10 WOODPECKERS IN RELATION TO TREES. 



DAMAGE TO WOODEN POSTS AND STRTJC TUBES. 



However, when woodpeckers depart from their normal activities 

 and inflict injuries in no wise essential to securing sufficient food or 

 proper shelter, we are not bound to pass over the offenses so lightly 

 as those above discussed. Probably the most serious damage 

 resulting from a change of habits is the hollowing out of telephone 

 poles for nest or shelter cavities, so weakening them that they snap 

 off in high winds. 



DAMAGE TO TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH POLES. 



The red-headed woodpecker (Melanerpes eryihrocephalus) in some 

 sections commonly chooses telephone poles as nesting sites. The 

 Pennsylvania Telephone Co., of Harrisburg, reports that some years 

 ago many costly poles were destroyed by this species, and Mr. Howard 

 F. Weiss, of the Forest Service, states that 110 out of 268 white cedar 

 poles along a southern railway were bored by tins bird. The bird 

 once became a nuisance to the Kansas City (Mo.) Electric Car Co. 

 by drilling the poles carrying the feed cables. A man employed 

 to kill them destroyed 19 in one day. 1 



A related species, the golden-fronted woodpecker (Centurus auri- 

 frons), does similar injury in Texas. Mr. H. P. Attwater says: 

 "Here their favorite nesting sites are in telegraph poles, and there 

 are few that are without woodpecker holes, as they appear to make 

 new ones every year, ... A line running out of San Antonio to a 

 ranch 9 miles distant was almost destroyed by these birds. They 

 came from all sides, from far and near, and made fresh holes every 

 year, sometimes as many as five or six in a single pole. 2 



Sennett made similar observations on the same bird in the Rio 

 Grande Valley. He says: "The square Government telegraph poles 

 are its favorite nesting place. There is hardly a pole free from their 

 holes, and in one I counted ten; probably some were made by their 

 only relative of that section, Picus scalaris, Texas woodpecker." 3 



Farther west a woodpecker, probably the Gila woodpecker (Cen- 

 turus uropygialis) , has been a source of trouble and expense to the 

 Southern Pacific Co. for several years, especially along the 200 miles 

 of road between Benson, Ariz., and Guaymas, Mexico. Mr. C. T. 

 Day, assistant superintendent of telegraph on the Sonora division of 

 this railway, says that between Nogales and Guaymas, Sonora, a 

 great many poles have been lost on account of woodpeckers. ' ' We are 



1 Bryant, J. A., Osprey, I., 147, Aug., 1S97. 



2 Quoted by Bendire, C, Life Histories of N. A. Birds, II, 125, 1895. 



s Sennett, Geo. B., Notes on the Ornithology of the Lower Rio Grande of Texas. Bull. U. S. Geol. and 

 Geog. Survey Terr., IV, 39, 1878. 



