RED-HEADED WOODPECKER. 23 
Besides depredations upon fruit and grain, this woodpecker has been 
accused of destroying the eggs of other birds and even of killing the 
young; and from Florida comes a report that it enters poultry houses 
and sucks the eggs of domestic fowls. Mr. Charles Aldrich, of Webster 
City, Iowa, says that a Red-headed Woodpecker was seen to kill a 
duckling with a single blow on the head, and then to peck out and eat 
the brains.’ In view of such testimony remains of eggs and young 
birds were carefully looked for in the stomachs examined, but pieces 
of eggshell were found in only 1 stomach of the Flicker and 2 of the 
Redhead. 
A very unusual trait has been recorded by Dr. Howard Jones, of 
Circleville, Ohio. Dr. Jones says he has seen the Red-headed Wood- 
pecker steal the eggs of eave swallows, and in cases where the necks of 
the nests were so long that the eggs were out of reach the woodpecker 
made a hole in the walls of the nest and so obtained the contents. In 
a colony of swallows containing ‘dozens’ of nests not a single brood 
of young was raised. One of the woodpeckers also began to prey upon 
hens’ eggs, and was finally captured in the act of robbing the nest of a 
sitting hen? 
No traces of young birds or of any other vertebrates were discovered 
in the stomachs of any of the 7 species under consideration, except 
bones of a small frog which were found in the stomach of a Red-bellied 
Woodpecker (jelanerpes carolinus) from Florida. 
The Redhead has been accused of doing considerable damage to fruit 
and grain, and both charges are fairly well sustained. In northern 
New York Dr. Merriam has seen it peck into apples on the tree, and 
has several times seen it feed on choke cherries (Prunus virginiana). 
Mr. August Jahn, of Pope County, Ark., writes that it has damaged 
his corn to the amount of $10 or $15, and Dr. J. R. Mathers, of Upshur 
County, W. Va., says that the same species feeds on cherries, straw- 
berries, raspberries, and blackberries, and that its depredations are 
sometimes serious. According to Mr. Witmer Stone, of Germantown, 
Pa., Red-headed Woodpeckers have been observed to strip a black- 
berry patch of allofits fruit. Mr. W. B. McDaniel, of Decatur County, 
Ga., also reports that the Sapsucker and Redhead eat grapes and cher- 
ries, the loss being sometimes considerable. These examples show the 
nature of the evidence contributed by eye-witnesses, the accuracy of 
whose observations there is no-reason to doubt. That the stomach 
examinations do not reveal more damaging points against the species 
is not surprising, for a person seeing a bird eating his choice fruit, or 
in some other way inflicting damage, is more impressed by it than by the 
sight of a hundred of the same species quietly pursuing their ordinary 
vocations. Thus an occasional act is taken as a characteristic habit. 
1Am. Nat., Vol. VT, No. 5, May, 1877, p. 308. 
2Ornithologist and Oologist, Vol. VIII, No. 7, 1883, p. 56. 
