120 THE CONDOR Vol. XXIV 
ACORN-GATHERING AND STORING 
Since the acorns are almost invariably placed in the holes butt-end out, and 
since the butt is, of course, always lodged in the cup as long as the nut is on the 
tree, it follows that somewhere between the picking of the nut and the storing 
of it the nut must be turned end for end. I was unable to see where or how this 
is done. 
In no instance did I see an individual deposit its acorn at once and at the 
place of alighting, even though any number of empty holes might be at the place. 
The bird may lght on a branch and, after a little delay, run along it to the trunk, 
where alone, so far as I have seen, the nuts are stored. Or the trunk may be the 
lighting place and considerable running about done upon it before the nut is fin- 
ally disposed of. In one ease particularly, the laden bird lit within a few feet 
of the ground, started immediately up the trunk, and scarcely halted until it 
reached nearly half way to the top, passing on its way dozens of empty holes. 
Quite as frequently as otherwise, the nut is placed in a hole and left for a 
moment, then taken out and carried on to some other locality. Almost always 
the nut is hammered more or less after being placed in the hole, this being done 
even though the hole is large enough and deep enough to admit the nut complete- 
ly and more too, without forcing. But not infrequently nuts are placed in 
holes not quite large enough or deep enough to take them in all over. Refer- 
ence was made to this fact in my previous report, and attention called to the 
exposure of such nuts to the depredations of other nut-eating creatures such as 
squirrels. Why nuts which slip into the holes easily to well below the surface 
of the bark should be thoroughly hammered while others even though ham- 
mered are nevertheless left sticking out considerably, is not obvious. 
About the most surprising performance I saw connected with the storing 
was the taking of nuts from holes where they had previously been left and in- 
serting them in other holes some distance away. The first few instances of this 
noticed seemed so strange that I doubted whether I was ‘‘seeing straight’’. 
It seemed likely that the nuts taken out were really those just put in but 
not yet satisfactorily placed, for, as just indicated, this sort of thing was the 
rule rather than the exception. But more careful attention removed all doubt. 
Quoting from notes: ‘‘Bird with acorn alighted directly on tree trunk, ran up a 
little way, inserted acorn; ran up a little farther, picked out another nut, ran 
up still higher and deposited this second nut’’. 
These narrations on hole drilling and acorn-gathering and storing could be 
elaborated much farther; but as they are fairly illustrative of all I saw, this 
is unnecessary. 
Reverting now to Henshaw’s idea about the character of the whole per- 
formance, I should say that while work in the narrower sense of human indus- 
trial activity would not be an appropriate name for what the birds do, neither 
would play in the narrower sense of human pass-time activity. 
In the first place acorn harvesting by the birds has reference to a definite, 
future need of the creatures, no less certainly than does grain harvesting by 
men. From the standpoint of prospective significance the two are so much alike 
that there seems no real ground for not calling them both work if either is so 
named. | 
In the second place there is a kind of persistence, or fidelity to the task, 
about both woodpecker acorn-harvesting and human grain-harvesting that does 
