170 
The Red-headed Woodpecker 
are put away in storage instead of nuts. The wise birds make real caches, 
concealing their stores by hammering down pieces of wood or bark over 
them. 
Beechnuts are so large a part of the food of the Redheads in autumn 
and winter in some localities that, like the gray squirrels, the birds are 
common in good beechnut winters and absent in others. Cold and snow 
do not trouble them, if they have plenty to eat, for, as Major Bendire says, 
many of them “winter along our northern border, in certain years, when 
they can find an abundant supply of food.” In fact, in the greater part 
Err tic Eastern States the Redhead is “a rather regular 
Migration resident,” but in the western part of its range “it 
appears to migrate pretty regularly,” so that it is rare 
to see one “north of latitude 40°, in winter.” It has become a rare bird 
in New England. 
In regions where this erratic Woodpecker migrates, it leaves its 
nesting-grounds early in October, and returns in the latter part of April 
or the beginning of May. Before too much taken up with the serious 
business of life the Redhead goes gaily about, as Major Bendire says, 
“frolicking and playing hide-and-seek with its mate, and when not so 
engaged, amusing itself by drumming on some resonant dead limb, or 
on the roof and sides of houses, barns, etc.” Although, like other drum- 
mers, the Red-headed Woodpeckers are not found in the front ranks of 
the orchestra, they beat a royal tattoo that may well express many 
fine feelings. 
When the musical spring holiday is over and the birds have chosen 
a tree for the nest, they hew out a pocket in a trunk or branch anywhere 
from eight to eighty feet from the ground. When the young hatch there 
comes a happy day for the person who, by kind in- 
Nestlings tent and unobtrusive manners, has earned the right 
to watch the lovely birds flying to and fro in caring 
for their brood. At last come days when the gray-headed youngsters 
instead of hanging out the window boldly open their wings and launch 
into the air. Anxious times these are for old birds — times when the 
watcher’s admiration may be roused by heroic deeds of parental love; 
for many a parent-bird fairly flaunts itself in the face of the enemy, as if 
trying to say, “Kill me ; spare my young !” 
One family of Redheads once gave me a delightful three weeks. 
When the old birds were first discovered, one was on a stub in a meadow. 
When joined by its mate, as the farmer was coming with oxen and hayrack 
to take up the rows of haycocks that stretched down 
the field, the pair flew slowly ahead along a line of 
An Anxious 
Family 
locust-trees, pecking quietly at the bark of each tree 
before flying on. At the foot of the meadow they flew over to a small 
grove in the adjoining pasture. 
As it was July, it was easy to draw conclusions ; and when I went to 
the grove to investigate, the pair were so much alarmed that they at once 
