fast to the table and it fur- 

 nished the birds with food and exercise and us with edification. Mr. Frank 

 Pinkley, custodian at the Casa Grande Ruins, told me of a pair of these wood- 

 peckers that stayed around his home and became quite tame, coming into the 

 shed to drink from a can of water. He said they got into the habit of sucking 

 the eggs in the chicken house, or, at least, pecking into them and eating of the 

 contents. As the eggs were from blooded Wyandotte hens, he had to break the 

 woodpeckers of the habit. I did not ask him how he did it, but fear that it 

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