BIRDS CONSPICUOUSLY BLACK AND WHITE 



Red-headed Woodpecker 



( Melanerpes erythrocephaliis) Woodpecker family 



Called also: TRI-COLOR ; RED-HEAD 



Length — 8.50 to 9.75 inches. An inch or less smaller than the 



robin. 

 Male and Female — Head, neck, and throat crimson ; breast and 



underneath white; back black and white; wings and tail 



blue black, with broad white band on wings conspicuous in 



flight. 

 i?(7«g-^— United States, east of Rocky Mountains and north to 



Manitoba. 

 Migrations— Ahnxidant but irregular migrant. Most commonly 



seen in Autumn, and rarely resident. 



In thinly populated sections, where there are few guns 

 about, this is still one of the commonest as it is perhaps the most 

 conspicuous member of the woodpecker family, but its striking 

 glossy black-and-white body and its still more striking crimson 

 head, flattened out against the side of a tree like a target, where 

 it is feeding, have made it all too tempting a mark for the rifles 

 of the sportsmen and the sling-shots of small boys. As if suffi- 

 cient attention were not attracted to it by its plumage, it must 

 needs keep up a noisy, guttural rattle, ker-r-ruck, her-r-ruck, 

 very like a tree-toad's call, and flit about among the trees with 

 the restlessness of a fly-catcher. Yet, in spite of these invita- 

 tions for a shot to the passing gunner, it still multiplies in dis- 

 tricts where nuts abound, being " more common than the robin " 

 about Washington, says John Burroughs. 



All the familiar woodpeckers have two characteristics most 

 prominently exemplified in this red-headed member of their 

 tribe. The hairy, the downy, the crested, the red-bellied, the 

 sapsucker, and the flicker have each a red mark somewhere about 



S3 



