IX 



A RED-HEADED COUSIN 



BESIDES his half-brothers, the narrow-fronted 

 and ant-eating woodpeckers, the Carpenter has 

 a numerous family of cousins, the red-headed, 

 the red-bellied, the golden-fronted, the Gila, 1 

 and the Lewis's woodpeckers. These all belong 

 to one genus, and are much alike in structure, 

 though totally different in color. Most of them 

 are Western or Southwestern birds, but one is 

 found in nearly all parts of the United States 

 lying between the Hudson River and the Rocky 

 Mountains, and is the most abundant woodpecker 

 of the middle West. This well-known cousin is 

 the red-headed woodpecker, the tricolored beauty 

 that sits on fence-posts and telegraph poles, and 

 sallies out, a blaze of white, steel-blue, and scar- 

 let, a gorgeous spectacle, whenever an insect 

 flits by. He is the one that raps so merrily on 

 your tin roofs when he feels musical. 



In many ways the red-head, as he is famil- 

 iarly called, is like his carpenter cousin. Both 



1 So named from being found along the Gila River. 



