My Experience with a Red-headed Woodpecker 



BY ALICK WETMORE (age. 13 years), North Freedom. Wis. 



HE first time that I saw the subject of this sketch was on 

 Sunday, October 8, 1899. As I was going along a ravine 

 on that day, I heard a loud, tree -toad- like ker - r-r -ruck 

 coming from the top of a tall dead stub. I looked up 

 and soon saw that the owner of the voice was a young 

 Red-headed Woodpecker. His (?) head was a dusky color. He 

 would stick his head around the tree and, after giving the note, 

 dodge back. I thought I would keep a sharp eye on him, and a 

 little while afterward I was rewarded by seeing him get an acorn 

 from a small oak. He seemed to be storing acorns up for winter in 

 holes and crannies. 



Once he lit on an oak limb that would not bear him, and it 

 swung until he hung back down, but he got his acorn. While he 

 was flying off, a little Junco seemed to think that he was trespassing" 

 and flew at him in a rage and made him get out of the way. I went 

 to a stump nearby and got an acorn and found that it was whole. A 

 few marks on the shell showed where he had hammered it into the 

 crevice. He always seemed to go to the same tree for his acorns. 



I laid down on the bank of the ravine close to the tree in the sun 

 to watch him, but he was suspicious and would not come near at 

 first. I was rather surprised to see that he could easily go down a 

 tree backwards, lifting his tail and, after hopping down, falling back 

 onto it. Everywhere he went, he expressed, in vigorous notes, his 

 disgust at having me around. 



The stub he liked best was very tall and had a crack in it near 

 the top, and into this crack he hammered, with his shiny white bill, 

 all the acorns that he possibly could. Some of them he cracked in 

 two and then put them in the crack. One fragment he dropped as 

 he lighted. He was after it quick as a flash, and chased it so near 

 the ground that I thought he would dash himself onto it and be 

 killed, but he turned up just before he reached it and flew off with- 

 out the acorn. 



In a cornfield a short distance away I found some nubbins for 

 him. While I was looking for a place to put them up, I found a 

 hole with sixteen acorns in it. He had put them there, for I could 

 see the marks of his bill on them and around the edges of the hole 



(155) 



