WOODPECKERS 
281 
Field Marks. The red head and contrasting masses of black and white on the body, 
especially the large amount of white in the wings. 
Nesting. In cavity excavated in dead tree or stub. 
Distribution. Most of eastern and central North America, from southern Canada 
south to the Gulf of Mexico. In western Canada, southern Manitoba, and along the 
southern border as far west as Alberta. 
SUBSPECIES. Birds from the western prairies are somewhat larger than eastern 
ones, and have been described as a separate subspecies, the Western Red-headed Wood- 
pecker (le Pic a tete rouge de l’Ouest) Melanerpes erythrocevhalus erythropthalmm, but 
the form has not, as yet, been recognized by the American Ornithologists’ Union Com- 
mittee. The author is unable to say which form is represented in Manitoba. 
The Red-headed Woodpecker is really common in Canada only in 
southern Ontario where it is a familiar feature about orchards and wood 
lots. With its flaming red head and black and white banner-like body 
it is well known wherever it occurs. It has fewer of the regulation wood- 
pecker habits than most of its family and has evolved some flycatcher- 
like traits in addition to its ancestral ones. Though some charges of fruit 
eating have been made against it, its total effect is good. Not numerous 
enough in the western or Prairie sections to be of much economic import- 
ance there. This is the woodpecker whose head Hiawatha, in Longfellow’s 
poem, dipped in the blood of the Pearl Feather. 
408. Lewis’s Woodpecker, le pic de lewis. Asyndesmus lewisi, L, 10-50. Plate 
XXXIX A. A solidly black-backed woodpecker. Abdomen an intimate mixture of rose 
and grey (mostly rose) with peculiar hairy effect; breast of similar texture, but grey, and 
continuing about neck in a narrow collar. Face and chin dull, dark crimson. Juvenile 
similar but without red face or grey collar, and the rose below duller. 
Distinctions. The solid black back, grey collar and breast, and peculiar streaky rose 
underparts can be mistaken for no other bird likely to occur in Canada. 
Field Marks. All black back and rose underparts, with characteristic flycatching 
habits. 
Nesting. In holes excavated in trees and stubs. 
Distribution. Western North America, from southern British Columbia south to New 
Mexico. In Canada, mostly west of the Rocky Mountains, but occasional as far east as 
Saskatchewan, and has been noted in Manitoba. 
Lewis’s Woodpecker is a conspicuous bird in southern British Columbia. 
Its habit of frequenting the tops of tall, isolated trees, and flying out from 
them, making short circles and returning, or passing back and forth between 
adjoining trees, well out in the open, would attract attention at once, even 
if the birds were not so noisy. The shiny black backs and rosy under- 
parts enhance their ornamental value. 
Economic Status. There are strong, and at least partly substantiated, 
complaints against them as fruit-eaters. When they confine their attention 
to wild varieties, no harm is done, but they take cultivated varieties, and 
may on occasion cause some loss where fruit-raising is an important indus- 
try. No complete study of their food habits has been made, but such 
evidence as w f e have indicates that the bird on the whole, and throughout 
the year, is largely insectivorous. It does not delve into wood for grubs 
as much as other woodpeckers do, but takes a considerable number of 
beetles, ants, and other hymenoptera, a few bugs, and some grasshoppers. 
Normally, about, 15 per cent of the total food supply is fruit. Though 
undoubtedly too many fruit-eating birds in a fruit-growing district are a 
handicap, the species is never anything more than a local problem, and 
further investigation in field and laboratory is necessary to fix its definite 
economic status. 
