WOODPECKERS 171 



As in other parts of its range, this bird seems to be irregu- 

 larly migratory in winter, usually at that season leaving its 

 summer haunts and appearing in other sections. It is not 

 known to leave the United States, but in parts of Alabama it 

 is certainly less common in winter than in summer. It is 

 recorded as arriving at Woodbine, March 13; Tuscaloosa, 

 April 4; Montgomery, April 5; Coosada, April 21; and Sand 

 Mountain, April 22. 



Fresh eggs have been found at Leighton, April 20, May 20, 

 June 17, and June 29, and at Prattville, May 80. 



General habits. — This woodpecker is partial to deadenings 

 and cleared tracts in the timber, but is found also about small 

 groves of hardwood timber and along roadsides, where it 

 makes use of telephone poles for drumming stations or some- 

 times for nesting sites. The birds are noisy, sociable, and 

 frolicsome, the mates spending much time in playing hide- 

 and-seek around dead stubs and telephone poles and chasing 

 one another from tree to tree. Their ordinary note is a loud 

 tchur-tchur, resembling the notes of the tree frog (Hyla versi- 

 cola). Most of their food is secured from rotten stubs or 

 from the ground, but the birds are rather expert flycatchers, 

 and secure a good many insects on the wing. 



The nests are placed in hollows in a great variety of de- 

 ciduous trees and rarely in evergreens, from 8 to 80 feet above 

 the ground; frequently, nesting sites are drilled in telephone 

 poles. 



Food habits. — ^About two-thirds of the food of the red-head 

 consists of vegetable matter and one-third of insects. The 

 vegetable matter is composed principally of com and other 

 grains, fruits, berries, and mast (acorns, beechnuts, etc.) 

 Prof. Beal, after treating exhaustively of this bird's food, 

 gives the following summary of its economic status : 



No species of woodpecker in this country, with the possible 

 exception of the yellow-bellied sapsucker (Sphyrapicua varius), 

 has been the subject of so much adverse criticism as the red- 

 head. It has been accused of eating nearly every variety of 

 cultivated fruit from strawberries to oranges, of pecking com 

 from the ear, of eating the eggs of poultry and pigeons, of peck- 

 ing open the skulls and devouring the brains of young poultry, 

 and of destroying the eggs or young of eaves swallows and other 

 birds. These accusations are well grounded, but the habits are 



