The Red-Headed Woodpecker 259 



stored away in the holes. Those were the palmy days for these 

 woodpeckers. The extensive forest of beech and oak furnished 

 them their winter supply of food, and the decaying trees in the 

 many "clearings" their summer supply of insects and larvae 

 with which to feed their young. It is not so now. The forests 

 have disappeared and when the winter comes the woodpeckers 

 must migrate southward until they find a place where their 

 food is not covered with snow. In the summer time they are 

 compelled to obtain much of their food from the air and the 

 ground, and because of this they are taking on new habits of 

 life. Many of them are becoming adept flycatchers, and it is 

 interesting to see them dart off from a place of advantage and 

 catch a passing insect on the wing, or a grasshopper or beetle 

 that may be on the ground. At Buzzard's Roost we have 

 many fine beech trees. One of these is the largest of its kind 

 that I have ever seen. At the base it measures fifteen feet in 

 circumference. See illustration opposite page two. It is 

 known as the Nesbit beech, from the circumstance, that 

 two men ' by the name of Nesbit, in hauling logs 

 with an ox team from the uplands down the hill from 

 where the cabins stand, the chain which locked the wagon 

 broke, and that caused the wagon to be crowded upon the 

 oxen, and them to run down the hill and against this tree 

 and the neck of one of the oxen to be broken and thereby kill- 

 ing it. These trees are to be preserved for the birds and as an 

 evidence of what was at one time plentiful in this country. 



The red-headed woodpecker breeds throughout its range. 

 Its nest is a fine specimen of workmanship and is usually ex- 

 cavated in the bole or limb of a tree, telegraph pole or fence 

 stake, and ranges in height from six to seventy-five feet from 

 the ground. It is when excavating these that it can b'e said 



that he sings : 



"I am birddom's carpenter; 



Can make the splinters fly; 

 On poles and posts and forest trees 



My merry trade I ply. 

 My bill is my chisel, 

 My tail is my stool." 



And true enough he is a carpenter for he makes a true 

 circle for his hole, and his bill is his chisel and his tail is his 



