10 WOODPECKERS IN RELATION TO TREES. 
DAMAGE TO WOODEN POSTS AND STRUCTURES. 
However, when woodpeckers depart from their normal activities 
and inflict injuries in no wise essential to securing sufficient food or 
piopei- 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 erythrocephalus) 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 
K. Weiss, of the Forest Service, states that 110 out of 268 white cedar 
poles along a southern railway were bored by this 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. II. 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 
Sennet t made similar observations on the same bird in the Rio 
Grande Valley. He sa} T s: "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 load between Benson, Ariz., and Guaymas, Mexico. Mr. C. T. 
Day, assistant superintendent of telegraph on the Sonora division of 
this railway, says that between Xogales and Guaymas, Sonora, a 
great many poles have been lost on account of woodpeckers. "We are 
i Bryant, J. \ . Osprey, I., n:. A.ug., 1807. 
looted by Bendlre, c, Life Histories of x. a. Birds, II. 126, L895. 
•i'ii. Geo. B., Notes on the Ornithology of the Lower Rio Grande of Texas. Hull. U. S. Geol. and 
err., iv. 39, 1878. 
