WOODPECKERS, CUCKOOS, ETC. 231 



crown is the customary scarlet patch common to the males 

 of most woodpeckers. 



The California woodpecker has the habit of storing away 

 acorns almost as persistently as do our squirrels. The birds 

 select partially decayed trees and perforate the bark and 

 trunk with small holes, into which they securely wedge these 

 acorns, feeding upon them, and especially the larvse they 

 contain, during the winter months. In New Mexico these 

 birds seem partial to small oak groves. In the Catalina 

 JMountains of Arizona they may be met with at an altitude 

 of 4,000 feet, living both in the pine and oak groves. Fre- 

 quently a natural cavity is used as a suitable site for the 

 eggs and young. Perhaps their habit of drilling small holes 

 for the storage of acorns causes this bird to become less 

 active in chiseling a cavity large enough to contain a setting 

 of eggs. When the birds excavate holes for nesting sites a 

 situation on the under side of a limb is frequently chosen. 

 Sometimes they successfully drill a hollow in a hving tree. 



Four or five eggs are laid in April or May. 



RED-BELLIED WOODPECKER 



The Red-bellied Woodpecker ranges throughout eastern 

 United States, nesting north of Massachusetts and Minne- 

 sota, "wintering from Virginia and Ohio southward. 



*' For the coincidence I shall not try to account, but it is 

 a fact that whenever the bird-man clears the snow from a 

 log where the wood-choppers have been at work, and sits 

 down, after a long morning's work with the birds, to a 

 shivering mid-v^inter lunch, the red-bellied woodpecker, till 



