RED-BELLIED WOODPECKER. 27 
Dr. B. H. Warren states that in Florida the Red-bellied Woodpecker 
is commonly known 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 Red-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 February and March, 1889, while gathering 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 J 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 away 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 theorange. 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. ThusI have found certain clusters 
in which every orange had been bored, while all the others on the tree were 
untouched, Anold 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.’ 
'The Auk, Vol. VI, 1889, pp. 337-338. 
2The Auk, Vol. VII, 1890, p. 340. 
