boring insects, and their larvae and 

 spear them hke a fisherman spears fish, 

 and the smaller insects adhere to the 

 sticky side of the tongue and are caught 

 much like flies are caught with fiy 

 paper. 



The worst that can be said of these 

 Woodpeckers is the fact that they are 

 accused of feeding on both the eggs 

 and young of other birds. Major Ben- 

 dire in his account of this bird says 

 that it "is unquestionably the most dis- 

 reputable representative of the Wood- 

 pecker family." When I was young the 

 farmers and horticulturists regarded the 

 Woodpeckers as robbers and thieves 

 and encouraged the killing of them. A 

 favorite pastime with the boys was to 

 set a long pole in the ground near a 

 cherry tree for them to alight upon, 

 and when they had done so, to strike 

 it with the pole of an ax or some other 

 blunt instrument, and stun them so that 

 they would fall to the ground, and 

 become the easy victims of the boy or 

 man that begrudged them the cherries 

 they were taking. This was a very 

 cruel practice, for it not only took the 

 lives of the old birds, but their young 

 must necessarily starve to death. Hap- 

 pily the people are being educated to 

 the great value of these birds and no 

 longer begrudge them the few cherries 

 they take in feeding their young, and 

 the ruthless killing of them is a thing 

 of the past. A careful study of the 

 food of these birds by the United States 

 Department of Agriculture shows that 

 it consists of fifty per cent animal, forty- 

 seven per cent vegetable and three per 

 cent mineral matter. The animal mat- 

 ter consists of ants, wasps, beetles, 

 grasshoppers, moths, caterpillars, spi- 

 ders, and myriapods. Ants amounted 

 to about eleven per cent; beetles nearly 

 one-third and grasshoppers and crickets 

 six per cent of the food thus taken by 

 them. Professor Forbes, in his exami- 

 nation of their food in Michigan found 

 that thirty-two per cent of it consisted 

 of canker wormiS. 



The Woodpecker is playful and noisy. 



lie likes to play "hide and peep'' with 

 an observer. This he does by alighting 

 on the bole of a tree near his observer 

 then shuffling himself around on it so 

 as to get his body on the farther side 

 of the tree and then peeping at his 

 observer! If the observer moves so as 

 to get a better view of the bird, it will 

 shuffle farther around but keep up its 

 peeping. They do not sing. Their call 

 is a loud "tchur, tchur" or '*ker-r-ruck" 

 and another is "charr, charr" or "kahrr, 

 kahrr." As a musician he is a drum- 

 mer. For a drum he uses the dead, 

 resonant bole or limb of a tree, or a 

 fence stake in the country or a tele- 

 phone or telegraph pole in the city. 

 On the latter they ''hammer out a con- 

 cert of sweet sounds from the mellow 

 wood-notes, the clear peal of the glass, 

 and the ringing overtures of the wires." 

 They are very fond of drumming on a 

 sheet of tin and frequently are heard 

 from the roofs of our dwellings. 



The flight of this Woodpecker is 

 undulating and surging ''as he flies he 

 looks as if he wore a white gown, with 

 a black mantle over his shoulders, and 

 a scarlet hood," and is one of the hand- 

 somest of our birds. He is easily iden- 

 tified. Directly after its publication, my 

 friend, George F. Bass, made me a 

 present of "Bird Neighbors," by Neltje 

 Blanchan. It is illustrated with many 

 'of the pictures that are used in illus- 

 trating this book, and it has proven a 

 valuable aid to me in identifying many 

 of the birds. Each summer I take it 

 with me to the farm. I have only one 

 grandchild and he has always called me 

 "Gorga." I showed him the pictures 

 in "Bird Neighbors" and told him about 

 the birds w^hen he was so young that 

 he could not speak plainly. The first 

 bird he learned to identify was the Red- 

 headed Woodpecker. It would come 

 to the great wild cherry tree in our 

 front yard for cherries, and when he 

 saw it, he would say, "Gorga, Gorga, 

 a Tacker, tacker," meaning a Wood- 

 pecker. 



William Watson Woollen. 



