jan., 1921 ACORN-STORING BY THE CALIFORNIA WOODPECKER 9g 
Report, MS) makes it all but certain that the woodpeckers make extensive 
use of the meats of sound acorns as well as of grubs of wormy ones. 
But, while some of the storage trees were completely emptied of nuts, tree 
A (so designated in the account of my July, 1919, visit), and the others of its 
group, had hardly been drawn upon at all. The acorns were in place much as 
they had been since stored away in the fall of 1918, and there was almost none 
of the litter on the ground around the trees which was so abundant around the 
mptied trees a half mile away. 
Now, indications of weathering of the exposed ends of the stored acorns 
Fig. 3. da, BLOCK OF BARK, JEFFREY PINE, WITH ACORN IN PLACE, 
SHOWING CLOSE FIT, BUTT OUT, AND OLD AGE OF ACORN AS INDI- 
CATED BY WEATHERING; 0, ©, AND @, ACORNS TAKEN FROM 
HOLES, THREE STAGES OF DETERIORATION (d, c, 0D) FROM AGE 
AND EXPOSURE. 
(previously noticed, but only cursorily) attracted my special attention. Such 
indications consist in a bleaching of the shell and a fine cracking of its sur- 
face. Following this intimation as to the keeping qualities of the acorns, I 
opened many sound nuts to see if the meats were showing signs of age. With- 
out exception the meats thus examined were much darker in color than are 
those of fresh nuts. In many eases the color was a decided brown and in some 
this had advanced well toward black. The impression one got was that unless 
