1877. ] Changes of Habit among Woodpeckers. 471 
ON CHANGES OF HABIT AMONG WOODPECKERS}! 
BY SAMUEL CALVIN. 
F has long been known to naturalists that certain genera of 
woodpeckers have wholly or partly adopted habits quite in- 
consistent with those generally suggested when we think of the 
Within the past two or three years I have frequently had the 
pleasure of observing the red-headed woodpecker in the act of 
catching flies on the wing. Seating itself on the summit — not 
on the side— of some fence-stake or other elevated perch, it 
watches, as does the kingbird, for passing insects. Having 
singled out the desired victim from among many not worth catch- 
ing, it darts forward, catches it, and returns, usually to the same 
perch, to wait for the next. This any one may see repeated 
over and over again by the same individual, showing that it is no 
mere chance departure from woodpeckerian dignity into which 
the bird is inadvertently betrayed, but is rather one of the ordi- 
nary and settled practices resorted to in procuring food. 
The movements in the air of this woodpecker are very similar 
to those of the kingbird; it executes the gyrations and peculiar 
gymnastics necessary to follow the dodging insect with great 
adroitness. 
What is the meaning of all this? The barbed tongue, stout, 
straight bill, muscular neck, and structural adaptations for climb- 
ing, all point to.a different mode of life. None of them, cer- 
tainly, can be regarded, as rendering the bird any special fitness 
for fly-catching. It must be that the struggle for life among 
bark-searching birds has recently —within the past two or three 
geological epochs — become more severe, so much so as to drive 
Some of them to the adoption of other habits, quite regardless of 
structural fitness. The golden-winged woodpecker (Colaptes 
auratus), as all know, has been driven from the trees to feed 
largely on the ground. Its near relative (Colaptes campestris), 
of some parts of South America, frequents open plains, and, 
according to the testimony of competent observers, is never seen 
on trees at all. 
As bearing upon these changes of habit, and perhaps furnish- 
ing a suggestion in part of their compelling cause, it is interest- 
ing to note that quite a number of the perching birds have 
settled into the questionable habit of systematically poaching 
upon the special domain of the woodpecker. Among the war- 
1 Read before the Iowa Academy of Science, May 3, 1877. 
