RED-HEADED WOODPECKER. 



21 



Merriam has given mucli testimony under this head.' He states that 

 in northern New York, where it is one of the commonest woodpeckers, 

 it subsists almost exclusively on beechnuts during the fall and winter, 

 even picking the green nuts before they are ripe and while the trees 

 are still covered with leaves. He has shown that these woodpeckers 

 invariably remain throughout the winter after good nut yields and 

 migrate whenever the nut crop fails. He says : " Gray Squirrels, Eed- 

 headed Woodpeckers, and beechnuts were numerous during the winters 



Fig. 3.— Ked-headed Woodpecker. 



of 1871-72, 1873-74, 1875-76, 1877-78, 1879-80, 1881-82, 1883-84, while 

 during the alternate years the squirrels and nuts were scarce and the 

 woodpeckers altogether absent;" and adds that in Lewis County, 

 IST. Y., '<a good squirrel year is synonymous with a good year for 

 Melanerpes, and vice versa." In early spring, following nut years, when 

 the melting snow uncovers the ground, they feed on the beechnuts that 

 were buried during winter. On April 5, 1878, at Locust Grove, K Y., 

 he shot 6 whose gizzards contained beechnuts and nothing else. 



' Birds of Connecticut, 1877, p. 66; Bull. Nuttall Ornith. Club, Vol. Ill, 1878, p. 124; 

 Mammals of the Adiroudaoks, 1884, p. 226. 



