RED-BELLIED WOODPECKER. 27 



Dr. B. n. Warren states that in Florida the Eed-bellied Woodpecker 

 is commonly tnown as 'Orange Sapsucker' and 'Orange Borer.' Dr. 

 Warren collected 26 of these woodpeckers in an orange grove near 

 Volusia and found that 11 of them contained orange pulp. Three con- 

 tained nothing else; the others had eaten also insects and berries. 



Corroborating Dr. Warren's account, Mr. William Brewster states 

 that at Enterprise, Fla., in February, 1889, he saw a Eed-bellied Wood- 

 pecker eating the pulp of a sweet orange. Mr. Brewster states that the 

 woodpecker attacked the orange on the ground, pecking at it in a slow 

 and deliberate way for several minutes. On examining the orange it 

 was found to be decayed on one side. "In the sound portion were three 

 holes, each nearly as large as a silver dollar, with narrow strips of peel 

 between them. The pulp had been eaten out quite to the middle of the 

 fruit. Small pieces of rind were thickly strewn about the spot." Upon 

 searching closely he discovered several other oranges that had been 

 attacked in a similiar manner. All were partially decayed and were 

 lying on the ground. He was unable to find any on the trees which 

 showed any marks of the woodpecker's bill.' 



Mr. Benjamin Mortimer, writing of the same bird at Sanford, Fla., 

 says: 



During l<'ebruary and Marcli, 1889, while gatliering fruit or pruning orange trees, 

 I frequently found oranges that had been riddled by this woodpecker and repeatedly 

 saw the bird at work. I never observed it feeding upon fallen oranges. It helped 

 itself freely to Sound fruit that still hung on the trees, and in some instances I have 

 found ten or twelve oranges on one tree that had been tapped by it. Where an 

 orange accidentally rested on a branch in such a way as to make the flower end acces- 

 sible from above or from a horizontal direction the woodpecker chose that spot, as 

 through it he could reach into all the sections of the fruit, and when this was the 

 case there was but one hole in the orange. But usually there were many holes around 

 it. It appeared that after having once commenced on an orange, the woodpecker 

 returned to the same one repeatedly until he had completely consumed the pulp, and 

 then he usually attacked another very near to it. Thus I have found certain clusters 

 in which every orange had been bored, Vhile all the others on the tree were 

 untouched. An old orange grower told me that the " Sapsuckers,'' as he called them, 

 never touch any but very ripe oranges, and are troublesome only to such growers as 

 reserved their crops for the late market. He also said that it is only within a very 

 few years that they have shown a taste for the fruit ; and I myself observed that, 

 although Red-bellies were very common in the neighborhood, only an individual, or 

 perhaps a pair, visited any one grove.^ 



1 The Auk, Vol. VI, 1889, pp. 337-338. 

 2 The Auk, Vol. VII, 1890, p. 340. 



